Ghostrunner, an explosion of adrenaline | Review
We have reviewed the game with the following PC:
GPU: RTX 2070 Gigabyte MOBO: Asus ROG STRIX Z370-F RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB DDR4 3200MHz CPU: Intel i5 8600k SSD: Sabrent SSD 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Keyboard: Corsair K70 LUX LED Red Cherry MX Brown Mouse: Fnatic Flick 2 Headphones: Logitech G930 Monitor: Samsung C27HG 70 Quad HD 144Hz HDR
Cyberpunk
The events narrated by Ghostrunner take place in the Dharma Tower, an exquisitely styled setting cyberpunk, complete with neon and degraded suburbs. This urban conglomerate is nothing more than the last bastion of human civilization, forced to take refuge in the tower following a cataclysm with apocalyptic features. As if all this were not enough, Mara, the Keeper of the Keys, a tyrannical and mysterious figure who commands this vertical city comes into play.As a very advanced war machine, which miraculously survived the purge of Mara, our task will be to climb the Dharma Tower, led by a mysterious and cryptic mentor, and place up to this tyrannical kingdom . All this, of course, making its way through hundreds of enemies, dangers, traps and increasingly inaccessible paths.
Everything revolves around discovering who really is the despot in command of Torre Dharma, in an ascension that is not only physical, but also metaphorical, as we will slowly be able to climb the dangerous structure more details about the situation that grabs the dark city and our past, with our protagonist who had lost his memory due to what happened before the events of the title. An intriguing plot, although not revolutionary and equipped with some twists "phoned", which manages, without upsetting particularly positively, to turn out to be a perfect side dish to what is the real highlight of the game, namely the gameplay.
Ghostrunner: hymn to the frenzy
Playing Ghostrunner is a sublime experience, able to gratify the player like few other titles. One More Level has created for the occasion a game system that may very well be comparable to a complex score, as difficult to master as it is incredibly satisfying once understood. Our ghostrunner will be able to run on walls, climb walls and float with grapples: all like in a Mirror's Edge on steroids, where the clean and clear aesthetic of the EA title gives way to the dirty and infamous streets of the Dharma Tower.A passage, that from the corrupt and only apparently shining metropolis of Faith to the degraded cyberpunk conglomerate of Ghostrunner, which can also be found in the possibility for our protagonist to foil any threat we will face thanks to a long katana . But be careful, considering Ghostrunner to be on par with an FPS or similar would be a very serious mistake: in the title of One More Level we will never find ourselves engaging in white weapon duels or anything else. The only way to get the better of the enemies will in fact be floating gracefully among the various elements of the room, trying to find an opening in the opponent's defenses. In Ghostrunner there is the absolute one-hit, one-kill rule, both for us and for our opponents: missing a movement will take us straight to the game over screen and having to start over from the last checkpoint.
It is precisely in this difficulty that one of the main weaknesses of the title can be found: that is, its being too frustrating in certain sections. We understand very well the desire of the developers to propose a level of difficulty above the standards, winking at hardcore players - it is something that we actually appreciate -, but certain phases focus too much on this aspect, making some sections frustrating to say the least and also discouraging. In short, if you love to repeat and repeat the same game fragment dozens and dozens of times, do not get too much trouble, but if this prospect alarms you, maybe Ghostrunner is not exactly the game for you.
Ghostrunner's gameplay does not stop here however and if you give the work of One More Level an opportunity - a name, a program given how much addiction Ghostrunner creates - you will find yourself in your hands a complete experience . In the course of the various levels of the game you will in fact get acquainted with numerous power-ups and various abilities, such as hacking platforms, temporal stasis and special attacks, which manage to make everything incredibly more varied and never drop the title in the repetitiveness. All upgradeable thanks to the raw but functional roleplay mechanics, with our character who will have a grid in which we will be asked to arrange the different upgrades like Tetris, such as a longer shot or a charge plus for some skills, in the way that suits us best. Grid and power-ups, as well as the skills mentioned above, which are obviously unlocked over time, thus also creating a great sense of progression in the player.
In short, in terms of content, he definitely didn't skimp and, although it is a purely linear adventure, you will hardly feel harnessed. The longevity is also excellent, considering the type of title where every small section is treated with great attention to detail, with Ghostrunner almost reaching ten hours and which lends itself to being replayed over and over again given its arcade soul. , complete with an end-of-level score.
More cyberpunk than Cyberpunk
Another respectable sector is certainly the level design, which almost always manages to impress and convince. In over 15 levels, we will in fact find ourselves in front of situations of all kinds, starting from a sort of obstacle courses full of dangers up to "quiet" crossings where a narrator will tell us the events of Torre Dharma. All passing through the inevitable larger areas in which we will be called to eliminate any threat that will appear in front of us.In these sections GhostRunner shines particularly. Thanks to the numerous powers of our digital alter ego and his strong physical abilities, in them we will be able to embark on beautiful and fluid dances of death, where we will be able to unleash our killing instinct in myriads of different ways. To make everything even more captivating is then a more than fair number of types of opponents, who will obviously have to be faced in different ways, thus increasing even more the sense of freedom of the player.
The artistic side is also excellent, with the production of One More Level which, as previously mentioned, respects all the trappings of the cyberpunk genre, and manages to surprise with well-finished, varied and technically good settings. Finally, the pounding soundtrack is absolutely spot on, with the techno tracks by Daniel Deluxe that manage to turn out to be a not indifferent quid and increase the adrenaline in the body even more during the game.
