Ghostwire: Tokyo

Ghostwire: Tokyo thrives on pushing the malleable boundaries of open world games.

I’m unsure how many players will go into playing Ghostwire: Tokyo expecting a wide, open city packed with collectibles. How many playing this will have experience with Tango Gameworks’ The Evil Within series and its rapid emphasis on larger explorable spaces?

Within the first hours, Ghostwire: Tokyo provided me with several unexpected things. And the through line of the entire experience were countless familiarities–genre tropes that have been around since Bethesda’s own Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and the glut of open world games that have followed.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a game that meets the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Batman: Arkham City, Grand Theft Auto IV, Yakuza 5, Far Cry 3, and Infamous 2 head on. If you are a player who has spent any amount of time in a virtual world searching for a hidden treasure or talking to a random NPC to trigger an obscure quest, Ghostwire: Tokyo is going to make that part of your brain tingle.

Dying Light 2 arrived last month. It was then proceeded by the windfall that was Horizon: Forbidden West and then, the following week, Elden Ring.

Such a surplus puts a lot in perspective. All games provide players with a world that is meant to be explored to their absolute borders. Strings of quests, tucked away secrets, gameplay loops, a wealth of personality. All these games striving for the same solution with different calculations.

For many, Ghostwire: Tokyo is likely to be lost in the flood. It does not feature the baffling sprawl and fidelity of Horizon. Nor does it offer the elusive draw of discovery of Elden Ring. Like Dying Light 2, it may be seen as a mere bookend for two of the biggest games of the year.

Judging a game for what it is and not what it should be is not often an entirely daunting task. When formulating Ghostwire: Tokyo, I cannot definitely say what stewed around in the creative minds at Tango Gameworks. I can’t speak on whether Breath of the Wild was a consideration for them. I’m unaware the impact creative director Ikumi Nakamura’s departure had on the game’s trajectory.

What I can say is that Ghostwire: Tokyo is confident in its vision. The fact that the game borrows from many of the mechanical tropes the genre has used for decades feels intentional rather than a mere lack of creativity. Like any of the several games I’ve mentioned, there was a goal in mind. Something different, yet similar to strive for. A dash of the past. A peppering of the present. A spark of eccentricity.

After writing a preview of Ghostwire: Tokyo last week, I had a strong sense of where the game was headed. After all, I had been playing for over 10 hours. I knew that I would be faced with a handful of surprises. But also confident that the game had hit a groove and would not stray far from that.

When I rolled credits after 30 hours, I felt satiated. Tokyo and its haunted streets still were packed with things to do. Finding everything and completing every quest would likely take another 10 to 20 hours. I lamented having to move on and spent twenty minutes gliding like a specter among the rooftops skyscrapers, soaking up the atmosphere before plummeting into that uncertain space of gathering my thoughts.

Ghostwire: Tokyo may end up lingering with players, much like the spirits that populate the game’s busy streets. The game is occupied and obsessed with style, coming up with brilliant ideas that transform its world and mold artistic expression. I guarantee there are at least a handful of elements or moments here that will click with the most stubborn of players and those alone should be cause for elevated interest.

Tango Gameworks does not wish to provide players with all the answers, even with the game’s mostly taut main narrative. After all, to get a clearer picture players should download the prequel novel that details the exploits of spirit detective KK and his team.

Players start Ghostwire: Tokyo watching the entire population disappear as an eerie fog sweeps over the town, leaving only clothes and phones and umbrellas. Amidst the panic, KK is floating around in corporeal form, seeking out a corpse to possess. He stumbles upon Akito, who has been left for dead after being hit by a car. It turns out being possessed by another spirit has its pros and its cons. With the help of KK, Akito is able to maintain his physical form. He also has the ability to fire elemental magic from his hands in the form of ethereal weaving. Seeing the havoc taking place on Tokyo, Akito wishes to go to the hospital and find his sister who has been badly injured after an accident. KK is trying to unravel just what the hell is going on.

Upon reaching the hospital, Akito is unceremoniously stripped of his mortality yet again after a strange figure in a Hannya mask spirits away with his sister to complete an unknown ritual. KK informs Akito that he will die unless he accepts their strange union and the real Ghostwire: Tokyo begins.

Describing the first chapter of the game feels like a fever dream. There are multiple small and strange details that go into trying to understand just what is going on. Where did KK come from? Is Akito dead? Why did his sister end up in the hospital? What is this ritual?

Surprisingly, over the course of the game’s main narrative, few answers are really provided. I was honestly shocked that several threads remained open and I was left wondering the ultimate fate of the world. But to be honest, I think it’s a bold choice to have such a massive game and not have everything spelled out for the player.

Instead, Ghostwire: Tokyo spends the largest part of its traditional storytelling evolving the characters of Akito and KK. At first, the pair’s relationship is almost nothing more than parasitic. Both begrudgingly accept the reliance on the other with KK lamenting the lack of a physical form and Akito being virtually helpless without KK. However, over the course of the story, the two warm up to each other and become more like brothers. It warmed my heart to watch KK go from chastising Akito’s mistakes in combat to praising him for victories and becoming worried about his dwindling health. There’s an undeniable strength in the voice acting of the two leads and the main cast overall. I was hypnotized by the Japanese voice acting and the strength it exuded.

That being said, Tango Gameworks spends an equally large portion of the game’s narrative bulk diving into Japanese folklore. In fact, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a celebration of Japan and its culture, using most of its side quests as an avenue for delivering short tales of Japanese life or a story about traditional myths.

Because every living human has spirited away, Akito and KK speak to spirits and try and help them with their problems so they can finally move on. Maybe the pair is trying to free up a public restroom for one spirit by providing the current occupant with toilet paper. Maybe you are trying to find the spirit of a woman’s boyfriend by lifting a curse from a hospital where many patients supposedly committed suicide. Or a stroll into an empty bathhouse could lead to a violent fight.

Ghostwire: Tokyo uses these side quests as explorations into slices of life. Most of the time, a side quest merely finds the player entering a building, sniffing out a clue or two, possibly engaging in a fight, and then being rewarded. Sadly, they feel a bit hollow and repetitive over the course of such a sprawling game. Gameplay-wise, there is little excitement to be provided and they don’t do enough to feel unique. Players are merely rewarded with money that can be used to purchase health items, arrows, or talismans, sometimes with items used to upgrade skills.

Many sidequests become avenues towards introducing collectibles that are scattered across Tokyo. Players will be introduced to kappas, kodamas, those strange umbrella demons, oni, and a number of other creatures and entities based in deep folklore. I work with a Japanese woman at my 9-5 job and told her about some of these moments and she knew every single one and was delighted and surprised a game talked about such things. Thankfully, the game provides players with an extensive glossary that dives into the history of not only its characters and creatures, but something as simple as the food players will eat.

Like its side content, however, these moments constitute glorified collectibles that result in repetitive gameplay. Each one follows the same process, regardless of its placement on a map. Kappas will always slowly swim around before eating a cucumber, taking over a minute before finally stopping so players can sneak up on them. Kodamas always hide in trees and wait for players to fend off enemies. Oni are always summoned after a player gives a dog with a bandana some food and then saves that dog from enemies.

It’s disappointing that more wasn’t done to maintain variety across the course of the game, especially considering the reward for completing these tasks helps players unlocked advanced skills in the tree. But that’s one of Ghostwire: Tokyo‘s biggest flaws.

For a game that frequently does weird things, weird things aren’t done enough. I could not imagine a major developer creating an open world that simply lacks NPCs but here we are. Aside from those quest givers who disappear from sight after moving on, the only “living” things players see are cats, tanuki, the random monsters and yokai, and the evil Visitors. Tokyo is shrouded in dark the entire time as a red moon hovers above.

Confidently crafting such a bleak world that feels haunted is one thing, yet the envelope could have been pushed further. Near one particularly corrupted zone, I watched as the paint on the streets lifted itself from the pavement and flapped around in the wind. It was such a subtle, strange effect that completely impressed me and one I wish was replicated elsewhere. Main missions offer creepy shifts in perspective and positively chilling moments that gave me pause. Boss fights were significantly creepy but, like so much of this game, there could have been so much more.

Very little of The Evil Within‘s DNA is to be found in Ghostwire: Tokyo. This is not a horror game. In fact, I stand by my assessment that it is an action thriller. Moments of tension are solved with brute force and scraping by.

Acting as more of a first-person shooter, Ghostwire: Tokyo again diverges from the pack by making Akito’s hands the guns. Using some truly impressive tech for flowing articulation, players are able to fire wind, water, and fire abilities out of his hands.

Imagine each ability as a kind of gun. The wind ability fires rapidly at most ranges like an assault rifle. The water ability slashes for big damage at close range, akin to a shotgun blast. Fire is able to pierce enemies at longer ranges, similar to a sniper. Each ability can also be charged up to unleash an alternate attack. A charged wind burst can be upgraded to fire out four bursts and only use one piece of ammo. Charge up the fire attack and it shoots out a ball of flame that explodes for massive damage in a large area. The water slash is capable of spreading over a wider distance to harm more enemies that are grouped closer to Akito.

Combat in Ghostwire: Tokyo is maniacally fun, if not a touch repetitive, like many aspects of the game. This is a wholly unique system in its implementation despite players having been able to use more than mere guns to attack in FPS games for years. Watching Akito’s hands glow with color-coded power and then thrust forward as his digits curl and swipe in fluid directions is equally–if not more–satisfying than a traditional shooter. The particle effects and sheer physical effort of Akito’s body being responsible for doling out damage draw the player into the magic-like physicality of combat. His grunts show that these ethereal weaving attacks take effort as ghostly lines travel up his arms and through his fingers.

The sheer attention to style and ensuring the act of fighting looks as fun as it feels is the glue that holds Ghostwire: Tokyo‘s action together. While tackling similar combinations of enemies, players will grow comfortable with combat in the first few hours, recognizing when to attack, when to press L2 to hone in and lock on to an enemy, and when to smash L1 to pull up a mystical barrier and negate all damage.

Fending off the otherworldly Visitors is no small task, even if the enemies do little to evolve over the course of the game. Players will encounter Slender Men-like entities wielding umbrellas or mallets, capable of melee attacks and throwing ranged projectiles. Their umbrellas will repel Akito’s projectiles. Throw in a few headless schoolchildren that want to karate you to death. Or faceless maidens that splatter the visible space with harming, homing red energy or attempt to heal their wounded compatriots. As players progress, they encounter deadlier variants of these Visitors that can take more damage or hit harder. Then raincoat-clad women wielding massive scissors arrive or monsters capable of floating around and shooting long-range projectiles at the player.

Playing on Hard I felt that Ghostwire: Tokyo significantly challenged me. Rarely did I feel that a fight was unfair, even when the numbers of Visitors I fought against seemed unwieldy. There is a balance between knowing what ethereal weaving tactics work best in a given scenario and when to simply retreat further down the street or a distant corner to get some space. There will be times where the player may not have a sense of their surroundings due to the first-person perspective and get locked into a corner with no way out. Ammo will often run scarce during long fights and players will have to desperately search for everyday objects that are shimmering with an otherworldly sheen that can be punched to resupply.

As players collect skill points to upgrade Akito’s abilities, they will mostly unlock further utility. Ethereal weaving does not do more damage but becomes more capable of damaging multiple enemies. An entire tree is dedicated to allowing the player to hold more defensive and offensive items. Another tree focusing on reducing cooldowns or extending time for abilities. None of them are essential but allow for meaningful progression and an overall sense of accomplishment.

Players can sneak around and stealthily take out unaware enemies or they can use the bow to instantly fell weaker Visitors. However, the bow may be criminally underused because quiver refills are incredibly sparse. Players will need to stock up at shops if they want to silently approach any mission or side objective. Talismans round out the arsenal but are meant to supplement current tactics. There’s a talisman to cover a section of ground in thickets to assist in stealth, talismans to distract enemies or stun them, and one that helps expose Visitor cores.

One of my favorite moments in any game in recent years is the raw feeling of latching on to a Visitor’s core after it has taken a lot of damage, watching Akito shoot a thread out to lasso the core, and seeing him twist and tug at this golden thread like he’s pulling off the sickest yo-yo trick. The enemy explodes with a crunch as the DualSense trigger resists and then pushes up. It’s even better during boss fights and adds yet another layer of spectacle and style to the gameplay.

And this world is riddled with collectibles that are meant to ease the burden of combat and exploration. As the story progresses, Torii gates are unveiled that must be cleansed to unfog the map and open up new opportunities. Players are often rewarded with prayer beads that enhance Akito’s abilities. Jinto shrines can be prayed at that increase the maximum amount of attacks by a given ethereal power. Nether foods grant temporary buffs. Prayer boxes can be donated to that heal Akito or unveil collectibles. The two-tailed Nekotama shopkeepers reward players with outfits, music, photo filters, and emotes upon finding the hundred-or-so treasures in the game. Players deposit massive amounts of spirits at a payphone to get more money and more experience.

Ghostwire: Tokyo‘s open world currency of things to collect and boxes to check off is healthy, even if most players can ignore large portions of it. I barely rescued fifty percent of Tokyo’s souls and couldn’t tell you how many Nekotama treasures I swore to eventually find. Eventually, my daunting playtime and the laundry list of things to do had to come to a close because, ultimately, Ghostwire: Tokyo toes the line of similar games that provide players with a wealth of things to do, even if they aren’t necessarily meaningful.

Honestly, I love this game a lot. I had a great time with it but I don’t allow that affection to blind me to the inherent design flaws. I’m a sucker for Ubisoft’s sprawling open worlds and recognize they may not be to the tastes of critics who are leaning more and more towards the Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild style of open-endedness. And that’s okay. I think different players will latch on to some or all of these games. They will love being guided to map icons and loathe having to meander across landscapes aimlessly.

But Ghostwire: Tokyo does owe a lot to its progenitors, those games that ushered in a new way of tackling a world. The game’s saving grace is that it feels and looks so damn good while miming a few mechanical relics. Again, it’s bold for a game to use one cityscape as its canvas and then make it dark the whole time and leave it without people. When it rains in Ghostwire: Tokyo, raindrops appear as kanji (or katakana). There’s a Detective Mode/Witcher Sense but it’s shown as Akito dropping a spectral tear onto the grow and watching objects of interest glow blue as threads connect to waypoints. Dogs and cats can be petted and despite looking straight out of an early PS3 game, players can read their thoughts. Players can silently stroll the streets or make their own playlist with music purchased in-game. The game loads quickly but flow is interrupted as Akito has to enter buildings. With every saving grace there may be a blemish. And that’s perfectly okay.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a brilliant experiment in the clash of style and substance. Tokyo exists as an open world reminiscent of older games whose design may now feel ancient. Yet Tango Gameworks infuses nearly every aspect of the journey with a new, weird twist that no developer has thought to do before. Combat is striking and frenzied, even if it never reaches true complexity. And while the side content and the story may falter in their variety, enough praise cannot be heaped on the handling of Japanese folklore and the devotion towards cultural expression. Ghostwire: Tokyo may not be for everyone but I guarantee there is something in it for every single player to love.