Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: Ghostrunner
Developer: One More Level
Publisher: All in! Games, 505 Games
Genre: Action, Adventure, Platformer, Hack and Slash, Arcade
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: November 10, 2020
Price: $29.99
I’m not a fan of one-hit-and-you’re-dead kind of games. That’s why I deliberately avoid Super Meat Boy and other such games that require utmost precision and split-second accuracy to deliver a kill or reach the end of a level in one piece. Playing these games become more of a chore than actually being enjoyable. And yet, when I first saw Ghostrunner, which mysteriously came out of nowhere it seems, I got very interested.
A few weeks ago, the trailer for the game popped out of YouTube. It has gameplay footage from a Nintendo Switch, and looked cool, to say the least. It has cyberpunk aesthetics with bright colors and features a lone cybernetic ninja with a katana, parkouring from wall to wall to slash enemies to bloody halves. I didn’t know if it was another port of an earlier-released game on other consoles, and I was a bit skeptical that it would run as good as it was shown on the trailer. Plus, the game didn’t even have an eShop page days prior to its release on November 10, 2020. Up to know, it shows a release date of December 9, for some reason, even though here I am, already playing it. This is not an early copy, and on the eShop, there are now two pages that show different release dates, one showing that it is already available.
Anyway, so I was both excited and anxious upon first booting up the game. Excited because the game really looks quite good (the visuals don’t look as good as it was on the trailer, but I was not really surprised) and anxious because I know that I know I will die at least a thousand times on this game and I was afraid that I would end up hating the game for not enjoying it. The game opens up with you playing as the nameless cybernetic ninja in first person view. Following a cool opening cinematic that sorts of acts as a backgrounder for the game, you find yourself alone with a katana blade on one hand. You hear a voice giving you information and instructions on what to do. The first two levels act as a tutorial, where you learn the basic movements and skills. You will have to jump across gaps and run along walls to reach the next platform as quickly as you can without falling to your death or getting hit by enemies that will try to actively shoot you upon first sight. You have the ability to slow down time that would allow you to avoid bullets and then go for a kill, which is obviously by slicing them using your katana. But slicing down an enemy doesn’t end there. Most of the time, you will need to engage multiple ones across separate platforms and they all try to kill you so there is no time for you to relax. You have to be continuously on the move, otherwise, you die upon one hit and you restart at your last checkpoint.
After the two first levels, it is revealed that you are the last of these cybernetic ninjas known as Ghostrunners. You are number 74, as it is pointed out, and the voice giving you instructions comes from Whisper aka the Architect. You are tasked to climb all the way to the top of a megastructure called the Dharma Tower, the last refuge for humans after an apocalyptic even called the Blast. Not much is said about the Blast. Anyway, your main goal is to reach the top and kill Mara aka the Keymaster, the Architect’s nemesis. Some time back, the Keymaster killed Adam, the Architect’s former self before his consciousness got archived online, and he has been seeking revenge since. You will also get assistance from Zoe, one of the last members of the resistance group known as the Climbers, who calls you Jack from time to time, as it was what you were called before you got reborn as a Ghostrunner. The three will converse throughout the game, revealing vital story elements and expositions, plus tutorials for newly-learned skills.
You will die a lot in this game, and that is to be expected. That is how you learn in this game. Each time you die, bit by bit, you learn from your mistakes, and eventually, you will progress further and further until you finish the level. And to help you further, you unlock new skills and abilities as you progress into the game which will make you more efficient and powerful. You can equip new abilities by plugging them in to your system in a Tetris-like manner, wherein the skills are visualized as combination of blocks that you have to fit together. At the start, you only have a few slots available, but you will eventually expand them to make room for more abilities. You cannot equip them all, so just equip those that suit your play style and needs. You also get to unlock new blades, plus get to collect some items scattered within levels, often located out of you usual path. So maybe while you are contemplating on how to not die in the next set of walls and platforms that you are about to parkour on, look around you and maybe you will find something cool.
You will also get software updates for you to learn new abilities, like being able to perform fast kills on multiple enemies and unleashing distant attacks. You do by going inside the Cybervoid, the visual representation of being hooked into a computer. Here, you will go through a relatively short level with a few platforming sections. You goal is to obtain the ability, install it, and test it. Once you are done with the software update, you go back to the real world and you can then use it. You can switch between abilities by pressing the D-pad buttons.
The more you progress into the game, the harder it gets, as usual, and your skills in this game really gets put to the test. Unfortunately, this Switch version of the game sort of works against you in what you are supposed to achieve. I think that this game is really suited best with using mouse and keyboard, like most FPS games. This game demands near perfection, with very little room for screw-ups, plus there is no option to adjust the difficulty. You should have pin-point accuracy and split-second timing. You lag just one tiny bit and you die. The locked 30fps is ok and serviceable, but I wish it was 60fps, especially for this kind of game. This game doesn’t offer gyro aiming, which sort of mimics the keyboard and mouse control scheme and would help you in micro-adjusting your controls as you try to do your parkour moves and trying your hardest not to get hit by enemies. Relying on analog sticks is less than desirable, and this results to hundreds of cheap deaths. The game does offer a few control scheme options, but they really don’t address the issue. Well, I may be just not that good with this game and the genre in general, but I don’t think I’m alone in this scenario. Dying time and time and time again, and then dying a few times more is just too frustrating.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS
- Good cyberpunk aesthetics, despite the low resolution and low quality of visual assets
- Excellent soundtrack, consisting of mostly electronic music
- Very challenging yet engaging “one-hit-and-you’re-dead” gameplay
- Cool skill equipping mechanics
- Wide customization options
- Plays surprisingly well in handheld
CONS
- Bland and predictable story
- No gyro aiming
- 60fps would have been much preferred
- Visual downgrades kind of hinders the player from fully enjoying the game as it impacts gameplay, like it would be too blurry and washed out at times that it is hard to see enemies from afar or judge distances between walls and platforms
- The audio is also downgraded; in some sections, the background music just drops, and you can only hear the clinks and clanks as you walk on steel platforms
- Some checkpoints are too far from one another that you will have to play particularly hard sections over and over again
- Quitting levels, going back to the main menu, and then continuing the game will make you replay the entire level from the very beginning, which is quite frustrating
RATING: 3.5/5 One-hit kills
No comments:
Post a Comment