Ghostwire: Tokyo is a big shift from Tango Gameworks’ other games, as well as shooters as a whole. While the team built its name on the horror series The Evil Within, this newest title only has vague horror elements. And speaking more broadly, most first-person shooters are about blasting shotguns and ripping and tearing and Ghostwire: Tokyo is about elaborately flinging spells as if each finger were its own individual gun barrel. Breaking free from tradition and industry tropes does wonders for the game, resulting in an experience that is able to carve its own path and stick out amongst a sea of dull open-world games and shooters.

Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1215237-ghostwire-toyko-review-ps5

7,1/10
Conceptually unusual shooter, surprisingly released at about the same time as Shadow Warrior 3, it also an "asian culture" shooter aimed at western audience, with a commentator in the form of a spirit-helper, though the ghost is not charismatic at all, there is even a kind of grappling hook.
But here we have a story-driven shooter, the plot itself is very banal, the villain kidnaps our sister from the hospital and we have to rescue her, along the way freeing dozens of souls in an empty city (although not quite, instead of people cats and dogs walking here). The cutscenes are also poorly done, so this is clearly not an aspect of the game for which you need to play it.
All these abilities out of our hands..of course, the idea is cool, but there is a very small roster of moves, for the first hours you will generally walk with literally one ability - a finger shot, fights are very boring, similar to a "clicker", and the awesome looking ability to let out from hand yellow wires from the trailer, used only for finishings (pulling souls). Next tricks are some kind of fireballs, water waves, green bombs.. in general, banality, it’s not interesting to shoot them. The mechanics also seem to be nothing really original, here, for example, there are the same banal "red barrels" from any shooter, only in the form of red balls.
That is, the game is missed it`s big potential, it disappointed me, it would be cool if Marvel made a game like this about Doctor Strange, by the way)
But then there is a beautiful city, good graphics, though only the first levels are optimized, then the FPS drops by 2-3 times, and, in cutscenes, there is just a black screens (which, by the way, is a huge technical fail for a story game)
Also, the city here is a large open corridor location, with gradually opening zones, and this greatly hinders its exploration, especially at first, because the fog in the city often does not allow you to move away from the story path just a couple of meters.
Well, you can also probably find some small elements of horror here or study Japanese culture in a local store by reading descriptions of a bunch of edibles with the same parameters that act as a first-aid kits here.

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https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41977550/

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Концепутально необычный шутер, удивительно вышедший примерно в одно время с Shadow Warrior 3, тоже являющимся шутером азиатской культуры, ориентированным на западную аудиторию, с комментатором в виде духа-помощника, правда тут призрак вообще не харизматичный, да ещё и русская озвучка делает ещё хуже, тут ещё даже есть некое подобие крюка-кошки.
Но хоть тут у нас и "сюжетный" шутер, сама история очень банальная, злодей похищает нашу сестру из больницы и мы должны её спасти, попутно освобождая десятки душ в пустом городе (хотя не совсем, просто вместо людей тут ходят коты и собаки). Катсцены тоже сделаны плохо, так что это явно не тот аспект игры, ради которого надо в неё играть.
Все эти способности из рук, конечно, идея классная, но тут очень маленький ростер приёмов, первые часы вы вообще будете ходить буквально с одной способностью - выстрел из пальца, драки поэтому кажутся очень унылыми, похожими на "кликер", а очешуенно выглядящая способность пускать из рук жёлтые провода из трейлера, используется только для добиваний (вытягивания душ). Открывающиеся новые приёмы это какие-то огненные шары, водяные волны, зелёные бомбочки.. в общем, банальщина, стрелять ими неинтересно. По механикам тоже вроде бы ничего прям оригинального, тут, например, есть те же банальные "красные бочки" из любого шутера, только в виде красных шариков.
То есть игра - это просранный, извините, потенциал, меня лично разочаровала, было бы круто, кстати, если бы Марвел сделала игру такого плана про Доктора Стренджа)
Но зато тут красивый город, хорошая графика, правда оптимизированы только первые уровни, потом фпс падает в 2-3 раза, и, в катсценах бывает просто чёрный экран (что, кстати, большой технический фейл для сюжетной игры). Также город тут представляет из себя большую открытую коридорную локацию, с постепенно открывающимися зонами, и это очень мешает его исследованию, особенно поначалу, потому что туман в городе зачастую не даёт отойти от сюжетной тропинки даже буквально на пару метров. Ну, наверное, вы можете тут ещё найти для себя какие-то небольшие элементы хоррора или поизучать японскую культуру, читая в местном магазине описания кучи одинаковых по параметрам съедобностей, которые выполняют тут роль аптечки.

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Review Personal de GhostWire: Tokyo :

Graficos:
Se ve muy bien la verdad, y pasear un poco por Tokyo de esta manera es la fantasía de cualquier fan de Japón, pero en general se ve muy bien.

Gameplay:
Esta decente, pero esperaba mas como una especie de Sekiro con Ghostrunner, aunque igualmente esta bueno la verdad que no me sorprende para nada y a veces es bastante tosco.

Historia:
Bastante mediocre la verdad, tenes que salvar a tu hermana de unos malvados y vos tenes un espíritu que te manda, la verdad para nada original y bastante malo.

Resumen:
No voy a seguir este juego porque la verdad no le tengo muchas ganas ahora, ya que me decepciono un poco pero en general esta decente aunque no lo recomiendo.

4/10

One of the most average and safe games I've played in recent memory which is beyond disappointing to me because I was very excited for this game and I absolutely love The Evil Within 1 & 2.

The story was very generic, main villain kidnaps the protagonist's sister, the protagonist, Akito goes on a revenge quest to save her and teams up with a wraith and former detective called KK who possesses him. The story does have some nice thematic elements of family bonds, love, learning to forgive yourself and finding a purpose for your life again, but it really just scratches the surface of these themes and just wasn't fleshed out enough to leave much of an impression on me.

The Ethereal Weaving magical based FPS combat while fun is simplistic and gets very repetitive the longer you play the game. There's only 3 different Ethereal Weaving powers which you unlock very early on, Gust which acts like fast wind bullets, Aqua which is more of a shotgun blast and is good for wide bursts that attack groups of enemies and Fire which acts like a powerful grenade launcher that has very limited ammo. You also get some various Talismans which stun and expose the enemies spirit cores so you can take them down fast, however these are expensive and I found myself rarely using them because using your base Ethereal Weaving powers is just more effective and cheaper. You also have a bow which you can use to snipe targets, but ultimately it still feels pointless and I hardly used it as well.

There are obligatory skill trees and level up systems which let you unlock abilities and strengthen your powers, but I feel like much like the combat or story these systems weren't deep enough and I had almost everything unlocked and at max level before even beating the game. Plus you hardly get experience just for fighting enemies or completing quests and most of your experience comes from finding Lost Souls through the city and transferring them through the phone lines. This is another part of the game that gets very repetitive seeing how you constantly have to do this just to level up.

The open world is very much the most typical overused Ubisoft checklist gaming formula down to a T (Hell, the protagonist even gets a damn 'Spectral Vision' Assassin vision power to show enemies and items on the map). Cleanse the Torri Gate, uncover more of the map, unlock a bunch of map markers for side objectives, find useless collectables, rinse and repeat. I will say some of the side quests are interesting because they highlight Japanese folklore, but at the end of the day a lot of encounters feel very samey and a few of them like cleansing corrupted Cherry Blossoms or capturing various Yokai you do multiple times so it cheapens the encounter and makes something cool at first feel repetitive the next 5 times you have to do it.

The devs went to great lengths to represent Japanese folklore, history and culture and there are tons of interesting database entries and things in the world that do achieve this goal, like collecting Tanuki, seeing Nekomata run convenience stores, using Tengu to grapple and glide etc, but at the end of the day you can only do so much to disguise the Ubisoft formula and this is one we've seen far too many times before and I'm personally beyond sick of it (I could at least tolerate it in a game like Ghost of Tsushima because the story was so compelling), especially even more so after just recently experiencing the peak of open world gaming that is Elden Ring.

I will say however one of the strongest elements of Ghostwire is its visuals and atmosphere. Tokyo looks great and really captures the bleak and isolate feeling of being one of the last people left in the city after everyone has been spirited away. You'll find remnants of the lost souls everywhere you look from clothing and phones to abandoned cars, which makes for good environmental storytelling. Tango primarily being known for horror games is evident by the creature design that's inspired by Japanese folklore and Yokai because though limited it's still very good and I also enjoyed the moments when the environment and world shifts around you in a psychological way which reminded me of The Evil Within or Silent Hill.

When all is said and done I think the best way to describe Ghostwire Tokyo is simplistic and repetitive. The devs put so much care into crafting a detailed beautiful supernatural version of Tokyo that represents Japanese folklore, culture and history, but if only they put that much care into crafting the gameplay mechanics and story. For games focusing on Japanese folklore, culture and history I'll just stick with Nioh.

Highly suggest these upgrades:

Amenokagami I, II
Amenotori I, X
Inubashiri I, II
Tajikara I, II
Ninigi I, II
Kukurihime I, II
Shinatobe I, II
Wadatsumi I, II
Hinokagabiko I, II
Takehaya I, II, III
Yumitsukai I, II, III, IV
Fukurokuju I, II, III
Daikoku I

29/68

I didn't expect much, but I thought this game was fun!

The shooting feels really unique, most of the upgrades feel meaningful enough, there are some really visually striking areas and effects, I liked yokai hunting and traversal, and I loved the buddy cop dynamic between KK and Akito. I liked that the story had a little bit of that anime melodrama going on, but coming out of a type of game that you wouldn't expect it from, and the dub is surprisingly good/ And hell, the game even has a bit of that patented Yakuza virtual tourism going on!

That said, as many people have said before me, this game is not without flaws; specifically and most glaringly the open world is extremely by the books in its design and a lot of the sidequests are busywork. There are also points in the story that are a bit hamfisted and I feel like it skips a beat sometimes, but I feel like it sufficiently makes up for that in the long run. I can also see the complaints of lack in variety, there was just enough in my book but I think one more spell element, an additional non magic weapon, and a couple new more aggressive enemy types would have helped. Plus I feel like it could have maybe used a bit more polish in general.

This is the kind of game I would love to see a sequel to, tightening up everything, polishing it up, and taking feedback into account, though who knows if it could ever happen. It might be an unpopular opinion, but given the choice between a new Evil Within and this, I would absolutely choose this with no hesitation. That said, as things are now I heartily enjoyed this game, a perfect and surprising little gem of a palette cleanser.

Downright offensive in its mediocrity, the only thing that GhostWire: Tokyo excels at is disrespecting the player’s time. Perhaps all the more painful is that, if you stare at it long enough, you can almost see the point where they decided to drop any pretense of developing an actual video game as opposed to a virtual sightseeing tour in the vein of Cyberpunk 2077.

GhostWire: Tokyo follows Akito, a young man possessed by the spirit of a dead man named KK who is after a mysterious figure wearing a Hannya mask who appears to have robbed the people of Shibuya of their bodies. Coincidentally, Mr. Hannya has also kidnapped Akito’s sister, so Akito immediately has a reason to acquiesce to KK’s demands to kill the youkai terrorizing the now-desolate Tokyo ward. The premise here is nothing special, and the narrative is even less so. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the back end of the game (nearly the entirety of chapters five and six) wasn’t brimming with cutscenes and walk-n-talk sequences. Rest assured, this game’s story – which literally could have written itself better – will not reach the emotional highs it should, and you will never find yourself invested in it, with Akito and KK remaining at its conclusion just as dull as they were on introduction, and the side characters (all two of them) not faring any better. All of this may have been expounded upon via audio logs – a long-time and god awful open world staple – but I checked out on those about a third of the way through.

The game’s combat looks interesting at first glance, at least visually, as it takes considerable inspiration from the fantastical powers of Japanese Shinto priests of legend (read: anime). Indeed, the combat initially feels solid: the player can assume three different hand formations – basically switching weapons – to fire blasts of energy with either wind, water, or fire elements. The shape and properties of each is different and can be used contextually based on which enemies you’re fighting at a given time. To supplement this, you have a bow and a small assortment of talismans that do everything from paralyzing enemies to creating bushes you can hide in. The skill tree, despite having no reason to exist in the first place, thankfully fills out quickly. The problem is, from your first fight to the last, nothing substantially changes about the way you approach enemies. The bow is contextually useful for flying enemies, and the talismans may as well not even exist. You’ll be using the same three energy moves (mostly water) for dozens of hours against the same half dozen enemies. You’ll come to find that, even on Hard, GW:T presents almost zero challenge, and offers no “risk vs. reward” systems in its enemy encounters. Every time an enemy hobbles up to slowly punch you in the face, you can either block and heal or try to very clumsily run away. Maneuverability in combat is basically non-existent here which, while not fun in any case, only functionally becomes a problem when you’re facing the later-game bullet sponge enemies that are a little more aggressive.

On the subject of enemies: for a game that seems to have billed itself on youkai, it sure seems to be scared of making any use of them. Most enemies you fight will be a variant of Slenderman with few exceptions, including teru teru bouzu and a headless schoolgirl enemy whose panties you vexingly cannot see even after knocking her on the ground. Most youkai are relegated to the boring sidequests, where you might follow a karakasa for two minutes before instantly killing it, or bait a kappa with a cucumber before instantly killing it; and rest assured: because this is an open-world game, you will be doing each of these several times. The youkai cast is rounded out by nekomata, who operate shops, and tengu, who allow you to reach rooftops. Hyakki Yagyou will occur as a random phenomenon on main streets, but running into it will only treat you to yet another gauntlet of fights against slendermen. Bosses are maybe more visually interesting than normal enemies, but are functionally boring, only serving as exercises in pressing R2 to finish them as fast as possible.

In terms of the main content, the game probably has a little more than a dozen hours of playtime. However, if you are foolish enough – as I was – to attempt to tackle its collectathons, you will be spending much more wasted time sprinting around streets and clumsily grappling across rooftops. Moving from point A to point B in this game is both boring and frustrating. I found myself constantly vaulting over things I wanted to climb, and unable to grapple to any rooftop that was slightly slanted. This is a problem when collectibles are hidden behind the aforementioned Hyakku Yagyou phenomenon, which requires the player to spend hours running up and down streets in hopes of running into one.

As a sucker for playing in open-world settings based on places I’ve spent a lot of time in, I was baited into buying this game based on its setting of Shibuya. To be fair, the city looks very nice, and it’s easy to be awed by it for the first couple hours. This quickly wears off. First of all, there are genuinely zero ways to interact with the environment. You can open doors, press elevator buttons, and pick up food sitting on benches, and nothing further. This game has no surprises, and will never defy your expectations as you round the next corner to cleanse the next shrine (climb the Ubisoft tower). Also particularly annoying is that, while the general layout of Shibuya is intact here, the game curiously does not recreate it terribly faithfully: famous landmarks are bafflingly absent, and even places consistently crowded with tourists and club-goers are almost unrecognizable from their real life counterparts. It is genuinely a problem when a game with a budget as high as this compares unfavorably with the likes of Akiba’s Trip 2, which you could literally give to a tourist as a map of Akihabara. This is not to mention the Yakuza series which, while only broadly inspired by real-life locales, lets you dig deep into its settings in contrast to GW:T effectively making you watch from the other side of the window.

In the year 2022, a game this out of touch would have already been offensive. Off the heels of Elden Ring, which is set to revolutionize expectations of the open world genre much like Breath of the Wild did, this game is sickening. This might be worth ten bucks on sale.

It's a shame, really. Ghostwire Tokyo is a game I wanted to enjoy but cannot say I did. It's like the worst aspects of Dead Island and Far Cry 3 mixed together and given an admittedly gorgeous coat of paint, however, no matter how many enjoyable enemy designs and cool world aspects you add the problem still remains that Ghostwire is not fun to play. So many technical issues arose, the main one being the lack of control. Most times it felt like I was telling someone else with poor hearing to input for me, rather than say pressing the jump button and having the character jump. Several encounters were made significantly more difficult considering the block button only worked half the time. None of this was hardware-related, only in Ghostwire do these problems arise. The game is burdened with this encumbering and barren map. It's the same issue I faced with Watch_Dogs Legion, a very samey giant city with endless nondescript streets. However, as I already alluded to, the reason I kept going with this game is the world design. So many well-crafted little details and overall interesting designs. The enemies and by extension the Yokai all held special little places in my heart, I found myself thinking about them way more than any other aspect of the game. The story came close to captivating me, however, there is just underlying tiredness that held it back. Too many times it felt too easy to relate characters to those seen many times before in both greater and lesser games. The quirky socially awkward tech guy for one, Ed, felt like a utility rather than a character. I would've loved to be able to connect to these characters I spend hours with but it just never happened. Granted, I didn't play every single side mission and therefore have no idea whether a super-secret Ed side mission finally fleshes his character out. By the end of the year, I'm certain I won't still hold contempt for this game. It's not bad, it's just not good.

When Ghostwire: Tokyo was revealed in 2019 it's creative director at the time, Ikumi Nakamura, arguably stole the show with her bubbly personality, eccentric, glowing energy, and memorable poses that spawned countless fanarts, edits and memes. Ikumi, who previously worked as lead art designer for excellent The Evil Within 1 & 2, would then shortly thereafter leave Tango Gameworks under health concerns.

Three years later in March 2022, she announced her new studio; UNSEEN, stating that: "I decided that rather than having a company where games get made, I realised that I’d like to have a studio where artists get together and have fun making games together and where they can be creative".

Cut forward to the release of Ghostwire. A game that lures you in under the guise of a gonzo, deftly original, urban spirit hunting horror, but in reality is a trojan horse for the exact type of open world, fluff ridden schlock I swore off years ago. Aesthetically competent and stylishly atypical; an uninspired, derivative, generic, by the numbers slog in every other regard. To sum up in a few words: it's all fur coat and no knickers.

Now, I don't pretend to know Ikumi's true thoughts and feelings regarding the development process of this title, and there was a time where she would refer to it as her baby, but one has to wonder how someone as passionate as her and the rest of the team at Tango could've ever found joy working on this Ubisoft-lite that just smacks of wasted energy and potential from beginning to end. And thats when her departure and subsequent founding of UNSEEN starts to make a lot more sense.

Maybe I'm just reading what I want to read, but her new mission statement comes off to me as a rejection of the philosophy and circumstances that leads to these focus tested into oblivion, visionless games. Only time will tell. Shinji Mikami too, there's no timeline where I could imagine him making a game remotely similar to this. I get the vibe he looked at it once, said "sounds cool" and went back to his office for 5 years. We need the man back in the directors seat now more than ever.

Ghostwire Tokyo is an amalgamation of everything open world games get wrong, and for it to release just a month after Elden Ring only serves to cement everything that game got right. Ghostwire did not have to be an Elden Ring, a Sable, or a BOTW. Absolutely not. However, the amount of hand holding and unsubtle, downright blunt player guidance on display here for a world so small feels silly. Even sillier next to Elden Ring's world which is monumental in comparison and doesn't at any point hold the hand of the player like a child being walked across an empty road, instead it simply allowed you to BE in that world. Have a little faith.

In Ghostwire you can't even open the map without having all control snatched from you as you're quite literally forced to look at every single bad side quest, tower, and objective one by one that just became available for you to (hopefully) ignore later in the game. It also features all the crap I kinda thought we moved past already like the aforementioned towers, fog on the map, and miserable side quests that end half the time in a large arena where you have to fight like 20 dudes and that's it.

And I had to laugh every time they got brave enough (which is often enough to comment on) to take all your powers away and leave you with that twiddly little bow as if anyone wants that. As if your game's combat wasn't rudimentary enough, panging of half assery even with the powers that all feel the same, that each serve the same purpose. As if slowly walking back and clicking on the same 5 or 6 enemy types slowly walking towards you wasn't boring enough. As if.

Tango Gamework's first miss, and what a miss. There's nothing to see here, move along.

I've played most of it. The graphics and the atmosphere are nice but the story is kinda cliché and the gameplay mechanics are shallow. Also, there are mandatory side quests like tower unlocking to go further in the story and get powerful, that's the sole reason why I've shelved this game.

Evil Within 2 was an open world with some optional side quests too and it was good. I don't really understand why they changed their design choices to Ubisoft-like. It's so sad situation for Shinji Mikami's (who is one of the most innovative video game directors) studio.

I will finish it later I guess?

I won't rate this game but man was I bored within the first couple of hours. I could go on about what I didn't like but I think it boils down to it feeling like just another point you in this direction open world game. A lot of the UI that I can turn off in the options doesn't feel like they intended for you to ever turn any of it off, so having all the notifications and markers on my screen at all time was a big turn off. Maybe there's a fun game hidden in here somewhere, but I certainly will never know.

In many regards, Ghostwire: Tokyo feels outdated and generic - it uses the same open world design that has been used in most triple A games since Far Cry 3 (towers included), it has a mostly useless skill tree for the sake of having it there, and the bosses are often simplistic and disappointing. With that being said, it's also a game that is visually refreshing, has a lot of verticality in its environments, the side-quests aren't at all time consuming and include some very memorable and often charming moments and its story is lead by two likeable protagonists that fortunately have a good dynamic between them. If you have any interest in japanese culture, specifically urban legends, Ghostwire might scratch that itch. Here's hoping for a sequel that improves its mostly shallow (albeit satisfying) combat mechanics with some new ways of traversing its detailed recreation of a Japanese setting.

In development for 3 years i'd say they did an amazing job with this game because this is one of the prettiest games i've ever played storywise and graphics wise and for a team that i haven't heard about, the work they've done is phenomenal.
The graphics look fantastic and it just feels like im watching a movie during the cutscenes and with that fantastic graphics come the environments which i feel like they really nailed it and it's like i'm really there exploring.
Gameplay is actually really fun and it's basically aggressive finger pointing and hand gestures and dog petting, one thing i did find kind of a bit repetitive is souls collecting which is needed for you to earn some money and EXP and it's fun for the first time but after playing it for a while it can get tiring.
Despite the aggressive hand gestures gameplay, this game's story is really beautiful and i can get real invested and the chemistry between the two characters KK and Akito is actually nice sadly i wished that the main protagonist's sister get more screentime but she's more so a plot device meant to get the main protag going but i enjoy it.

Overall this game is great and despite some scenes in the game made me feel like im tripping on acid it's very fun i definitely recommend it

This game is like a throwback to 7th gen open world design in all the worst ways.

It's... playable, but you've probably played a lot of other titles that are more satisfying, more rewarding to play than this. It also lacks a lot of the pacing, the cool setpieces and enemy encounters that made the Evil Within games fun, from the same developer.

And the story is weak, it lacks the emotional core to make you care for the long run, despite the alright start. It tries to say something about grieving and moving on, but all of it feels really thin, none of the characters get enough to explore what they're going through.