To make matters worse, the game has a nasty habit of not recognizing when you want to use your grappling hook even when the prompt is clearly visible, resulting in a nasty fall to a bottomless pit. There were so many times that I became utterly disoriented in the middle of a series of jumps because of how difficult it was to keep my character facing the right direction. It only gets worse when new enemies are introduced, like soldiers with forcefields that can only be disabled by finding and destroying their emitters, or highly mobile enemies with machine guns who fire off volley after volley of hot plasma, and other cyber ninjas who want to cut you to ribbons (though to be fair, those fights are actually pretty cool).Īs you can imagine, the game’s control issues carry over to the platforming as well. If you think that sounds frustrating, just you wait. Even after adjusting the look sensitivity in the options menu, it did very little to help remedy the issue. But even with this ability activated, I often found myself struggling to line up my cursor with my opponent before another enemy could gun me down from offscreen. You have a focus ability that slows time to a crawl for a few seconds and even allows you to dodge out of the way of projectiles, which helps a little, I guess. Considering you need to line up your sword slashes and wall runs perfectly, this creates all sorts of problems. Even the tiniest tap of the right thumbstick causes you to turn 45 degrees. While these bloody encounters show flashes of promise, the game’s glaring lack of optimization gets in the way time and time again to spoil the fun.įor a game that’s built around speed, efficiency, and pinpoint accuracy, Ghostrunner‘s controls completely miss the mark. You would think these moments would be the highlights of Ghostrunner‘s campaign, right? Well, not exactly. Armed with just a sword and your wits, the challenge really starts to climb as you try to plan the best path to take through each area so that you can dispatch your foes and progress to your next objective, all while dodging a hail of gunfire. But before long, you’ll come face to face with Mara’s goons, which you’ll often need to take down while simultaneously performing insane acrobatic feats. Trying to navigate Ghostrunner‘s gritty locales is already challenging to begin with. But much like Mirror’s Edge, bright yellow accents usually serve to highlight your destination as you make your way across the sprawling environments. With so much going on, it can be pretty tough to get your bearings. However, it doesn’t take long before you find yourself in the middle of a veritable Rube Goldberg machine of perilous platforms and churning death traps that will put your parkour skills to the test. Things begin straightforward enough as you run along walls and slide down ramps to gain speed to perform long-distance leaps of faith. Precision platforming is the name of the game in Ghostrunner. Guided by the voice of a being known as The Architect, your goal is to climb Dharma Tower (no, not Darm Tower of Ys fame) and kill the Keymaster, Mara, who rules over society from her lair high above the city. The game puts you in control of “Jack,” a Ghostrunner brought back from the dead with no memory of his former self. Unfortunately, like a cybernetic implant rejected by its host, the Switch version of Ghostrunner feels like it’s fighting tooth and nail to rebel against the humble hardware that’s trying to run it.īefore I get into all that, though, here’s the setup. I spent roughly six hours slashing my way through the game’s campaign in hopes of honing my samurai skills to a razor’s edge. I felt more like a squirrel trying in vain to clamber up a light post covered in Crisco than a badass cyber Samurai scaling an ominous tower high above a dystopian skyline. However, as much as I wished to become the agile ninja showcased in the game’s opening cinematic, my career as a Ghostrunner was an exercise in frustration. So when a review copy of the Nintendo Switch version landed in my inbox, you better believe I was eager to take a stab at the title. Combining the high-flying parkour gameplay of Mirror’s Edge with the tense, one-hit deaths of Hotline Miami, this cyberpunk slasher was well-received when it made its way onto the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC last month. Developed in partnership with One More Level, 3D Realms, and Slipgate Ironworks, Ghostrunner aims to make players feel like the ultimate cyborg ninja as they grapple, wall run, and slide across ominous industrial areas and slice gun-toting psychos in half with their futuristic katanas.
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