GhostWire: Tokyo

I'm definitely gonna wait and see what the general reception is like. I'm not sure how what I make of it from the gameplay I've seen, but I hope it turns out great. The concept is definitely interesting, but I just hope there's enough meat to the combat.

> Deathloop
I heard pretty mixed things about it. Seemed like exactly the sort of game that gets 10/10 from critics and 5/10 from "actual" gamers. I'll probably try it when it's cheap enough, but not in any rush. Got plenty in the backlog to get to first!

18 minutes of gameplay is out…looks good but I’m worried about how little the enemies are attacking. A lot of them are just standing around, only the one higher tier enemy seemed to really pose a threat. Hopefully the footage was played on the lowest difficulty or something, because even if those are all the trash enemies, they’re still too passive.

Pretty much summarizes my thoughts.

As I've said before, I like the art style and atmosphere, but I wasn't too impressed with the combat gameplay, mainly due to how passive the enemy AI was as you noted, though to be fair I couldn't really understand what every attack did so it's harder to make something out of it. Seems like you can parry projectiles in addition to melee attacks?

Is it directed by Mikami or someone else?

It also seems like the magic is just guns, like how Infamous did it(that’s how I remember it at least). There’s even a little ammo counter in the corner of the screen. I was expecting something more like Bioshock where the different plasmids have different utilities and allow for cool setups. Maybe this stuff is in the game and we just couldn’t see it from the little they showed in the demo.

>director
Kenji Kimura, afaik he was an art guy for stuff like Soul Calibur. The combat designer of the game worked on Doom 2016 which is probably why it has glory kills. I think it’s official that Mikami won’t be directing again.

I was never able to get into Bioshock's gameplay but even then I really liked the plasmids, which is to say seeing something in that vein could make for some interesting gameplay. Hopefully it's more than just fancy animations for what is essentially a FPS in disguise.

Infamous electric powers did play like a TPS.

Seems like the combat could be quite shallow. The Mikami fundamentals appear to be there but it might not have much staying power. I’ll be playing tomorrow so I’ll make a post then.

Near the end of the game, on chapter 5 of 6 I believe. Allow me to be annoying for a while.

-In terms of general "feel" including UI and movement, the game is much more like TEW2 than I thought it would be. The map, menus, weapon wheel, etc, are all very similar to that game.

-Game starts quite quickly, first thing you do is a short fight. The opening hour or two has a lot of cutscene interruptions but they can all be skipped.

-As I'm sure anyone who's familiar with Mikami and his games could imagine, the general sense of combat is similar to something like RE4. You have three ethereal weaving attacks that are essentially this game's versions of guns; wind is a handgun, water is a shotgun, and fire is grenades/explosives. Each of these can be charged to have a different attack, though the charge attack for wind is just firing three times. The charged aqua blast hits harder and causes more knockback, and the fire's charged variant is an explosion that does what you would expect.

-I feel it necessary to point out one huge missed opportunity in this game imo: the lack of actual elemental properties attached to these attacks. For example, neither of the fire attacks actually catch things on fire, there's no mixing these together for different effects, there's just a general lack of synergy and detail between them all.

-The only other weapon you get is a bow, which is powerful but functionally pretty uninteresting. It doesn't really allow for any unique set ups or anything, but one interesting detail is that it doesn't expose cores for the finishing moves. The other slots that fill up the weapon wheel aren't really weapons; one is a little AOE stun(which doesn't work against heavies or bosses), two stealth based talismans(one a decoy and one a sound distraction) that do absolutely nothing in combat as far as I can tell, and a small AOE debuff that makes exposing cores easier. So as you can see, the arsenal is quite a bit smaller than expected.

-This game's version of glory kills made me pretty happy: finally, another game with a finishing move that doesn't make you invincible. Obviously, that kind of stuff is fine, but TEW turning that on its head was just so fucking brilliant, and this game sort of does it but not to that extent. So when an enemy's core is exposed(done by dealing enough damage, not counting the bow), you can rip the core out, which takes a couple seconds, and you're vulnerable. You can even do it to multiple enemies if you expose them at the same time, so we have a vulnerable finishing move that encourages grouping, which I love. But this is sort of like the weapons and enemies: being good, but a step back. It does what one of their previous games did, just not as in-depth. For example, in TEW enemies could still attack you while they were down, so you had to observe them along with other enemies nearby, and you could burn enemies who were technically still at full health. I hate comparing things like this, but when you have a game whose DNA is so clearly similar to games that came before it, it's hard not to think this way. Still, I'm very grateful they didn't go with a standard finishing move system!

-Playing on Hard, the enemies are quite a bit more deadly than I initially took them for. All the previews for the game showed enemies just standing around staring at the player, not sure what the hell setting they were on but Hard is absolutely not like that. Enemies walk quickly, attack fairly often, usually the compositions have you dealing with long and close range attacks, and everything hits hard.

-A disappointing aspect to me is just how resistant enemies seem to be to your weapons in general. Not that the weapons are inherently weak or bad, but after playing so many games by this team with generous hitstun, various setups and the like, it's a bit underwhelming to come into this where you can fire the wind attack several times in a row and enemies aren't even remotely phased. Even the aqua attack doesn't seem to do it often unless it's the charged version.

-While there are more enemy types in this than other games from the team, the enemies themselves aren't quite as interesting or fleshed out. Most of them seem to only have a couple attacks, and with the lack of reactions like I just noted, they feel like a step backwards. For example, there are multiple flying enemy types, but none of them seem to do anything aside from float around and shoot projectiles. A lot of enemies also carry umbrellas which act as shields, but their implementation is kind of whatever, they don't have different ways to get through them like shields from a certain other game. Although, some fundamentals are still here, like being able to shoot/attack projectiles out of the air, you even whittle down large projectiles until they evaporate.

-Oh yeah, there's a block and parry. They're about what you'd expect. I rarely use them except for certain projectiles that get hurled back when you parry. I'm so used to using offense as defense in these games that I don't even ever consider blocking(same problem I had in RE7...).

-There's also stealth. It's exactly what you think it is, because this is a modern video game.

-Unfortunately, this is open world, but in terms of size and scope it's more similar to Yakuza than anything. Since the world is on the small side, it does funnel you into fights a lot, but the encounters themselves rarely stick out, and blend together a lot. There are some highlights, there's one where you're indoors and the lights go out while there are some higher tier enemies nearby, along with environmental hazards. Would love to see more of this kind of stuff.

-The game has "stuff" galore: spirits to collect, money, shops, statues to find, collectibles, consumables of all kinds, outfits, prayer beads, upgrades, etc. It does make the game feel on the bloated side, but maybe since the world is so small, I'll enjoy getting everything when I'm familiar with the game and on NG+.

-Upgrades aren't bad but aren't anything special. A few things caught my eye in the menu that made me a bit annoyed, like having to upgrade the fire to piece through one enemy, then upgrade it again to pierce several enemies. There's upgrades for stealth and other stuff that just feels like filler. One thing I'm not a fan of is gating off upgrades with a separate item; you need magatamas to unlock some of the better upgrades, along with normal skill points. These are all hidden so in order to get some of the upgrades that are really good, I have to go on errands to find these stupid things.

-Forgot to mention, the game looks fantastic. Videos do not do this thing justice. Also, dialogue is actually kind of decent? I'm so used to playing games with drawn out dialogue that's ultra serious and characters in this game get to the point and Akito and KK have some funny banter(sort of like Sam and Burns).

-I'm going to address the "reviews" of this game real quick because they're a fucking joke from what I've seen. Not that I find this game to be a masterpiece or anything at the moment, but I find it hilarious how many reviews are saying the game is "too basic" or "dull open world" yet Ubisoft games have higher metacritic scores, and the new horizon was praised so highly. I watched some YT review where the guy said multiple things where I thought, "did you even play the fucking game?". Goes on about how the melee is so worthless and shouldn't be in the game. Wrong. The melee is free damage and a good counter attack, and can help expose cores. Said the enemies are boring and easy yet said the game needs a dash. Not sure how an evasive maneuver would help a game where the enemies are supposedly so easy.

Should have this beat tomorrow. Going to play VH right after.

Wait this game is out??? Damn when did that happen.

How long is it?

Comes out tomorrow, but the digital deluxe opened it up on 3/22.

>how long
I have 9 1/2 hours and I’m near the end. I imagine it’ll be 10-15 hours for most people. The bad review I mentioned before said 5-8 which…I find hard to believe.

Beat it on Hard, final time was a little under 11 hours. I'll do a write up later today or tomorrow.

Just started a run on VH, which is a forced NUR. So that should be interesting. But onto the game itself:

-I want to rescind my statement about the dialogue: it goes full TEW2 in the last hour or so and gets very heavy handed and a lot of the mystery sort of goes away.

-The pacing is a bit odd. Without spoiling anything: there's six chapters, the first is a prologue, the next three are long with a lot of combat and progression, and the last two are just talking and boss fights. The game really never slows you down until the ending, weirdly enough.

-As far as how the game itself is structured, it does in some ways feel like Yakuza mixed with a standard open world game. In Yakuza, you travel across the fairly small map going to fights with long stretches of dialogue between that draws the game out; in GW, you can't just travel from one point to another because of the fog that's all over the map, you have to find gates and cleanse them to wipe away sections of fog. This usually involves clearing out a group of enemies beforehand because they're guarding it. It's not unlike towers or whatever in a lot of modern games. While there are some standout scenarios, a lot of the game follows this structure, and it can be kind of monotonous just going to a gate, killing a handful of enemies, only to clear a small bit of fog and have to do it 3 or 4 more times to get to the next mission.

-I can't comment on the side content, because I did none of it. But the map is totally littered with this stuff; you talk to spirits and help them with some basic task. The game has shops absolutely everywhere that mostly sell the same stuff, and phone booths which you use to actually acquire skill points and XP are also abundant. I don't know why you couldn't just absorb spirits and get the rewards immediately, since going to the phone booths just seems pointless.

-As far as the combat is concerned, my stance on it as of right now is this: it's good, even has flashes of greatness, but it's nothing special or anything we haven't seen before, despite the unique premise.

-I'm usually not one to jump to quantity when it comes to talking about the quality of a combat system, but there really just isn't enough here to put it over the top imo. If we count the charged attacks as separate moves, plus the bow, you have seven weapons total. But there's a lot more to it then that. The charged wind weave is just the standard wind weave shot 3 times, it doesn't have any unique properties as far as I could tell. It does only take one ammo, which encourages you to use it during fights where you have adequate spacing, but the effect on the enemy is the same. Aqua and fire weaves are fairly similar. To me it seemed like aqua is just a worse version of fire, since they're both heavier crowd control weapons but fire is more powerful and can pierce, as well as knock enemies down, I mostly used the standard aqua shot for umbrellas. And while the bow can be useful in combat, it's a fairly dull weapon, which would be fine if the arsenal had more to round it out.

-Due to the limited toolkit, enemies that are not as susceptible to reactions, and how fights can feel drawn out at times, I do wonder about the longevity and total depth that will be here when all is said and done. Even things that could typically add flavor to combat are largely absent, such as ring outs, environmental hazards(barring the occasional exploding barrel) or weapon pick ups or power ups.  

-I found the talismans disappointing overall. The stun talisman is self-explanatory in its use, it's a good way to lock in tougher enemies and can several charge attacks in. The talisman for exposing cores, on the other hand, I don't really understand yet. They're so expensive I only bought a few during my entire playthrough so I didn't get to experiment very much, but a talisman that just essentially lowers enemy health is kind of meh to me(though I'm sure they'll come in handy on VH). And the last two talismans are for stealth, which I can't believe they even wasted slots on these. All of these modern games with tacked on stealth need to just stop.

-There are sections where you get separated from KK, which cause you to lose basically everything except your bow, and they suck. Luckily, they're very short.

-Boss fights are decent overall. One thing that's really cool is that fire seems to be a universal way to interrupt any boss attack. The first boss in chapter 5 gave me some trouble, especially with one variation of its attack, and I just blasted it with fire when it was winding up every time. I did have some trouble with some of the attacks, since some require you to jump to dodge them and it just doesn't come out all the time depending on the terrain. Also, boss health is quite high, so sometimes I would run out of ammo, and wait for the respawning corrupted items to reappear so I could hit them and get some ammo drip fed to me.

the final boss:

-As I was playing, I did kind of wish that maybe doing a perfect parry would give a sort of dodge offset. You can be charging a spell almost to full, to a perfect parry, and then have to restart the charge. I think maybe it would have been cool to allow the player to pick up where the charge left off as a reward.

-I have to say it again, the game looks incredible. It becomes obvious as you play this was meant to be TEW3 initially, since a lot of the bizarre types of images in those games pop up here and it's seriously cool looking.

I'll keep posting as I play through VH but after one playthrough, I'd say the game is still quite good, just not really what I had hoped for. For anyone asking if this is worth full price, I would say it obviously largely depends on your situation, but as of now, I would honestly say no. If it's anything like TEW2, it will unfortunately bomb and be $10 in a few months anyway.

Limited tools and no interesting reactions/mechanics?

And this is from Mikami's studio?

Still interested in this game, but with PS5 exclusivity I probably will hold off until it reaches Xbox in a year. I honestly think this game will get a second release next year with marketing hoo-ha behind it, since it's now a Microsoft property.

>this is from Mikami’s studio?
Weird, isn’t it.

I’m about halfway through VH and I’ve noticed no real differences from Hard, other than XP being set to 0(which reminds me, I was wrong earlier- you can still acquire upgrades, you just don’t level up which gives you more health). Honestly, the combat hasn’t for me hasn’t changed at all since I started playing, I don’t think this one is going to have much of a shelf life.

I wonder if the game might shine more on a personal NUR, I mean a lot of times games (like GoW etc.) don't ask us to do the cool stuff, you gotta 'find' the fun-zone so to speak. I find it hard to believe a Mikami game lacks that in some respect. Who was the eventual director again?

Yeah, I’m going to do a NUR after this. But usually I can see glimmers of greatness before I get that far along, I just don’t see it yet. Who knows, maybe it’ll really become better once I start taking on challenge runs.

Beat VH without using shops. I really didn't notice any difference from Hard. Beat the the last three bosses on my first try(despite the first of the three being a horrible fight).

I think I realized another huge thing about this game that makes it fall so flat compared to what I was expecting: the botched way it handles resources. Every boss ends up just being "nuke them with charged fire"(you won't use the wind or water because they're weak and do virtually nothing) and it's extremely one dimensional. In something like RE4 or whatever you typically wouldn't just nuke a boss with the magnum because you know that getting ammo back would take a while or not happen at all. But in this, when you destroy one part of a boss(essentially completing a phase) you get a complete refill on all of your spells. So for the final boss, you have to destroy three heads, you nuke a head with fire, and finish out any remaining HP with wind, and then when the head is destroyed, you get all the fire back, and just repeat it again. It makes approaching every boss the same.

Also upgrades are stupid. You can only upgrade your abilities/spells by finding notes/diaries. So you upgrade combat abilities by...doing something that has nothing to do with combat.

I doubt I'll play this again. It's fine but I really feel nothing from it.

Hey new avatar, what happened!

I'm still curious about the game and will play it next year when it hits XBOX(masterrace), until then sorry to hear that we've got our first Mikami bummer. Though he wasn't truly the director, he's still really connected to it.

> upgrade stuff by not doing combat
I can sort of get behind that though. I felt Yakuza 6 (for all its faults) did this well, in that it promoted non-gameplay elements of the game and rewarded you for them. Can't imagine it being fun on replays though. Or do they carry over?

>avatar
Just wanted a change. Seb is still my boy.

>do they carry over
No. Only thing that carries over is cosmetic stuff iirc.

Yeah I can see that being draining, having to do all those collectathons on repeat-runs to get the gear/spells you need.

Say you were to become the man in charge and make GhostWire:Black, what would you change/add?

Honestly, there's so much I would do, it would probably need to go in a sequel. But if I were to change some things:

-The biggest one is tweak the spells, because right now they're little more than watered down RE4 guns. There needs to be more synergy between them and properties that make them feel like elements. The game has a lot of rainfall and even a small lake, it would be cool if these somehow could enhance or effect your aqua weave. Maybe wind would have the ability to carry projectiles back to the enemy, or fire would do damage to the environment, and you could use it to blow up the many cars throughout the map. I find it very odd that none of this stuff was in the game.

-A couple more weaves would be nice too, since there's only three, but there's four talismans(and two are only for stealth), making the toolkit feel lopsided. Maybe one could be offensive while enhancing mobility somehow.

-Skill points should be acquired at least partially through combat. Finding the notes could still be there, but having some sort of performance-based reward would go a long way in not just mindlessly mashing wind during fights.

-The bow feels like a complete afterthought and tacked on. For how scarce arrows are, it's a shockingly underwhelming weapon. Aside from being a stealth weapon, it doesn't offer anything different than the rest of the weapons.

-The map is way, way too cluttered with shit. I think I only got around 10% of the spirits in the entire game, and I only did a handful of side quests and that was more than enough. I'm not sure how I would fix this, but it's definitely got a lot of fat to trim.

-Like I said before, resource management in this game is kind of..."fake"? If that makes sense. I would lower enemy health and make it so there aren't so many ammo pinatas everywhere.

-"Wiring in", which is your Devil Trigger essentially, is pretty braindead at the moment and is just a win button. It would be better if this somehow enhanced your abilities and actually changed the way you approached situations, just with an advantage. Right now it slows down time so you just stand back and blast everything.

Some of these could be implemented in the inevitable Xbox port next year, but there's no way they would completely re-design the spells or map.

On other notes, started Ghostwire.

Very interesting title. It's held back by some of the more modern crap. But there is a soul.

The goal in combat is to open up enemy cores for an OHKO. You can just nuke them until they open up, but there's some sweet additions. You can use a fire-spell for a knockdown, which allows for an instant core-OHKO. You can also generate an ice-aura that freezes them when they're in it too long, leading to an OHKO combo (just fire a strong spell at them to shatter them) which is great fun.

You can also do stealth kills mid combat if they are distracted, or use a Talisman (rare, expensive item) to stagger them for an OHKO (or 2HKO against minibosses). Highest difficulty is a forced NUR. Overall quite interesting and plays unique. Does have that Mikami touch, even if he was only lightly involved. Game is also quite brutal on difficulty, Hard Mode already sees me die quite a lot.

Its biggest sin is inventory bloat. Theres like 40+ healing items each with unique values and options, which is just a mess for example. Still, enjoying my time with it.

I was surprised reading that nearly all the abilities that I enjoy though, like the freeze-aura and also groundpound were added in the Xbox version. Can imagine the game was pretty barebones.

Some closing notes @Infinity_Divide
> spells
So they added some new spells, like a flamethrower, rapidfire gun and freeze ray (with bonus shatter).

> talismans
They are insanely good imo. Stun Talisman is an OHKO since you can backstab enemies during it. Core Talismans are a massive DoT. Just throw them into a group and laugh.

> bosses
So far hated them all. Just finished the giant spider one.

> side content
Honestly, so far this is the highlight of the game for me. The side-missions are where the real meat and potatos are at. Fantastic, tense and creepy missions with interesting stories. THe main mission feels like a slot in comparison. The other side content (spirits, statues etc) are terrible tho.

>freeze-aura and groundpound
Hmmm? These would have been nice when I played the game last year...

>new spells
What the hell. Are these on PS5 as well?

>bosses
The spider one is horrible. Still don't understand its attacks.

>side content
Not to sound like a filthy normie, but I think I was put off because I played this right after Elden Ring where I enjoyed exploring, and this felt a lot more mundane to me.

If the extras are on the PS5 version I might try it again...

> spells
Even more, the flamethrower generates a DoT that, if an enemy is killed by it, explodes and puts the DoT on those around them.

> PS5
It's part of the SpiderWeb patch, so it should be on PS5 as well. The new mode is extremely fun imo. It's a roguelike mode with all the new abilities and...ironically the entire game's structure works really well with it imo.

> spiderboss
You have to do a lot of weird jumps, didn't really get it either.

> side content
Yeah to be honest, some are bad here too. Just the generic "go to location A to fight enemy B", but some are legit amazing. The patch also added a sort of expansion-quest that is absolutely terrifying.

Have to say, the roguelike mode has its claws in me. Been playing it a ton.

So I see the groundpound, dodge, and quick purge, but where are the freeze and flamethrower?

They are unlocked at a specific level, same with the SMG. In Spider's Web they are immediately available from the skill-tree. In general I can recommend that mode, it's been super fun and addictive to play.

Gotta say, I do have a bit of a newfound appreciation for this one. After thinking about the death of arcade sensibilities in modern games, it is a relief to play something that's actually consistent and have some old-school design in it. The game is bloated to hell but in battle it's a pretty pure experience.

Opening up multiple cores in a short amount of time and ripping them out at once is a super fun loop. Still wish the game was sliiiiightly faster and there were some more creative arenas.

Yeah for that I really, highly, HIGHLY recommend playing Spider's Thread. It is basically a bunch of welldesigned combat arenas in a row paired with interesting enemy pairings (and new enemies too). The combat is super intense in that mode too since you can rely less on healing. I really have fallen in love with the title, especially thanks to the added content. Sometimes you just gotta let a game breathe I feel.

I was always interested in the setting and atmosphere, but now that the update was released I decided to get it (The original version seemed to lack when it comes to combat).

I briefly tried it, and it's nice seeing that I can make enemies trip and fall by shooting their legs like in RE4. Gonna start it proper in an hour.

Should I start it on hard or Tatari?

I'd say start on Hard. Tatari is way more limited as a lot of your key tools are now tied to leveling (like the freeze ray). Feel Tatari isn't that good of a mode tbh. Just play on Hard and then dive into Spider's Thread where the real meat and bones is now.

It's a shame hearing it limits my tools due to leveling rather than making more interesting changes so yeah I'll start on hard, and assuming I'll enjoy the game (which I believe I will), I'll also play Spider's Thread.

Yeah it definitely seems the Spider’s Thread DLC has elevated the game quite a bit. It’s interesting(and a bit sad) to me that a game that got no recognition whatsoever released such a good update for free a year after release. It might attract some new players(like those of us here) but overall the title will probably still be deemed a failure.

Just an FYI @GN1 , most of my personal gripes are absent in the DLC mode. Things like enemy compositions, tanky enemies, level-gating abilities, cluttered world, lack of level design - it's all absent in the more streamlined DLC mode. It's scary.

@Infinity_Divide the game was apparently a succes again. Thanks to Gamepass they had 4 million new players which is pretty nice, though I'm unsure how that payment system works. Then again they are now MS-owned, so probably just means they get to live.

> good update year later
Kinda takes you back to the old ps2-era huh?

Finished the Spider mode, absolutely fantastic. Do feel it's a tad random at times, but that's the nature of the deal. Had many attempts where I'd just get massacared on Floor 12 due to some insane combination of floor and modifiers and bad shit going down. My best attempt landed me on Floor 14. Then suddenly on my next attempt I beat all 30 floors, but I got a lot of easy ones that were just "walk to the objective" with optional enemies that I sneaked around and race-missions which are easy as pie.

The final boss almost killed me, but I downed him. Ammo is always annoying against him since you run out so easily. Apparently there's a loop for him but eh, didn't bother.

Afterwards you can go on to floor 429 if you wish for an infinite loop of challenge, but I've had enough for now. Great game though, really made me appreciate Tango even more.

Yeah it's a really great mode and is super fun to just jump into when I want something interesting that doesn't get tedious.

Would you recommend the main game after playing Spider's Thread? I went back to it for a bit but there's a lot of boring sections and progress is so slow.

Honestly, no. The main-campaign is fun for one time to get to know the game's mechanics I'd say but Spider's Thread has so much more interesting combat encounters I don't see a reason to ever boot the campaign again tbh.