Analysis of Ghostwire Tokyo

A triple A with soul of double A, with all that this entails: very powerful proposals but with elements that do not get to comfort at all.

I have never been lucky enough to visit Tokyo, but some part of my brain, unconsciously, it feels as if it had been there. I know it's not a real perception, but the little fetish that the videogame has with the Japanese capital has made me reasonably familiar with its emblematic places, with its landscape and with the peculiarity of the layout of its streets. Tokyo - and, specifically, the area of ​​Shibuya and its surroundings - usually characterized in its fictitious representations by a very remarkable bustle, a vaivan of people, thoughts and rushes that extend throughout their geography. It is what comes to mind if we think about sitting on the crowded train of person 5, class road, or to bite dust to dozens of macaros in the Kamurocho of the Saga Yakuza. The Tokyo of Ghostwire: Tokyo, however, is empty.

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Basic information

* Developer: Gameworks Tango * Editor: Bethesda * Platforms: PS5, PC * Proven version: PS5 * Availability: 03/25/2022

At the beginning of the plot of the game, a mysterious event has made all the inhabitants of Tokyo disappear. The only exception is our protagonist, Akito, who at the time when the debacle happens is possessed by a kind of spirit. When we won the control of the character, we find that some strange monsters, the visitors, have taken the city and swarm through it by generating psychic corruption in certain areas and absorbing the souls of the missing persons. After a bit of bewilderment, K. K., the Spirit with which we now share body, provides us with the skills that will be our best trick throughout the adventure to face these monsters. Our arsenal will consist, for almost all the departure, in ether shots of different types - water, fire and wind -, talismans that generate different effects, such as being immobilizing enemies, and a magical arc that looks suspiciously to an arc Normal and it will almost always be our last resort.

But, at least during the first compasses of the game, we will focus on understanding what has happened and what we can do to solve it. Since there are no other characters in this universe, almost all action will be developed or by flashbacks, or by conversation between K.K. And Akito. When the disaster happens, Akito is fundamentally worried about saving his sister, who was admitted to a hospital when it happened; The reasons for K.K. We do not know them at first, but they will unravel little by little as we are approaching the causes of the event and Hanny, the villain with demon mask that has orchestrated everything and that will always be in the middle of all the mezzanters.

The truth is that the individual stories of Akito and K.K. They are quite less interesting than the relationship between them. It is not that the premise is originally - K.K. It is an Exdetective Grumpy and Akito is a young man a little pardin - but seeing the way they are getting to be known, they are chincture, they joke and sometimes lower the guard to trust anecdotes more characters is the perfect backdrop for supernatural investigations. In this mentor and student relationship, K.K. He will always be there to advise us, at first, and to give us encouragement, appreciate our skills and complain a bit when we neglect, once we have caught more confidence. His voice, in addition, goes out of the Dualsense speaker instead of the screen, and that gives him an extra point of spectrality that is a bit sinister at first, but comforting at the same time, as if there was a part of our brain that was Always there to devote some words of encouragement.

Ghostwire: Tokyo has a fairly traditional open world structure, which will start in a fairly limited area and we will have to discover the map little by little. The narrative excuse of this is that the arrival of visitors has made the levels of psychic corruption in the area, and most of the city is covered by a fog that hurts us when trying to cross it. To "purify it" we will have to find the different Torii doors that are scattered around the city and eliminating the negative energy of them. When we do, we will unlock the exploration of the areas around the doors, with their stores, secondary missions and other activities that we can do.

As already commented in our advance, one of the strongest points of the game is the way in which all its elements are extraordinarily anchored in the Japanese culture and folklore. This is transferred to the thoroughness of the recreation of the city, which shows us emblematic places but also alleyways, roofs and dark corners, and whose eye in detail is moving even to traffic signs, marks on the road and posters and signs In establishments. The Japanese flavor, valgates redundancy, moved to healing objects, which we can buy in stores or in different street positions or simply find scattered on the map. Each appetizer, from rice balls to Taiyakis, Dorayakis, Senbei or refreshments of green tea are very consciously anchored in Japanese culture. Sometimes, we will know these foods by cultural assimilation of other Japanese fictions, such as manga and anime, but in others they will help us discover a bit of a country that is not ours and whose subtleties can be buried by stereotypes and popularization of certain of its facets. In any case, and so that we do not get lost, the game has an extensive database that we are collecting as we explore your map and that offers us more detailed descriptions of each of the objects, meals and other elements that we are finding.

Speaking of this, my favorite facet of the game is the secondary missions, in which we usually face against or help Yokais. Ghostwire: Tokyo takes advantage of its supernatural background to give a rather relevant role to this element of Japanese folklore. The Yokais are ghosts or monsters, generally invisible to the human eye, which serve to explain to everyday phenomena that apparently do not have it. Sometimes they are malignant, sometimes they are reasonably peaceful, and sometimes simply the linked and cause fear when it is not their intention. After the Tokyo debacle happens, many souls of citizens can not go to the beyond because they still have issues to be resolved on Earth. Some of them are related to corruption and visitors, but most will have to do with some Yokai doing their own. These missions are simple and generally short, but they allow us to discover some of Japan's most common urban stories and legends, from a perspective that is sometimes tender and sometimes even a bit a little towards the humorous. If we already knew them, we are surprised by the way, almost always accurate, in which the game knows how to reinterpret certain traditions to make them contemporary, to adapt legends and mythologies emerged centuries ago to the current era and give them a small twist. If you do not know them yet, you will surely surprise you discover some less common details about some of these creatures and, above all, the way in which, despite being Japan and Europe very different places with differentiated customs, the citizens of both end up housing, in essence, fears very similar.

I would like everything to ghostwire: Tokyo was as interesting as I have described it until this moment, but even though the opening of the game and the first contact with his universe is quite exciting, we did not take long to find very concrete and easy frictions identify. I speak, specifically, of combat, and the way it is visually very alive, but it runs out quickly for tending too much to repeat the same patterns. In a game with designs of monsters and very varied and very particular enemies, Ghostwire: Tokyo is committed to making us always fight with the same five enemies, offering us only occasionally some not too bright final boss. I find absolutely incomprehensible that a game that is capable of designing creatures and characters so striking, so terrifying and so unique is insisted on constantly overwhelming with a lot of untena battles against hordes and hordes of headless schoolboys and unfaceless offices.

The absence of a variety of enemies may not be so serious if the combat system was, at least, something deeper, but the truth is that it stops moving pretty fast. The combat consists, basically, in shooting the enemies - through the first person's perspective, pointing with a peephole in the center of the screen, without blocking the shot - until they stop their core exposed. There is no explicit life meter, but the characters will be left to see this core more or less as we hit them, and they will hide it again if we spent a while without hit. Once it is exposed to everything, we can press the R2 button to extract it and end them definitely. Doing it recovers a small part of our ether, that is, the energy we have available to shoot. Thus, we will want to prioritize the weak enemies first and be gathering ammunition for the strongest.

This is, basically, everything there is. We have a skill tree, but almost everything we can unlock are options for exploration or power increases of elementary shots. There is an option to carry out a lock and, if we do well, we will execute a perfect block that will also recover ether and that is quite satisfactory, maybe one of the strengths of the whole whole. But, for the rest, the system has neither the complexity nor the necessary variety to make interesting the totally excessive amount of enemies that we have to defeat. The plot has quite a few mandatory meetings, but the city is also full of random enemies scattered on the map, and we will have to beat a good handful of them before purifying any Torii door or ending virtually any secondary mission. And, while it is true that the visual effects of combat and the use of haptic vibration are quite striking, they lose emotion quite easily.

Something similar happens with the technical section. The game is visually imposing, and has a constant commitment to create impressive images, very particular, and build a totally genuine atmosphere. In addition, the detailed of the decorated - draw attention, especially, the interiors - makes us always find small details that had been overlooked. However, although we will surely want to start playing quality mode, which has the activated ray tracing, long-term extra definition and particles will end up deserving both the penalty and activate the performance mode and enjoy a more stable frame rate. Quality mode blocks the game at 30fps, but it can very often lower below that during battle scenes or the parts of the game in which it rains or snows.

In spite of all this, I have greatly enjoyed my experience with Ghostwire: Tokyo. At certain times the main plot is not as exciting as it seemed at first, and the problems with combats become more than present when we already worn around a dozen hours, but in what is a fairly contained experience - it has Late around twenty-five hours having completed all the secondary schools - the game really shines in the small moments, in the detailed exploration, in which we are completely tucked in its playable loop. Navigating the map is very accessible, and the missions and collectibles tend to take away rather little time, so we find ourselves wanting to do it practically everything and soaking up the particular perspective that the game about Japanese culture has. I understand, on the other hand, that the title will be easier to enjoy for those who have an early emotional linking with the Japanese country, and that it will be more difficult to digest the set if you do not have a predilection for it or by the concrete aesthetic proposed by the play.

In retrospect, I think this Ghostwire: Tokyo has an essence similar to the other developer games, Tango Gameworks: The two The Evil Within. Not because they have an atmosphere or a similar gameplay, but because both are titles with a lot of desire, shocking images, visual charism and very particular interpretations on their respective genres. Games that pay in ideas What they can not pay in technical and mechanical depth. Perhaps it was strange to wait for a game more on the line of a triple A by a study that has never designed one, or maybe it has been a mistake from Sony promote it that way, if what I had to offer was consistent, but modest. Ghostwire: Tokyo has many details of brilliance, and a very strong bet for its central elements and for wanting and pampering the culture of your country, for making it accessible to others. Even though I have not moved from my room, I feel, perhaps more than ever, that I have spent a good handful of hours traveling through Tokyo, mimicing me with the city as it had done it rarely. I believe, in essence, that the title can be enjoyed if it faces exactly in this way: as a small trip we make with love and enthusiasm and desire to oppose the possible difficulties.