Ghostrunner review - an exhilarating display of acrobatic first-person platforming

3 years 5 months ago

Ghostrunner is a game about the joy of movement, and I love how it never loses sight of that. You're a cyborg ninja and your weapons are speed and agility; everything you do, and everything the game throws at you, revolves around it. There are many enemies and boss encounters and special abilities, but they all centre on the fundamental idea of momentum.

It's a relief. I worried Ghostrunner would do a Mirror's Edge and get bogged down in combat, but it doesn't. Polish developer One More Level understood why the Ghostrunner demo worked earlier this year, and stuck with it. Do one thing and do it well.

Ghostrunner is a game about acrobatic routines, about devising them and performing them. It's what everything boils down to. You're an incredibly agile character who can wall-run, slide around, swing around, dash around and even slow time. But you're also an incredibly fragile character who will die in one blow from anything. The challenge of Ghostrunner, therefore, is a kind of elegance: not getting hit while simultaneously getting close enough to hit and slice apart others.

Read more

Tags