Ghostwire Tokyo: Empty Streets, Ghosts and Cats
When it was first announced, this game caused me great excitement with the things I saw. We were wandering around the streets of Tokyo and the game was home to very strange creature designs. However, over time, this excitement quickly crashed and disappeared completely. The last thing I expected was to like the game. And I found unexpected enjoyment in the game.
Is a simple story sometimes enough? The game doesn't go very deep or twist through layers in terms of story. So much so that I can tell you this story in just three sentences. As a result of some supernatural events, Tokyo is taken over and everyone alive disappears. While our main character Akito has passed away, a soul named KK enters his body and we share the same body with two people. The game is accompanied by the guidance of these two people and their dialogues.
Akito also has a sister, our bad guy kidnaps our sister and wants to use her for his own purposes. Akito wants to save him and events develop. In short, the story adopts the formula of do something and save the girl. However, surprisingly, when I put this side by side with the presentation and atmosphere, I found the story sufficient in its extremely simple form. Indeed, after watching the cinematics at the beginning of the game, I understood the story within minutes and immediately got into the "okay, let's go save my sister" mood.
Even though Akito and KK are not very memorable personalities, the game told me "look, they are joking and bonding in a friendly way" and I took that bait. The dynamic between them gave me pleasure. Nice in theory, numb combat in practice The fighting mechanic we use most in the game is based on throwing spells with our hands.
Over time, these expand into elements such as water and fire, which are similar but with slightly different variations. We acquire new abilities such as Stun. Unfortunately, these are not enough and the combat becomes repetitive. For a good portion of the game, I ran away from combat and moved straight towards the mission. We also have an arrow we obtained from KK's office.
Still, the thing I enjoyed most in the game was opening the locked doors by drawing shapes in the air with our hands. Or, in the finisher move, bending and breaking a rope extending from the enemy spirit. Besides, there is also some track. Just as I recently had a lot of fun doing this in Dying Light 2, I also had a lot of fun doing this in Ghostwire: Tokyo.
My favorite parts of the game: side quests and cute animals, yes Contrary to the incredibly simple main story of the game, the side missions are completely different from each other, fun and very rich. Even though everyone in Tokyo has disappeared, people's souls remain around.
Sometimes I had to follow a doll that had escaped from someone's hands. Sometimes I had to enter a garbage house that swallowed everything, sometimes I searched for the soul of a little child who was kidnapped by the owner because he believed it would bring good luck, sometimes I trapped and hunted a soul by using a cucumber as bait. Even though the missions did not make me do very different things, I enjoyed following the underlying stories and they aroused my curiosity. The best part of the game, in my opinion, are the side quests. In fact, it is better than many games released under the name of open world. In addition to side quests, there are also small activities you can do.
For example, we collect the souls you come across on the streets, send them to KK's friend Ed through a phone booth, and save them. This gives us xp. Or we clean the Torii gates. We lift the fog over the city and provide access to new areas. They have equipped the game with plenty of content for us to explore Tokyo, which is full of ghosts and animals.
The other good thing is that the game is filled with cute animals everywhere. There are cute stray animals running around and we can read the thoughts of every animal in the game. I caress a dog's head and read his thoughts. Sometimes he thinks he is hungry, when I give him food he thinks how delicious it is, sometimes he believes that his owner will come and waits.
We encounter cat-shaped yokai in shops in Shibuya and we do our shopping through them. I even got a side quest from a little raccoon. I know it's not a groundbreaking thing, but it was a detail that excited and entertained me.
Ghost hunting on the streets of Shibuya and some technical issues Although the game sometimes has very detailed visuals, sometimes it does not look very good. The indoor areas were designed in great detail, I couldn't help but examine the objects on the table and on the supermarket shelves. But the open world doesn't always look so good. It is still enjoyable to wander the abandoned and sparkling streets of Shibuya.
Even though I played the game on a good system, I frequently experienced fps problems. If there were minor problems, they could be ignored, but my game literally crashed and became unplayable. Which was a little frustrating for me, who enjoyed the game. Note: These problems have decreased, although not fully resolved, after the game's release.
In conclusion While the game somehow doesn't promise anything new or different, it also has a lot of elements for you to have fun with. Although combat is repetitive, other elements in the game provide a very rich and innovative progression.
Unfortunately, its price is higher than necessary, which is an inevitable situation for every game, whether we expect it or not. It's not a game we would strongly recommend. When you sit in front of it, it makes you say "what the hell, what is this?" I can say that it has a good presentation for everything it contains. It's worth taking a look when it comes to Game Pass.