Picture Japanese salarymen rushing to work through the streets of Tokyo and your mind will likely flash with a top-down image of the Shibuya Crossing. There you will see thousands of ant-like figures scurrying to work, hundreds of umbrellas extended, doing their best to keep the rain off sharp black suits.
Ghostwire Tokyo sees salarymen in a similar light. Here they’re tortured souls wandering the metropolis and suburbs; faceless everymen with no eyes, ears, or noses – only mouths with which to silently scream.
You help these tragic beings by using a technique called ‘Ethereal Weaving’, pressing your index fingers together to make a gesture, before performing kung-fu like movements to fire magical glyphs into them, eventually exposing their souls. Bond their life force in magical ropes, tightening them with hand movements as if you’re playing cat’s cradle, before finally exorcising them, relieving them from their overlong shift in purgatory.
You’ll also see creatures with gaping, fanged mouths for faces, vengeful spirits with long, black hair, raincoat killers, and countless other horrors as you venture through the next game from Kenji Kimura and the team at Tango Gameworks, the developer behind The Evil Within. But this isn’t another survival horror game. Ghostwire Tokyo has horror elements, but the 30-minute gameplay presentation we saw proved that this is – down to its very soul – an action title.
Experiencing the story from a first-person perspective, you explore a semi-open world Tokyo where everyone has vanished. You play as a man called Akito, who has somehow bonded with the spirit of a ghost hunter, hence his newly acquired powers of magical, ghost-busting karate.
It sounds strange, but it essentially works as a regular first-person shooter, except with finger guns – it’s all hand waves and wrist flicks, with enemies reacting to every blast of energy before turning into dust when they’re purged. You can also creep up on enemies for a quick purge, rending their spirits from their form as their head cranes back and their gaping mouth screams out in wordless agony. Or you can pull out a bow and let loose with arrows, striking petrol tanks to cleanse enemies with fire. Your powers also make you agile, from grappling onto anchor points and pulling yourself up to teleport dashing between rooftops. It’s hard to say how satisfying it will feel to play, but it looks and sounds fantastic in the hands-off gameplay presentation.
It’s very impressive visually, outside of the door animation that sees the protagonist reach for the handle before the screen fades to black. I get it, Tango Gameworks – doors are a real horror show for game devs.
In one scene, Akito heads to a phone booth and the handset opens up to reveal high-tech instruments inside. All the while, rain patters on the booth’s windows. There’s something strangely romantic about it. Not only does the game’s thick atmosphere sell the fantasy that you’re exploring Tokyo, but it sells the illusion of a secret world hidden just beyond what everyday people can perceive. There are visual anomalies, liminal spaces, topsy turvy interiors, and inky corruptions backed by neon lights reflecting off the wet pavement. It’s moody, weird, and effortlessly cool.
At one point, Akito enters a convenience store. Inside, there’s happy, frantic music interlaced with cat meows, advertising a popular cat food brand. On the counter, there’s a yokai shop assistant that’s taken the form of a levitating feline. Here you can stock up on various items to help you vanquish enemies, buff your stats, and presumably complete certain sidequests. Light RPG elements lend the action a fair bit of depth, and that depth seemingly extends to the game’s themes, too.
As you might have guessed from the tortured salarymen wandering the streets, it doesn’t seem like Ghostwire Tokyo is shying away from social commentary. At one point, your ghost-hunting passenger tells you that “all property is theft”. Shortly after, you’re exorcising a greedy landlord. This is a Japanese game company telling stories about its own backyard, and it’s refreshing to see in a world where America is ground zero for pop culture. Ghostwire Tokyo is unlike anything else I’ve seen before, and I can’t wait to put in a proper shift with it.
Ghostwire Tokyo releases on March 25 for PS5 and PC.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
