ghostwire: tokyo – Ghostwire tokyo review is the best embodiment of Japanese culture

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ghostwire: tokyo – Ghostwire tokyo review is the best embodiment of Japanese culture

Ghostwire: Tokyo has drawn attention since it was announced in 2019 for two reasons. The first is the work of Tango Gameworks, the studio founded by the director of Resident Evil 4, one of the best third-person horror games we’ve seen. He successfully developed and released two parts of his own horror series, The Evil Within. The second reason is that the game’s trailers make me think it’s a lot like Bioshock which I consider to be one of the best games ever.

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Ghostwire: Tokyo Story Without Burn

The story revolves around the character (Akito) who dies in a traffic accident while driving his motorcycle in a large Tokyo square, only to wake up and find that people have disappeared from the city and that dark magic or something supernatural has happened, only to discover that he has returned He was brought to life after he had already died thanks to a person named “KK”, a respected ghost hunter who was looking for a way to enter our world and confront one of the evil characters that the game refers to as (Hanya).

Akito loses control of his body and succumbs to the fait accompli that kk is now an integral part of his life, along with the supernatural abilities he provides. This mismatched duo is forced to team up to find out what’s going on in the world and find Akito’s missing sister.


The gameplay combines more than one type of game

On paper, Ghostwire: Tokyo is classified as a first-person action game with horror elements, but in fact, I think its experience was more than that. The game succeeded in frightening me many times with great effectiveness, some stages – especially in the second chapter – reminded me of psychological horror games such as PT and Visage, where the design of narrow corridors and horror atmospheres were based on Claustrophobia, and then the game moved to present an open world and transport My memory of Dying Light 2, a fighting style that you can classify as an open-world shooter like Far Cry but using magic instead of guns. As a result of this diversity, I’m never bored with the 15 hours of gameplay, as Ghostwire: Tokyo comes to be constantly changing, and constantly updated, except for perhaps the last three hours, in which I found the focus was on the story rather than the new gameplay.

I didn’t find myself dissatisfied with any of the stages the game presented, and the more I liked an element of it, the more opportunity I got to do more of it, which I always like to do in most open-world games. But what do you do all hours of the game?

Well, since the story presents itself as a mysterious incident that you are trying to discover, there is inevitably an investigation component to gather evidence and learn more, and this evidence is to explore and track the characters around you, read documents, confront enemies and infiltrate or break into their gathering places. The enemies here are the ghosts whom the game calls “visitors” who completely replace the city’s inhabitants. They look like humans, but with some terrifying design touches, such as if someone walks on all fours, or his face is without features.

And because the world of Ghostwire: Tokyo is so rich in details, exploration is one of the funniest things you can do; Especially since the game is based on an environmental narrative style that gives you more details the more you read in the collectible messages that the game provides for you to hunt in your spare time. Examples of this are text messages that you find on mobile phones lying in the streets, left by their owners with their possessions during their mysterious disappearance, and in which they are their last words to their loved ones, from him who reassures them of himself, and some of them complain to them that there is something strange about the atmosphere around him. The bottom line is that the world that Tango has created is amazing, and you’ll love diving deep into it.

The battles are the most beautiful and fun thing about the game. As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, the game comes in the spirit of Bioshock, and I’m happy to say that Ghostwire: Tokyo satiated my penchant for magic and hand-to-hand combat. The developer studio has made sure that the magic movements and its visual effects are the most amazing thing that the game offers, and succeeded in that. There are abilities based on environmental elements such as wind, fire, and water, and there are “Ether” abilities that are collectible through the gameplay. Each of these abilities has its own upgrade tree, and you’ll spend hours playing through them and trying to choose what can give you an advantage over your enemies.

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In general, the design of the skill and abilities tree makes you feel that you are progressing in the style of play, and you control abilities better and more effectively, and there are many tools that the game offers you to use in disguise or direct confrontations, such as a card that contains energy that harms enemies, which can be thrown at them, similar to Her idea is the idea of bombs.

As for the side content, there’s a lot that I consider fairly traditional. Some people might be annoyed by this, but I personally didn’t care as long as I was offered fun game systems that I could use over and over again without getting bored, and the game also didn’t force me to complete side activities and left me free to ignore them except for one side activity, which is to free Shrines. Which is suitable for quick navigation, and shows you parts of the map – just like the idea of ​​towers in Far Cry 3, for example – but fortunately, liberating these places does not take much time, and it is during the use of the battle system – which is the most enjoyable game system – so again, you will not feel Bored!

As for the other side activities, there is the freeing of trapped souls, by buying Katashiro pieces and using them to free them, and sending them to a safe haven through the “phone booths” available on the map. There are also side missions that provide you with different stories that you are the core of the plot.

On the side quests, I ran into a guy asking me to free his house from the spirits that inhabited it because he’s constantly filming clips of evil spirits and spooky goblins and broadcasting them on the Internet, a lot of funny things that soften the tone of the serious story. The game world, in general, is beautiful, cute, and scary at the same time, and if you are not convinced how these elements come together at the same time, the answer is in two passages: “Tango Gameworks”.

On paper too the game is classified as an open world, but a lot of the time it will feel linear enough to be a story game focusing on movie clips and trying to get you attached to characters and events, and on other times that will be a drawback, when you find that your navigation options are limited. In both cases, the developer studio succeeded in creating a hybrid experience that combines open-world action, and the focus on the story linear games are known for.


The best visual experience of Tokyo in a long time

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a virtual trip to the city of Tokyo. Although ghosts inhabit it, you will feel that you have already traveled to it, and walked in its streets and between its alleys. There is great interest in transferring the experience of one of the most beautiful and best cities in the world to the player, and I think that those who will be affected the most by this experience are those who love to read about Japanese culture, and fans of the Detective Conan series, for example! Those who dreamed of traveling, perhaps living in Japan. There is a special character that I can’t describe accurately, and I don’t know how the developer was able to employ the graphic aspect of the game to give me a sense of that depth. I loved every inch of Tokyo with its horrific version of the game, its blazing lights, and the semblance of life that dissipated moments before the story began.

The experience also extends to the visual effects caused by the destruction, and the quality of the cinematic clips that I loved so much. The audio experience was also excellent, there is a high-quality Arabic translation, and there is an English translation. The Japanese voice acting was great for those who like to enjoy games in their mother tongue with English subtitles, but personally, I preferred listening to the English voices.


The flaws we found in Ghostwire: Tokyo

What didn’t live up to my expectations was the smoothness of the controls, which I felt needed a Dying Light 2 parkour-style system, or the gameplay to switch to a third-person perspective. In general, the jump and jump scenes were not very smooth and this bothered me a bit.

There are also some problems with the story, questions that are never answered despite being set in front of you at the beginning as a big dilemma that you will have to face later on.

ghostwire: tokyo – Ghostwire tokyo review is the best embodiment of Japanese culture


In the end

Ghostwire: Tokyo managed to avoid frustrating my relatively high expectations for it, but it also didn’t deliver what I had some small hopes for. I asked myself a question: Will this game be the unexpected surprise of the year? Like It Takes Two, no one expected such success. Unfortunately, Ghostwire: Tokyo is not, but on the other hand, it is a unique title that offers an atmosphere that you will not find anywhere else, and the combination of game systems makes it a hearty meal for every fan of Tango games whose mark is evident in the story, and his pride in Japanese culture is greatly heartwarming. You can also consider this game as a virtual trip to Tokyo, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

ghostwire: tokyo – Ghostwire tokyo review is the best embodiment of Japanese culture

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