After a year of exclusivity to PS5 and Windows PC, Tango Gameworks Ghostwire Tokyo finally hits Microsoft’s Xbox Series of machines with new content. How does Ghostwire Tokyo fare on Xbox, knowing that its PS5 counterpart was criticised for performance issues? And, of more import, has Tango Gameworks delivered the spooky, atmospheric adventure that the game’s original trailer hinted at?
After a terrible accident allows the spirit of KK to possess him, Akito finds himself in Tokyo rendered a ghost town when a supernatural fog rolls in and turns the hapless inhabitants of the city into spirits. Thanks to KK, Akito is left untouched by the fog, but not by the responsibility he now has to save the citizens of Tokyo, and his comatose sister, from an even more mysterious group of Hannya mask-wearing bad guys.
Using KK’s spiritual powers, mainly in the form of energy manipulation through his hands, Akito will have to battle monstrous “Visitors” that have come in with the fog, save the souls of trapped spirits and help others to pass along to the other side, all the while trying to stop those mask-wearing guys from performing a terrible ritual to change the world.
Despite its use of Japanese folklore and mythology and its truly beautiful setting, Ghostwire Tokyo plays like most open-world first-person shooters from the last twenty years. There’s a massive map to explore with areas gated off by deadly fog that can only be cleared away after cleansing a Torii Gate, side missions unlocked when you clear away said fog and plenty of collectables to pick-up.
The game’s combat system is based around Kuji-Kiri hand gestures, letting you throw out various elemental attacks literally from the tips of your fingers with some beautiful animations. Wind, Water and fire make up the main part of your arsenal, along with a very powerful bow and various talismans to slow or trap your enemies with or boost your movement set. Limited ammunition is the order of the day but you can refill your spell ammo from the various netherworld objects littering Tokyo and defeated enemies.
Ghostwire Tokyo’s assortment of beasties employs some fun and creepy designs. The harmful spirits wading through the dense fog and harvesting human souls are wonderfully designed and animated, but their spooky impact diminishes once you start to fight them and realise that, beyond your useful one-hit stealth kill, they don’t need much in the way of tactics to take down. Damage them enough and you can see their spirit cores which you can either blast away or rip from them with a distance spell cast. It’s an effective looking way to banish the Visitors but does leave you open to counterattacks.
Sadly Ghostwire Tokyo’s combat doesn’t evolve beyond this. It didn’t make the game any less engaging in the long run, but I would have liked to have seen more depth to the combat.
The game’s side missions are some of Ghostwire Tokyo’s most memorable moments. Whether you’re helping to cleanse the spirit of a malevolent collector, helping Oni or Yokai, or finding missing people, these small missions highlighted just what could have been done with Ghostwire Tokyo had Tango delved deeper into a more horror-focused approach. Most of the missions, while nice and short, are atmospheric and creepy.
The new content comes in the form of the Spider’s Thread DLC, which introduces new story content and a Tower Climb. Or much rather a Tower descent as you’re delving deeper into the bowels of the underworld to stop an ancient monster from emerging into the real one. Spider’s Thread plays out like a rogue-lite tower add-on with thirty floors for you to descend. To Tango’s credit, each floor is objective based so you won’t only be engaging in increasing levels of difficult fights.
You may have to fight enemies using specific weapons or make it to the objective without being seen. Spider’s Thread comes with its own skill tree progression system, though you can access it any time after the main game’s second chapter without overwriting any saves. When you die, you’ll lose the currency you’ve acquired but keep your skill progression. The biggest setback to death is that when you peg, you’re going to have to start from the first floor all over again. I would have preferred a checkpoint save system here. . .
Tokyo can be a labyrinthine nightmare to navigate at times. Even more so with the surprising level of verticality in the game’s design. You can climb to the top of many buildings and, using Tengu, jump and glide across the rooftops. Which can be a pain when it comes to the game’s collectable souls. There are over 240 000 of them to save, usually in clusters. Where you’ve been and what you’ve collected can be headache-inducing if you’re trying to save ‘em all!
Visually Ghostwire Tokyo is absolutely gorgeous. The juxtaposition between Tokyo’s high-rise apartments and dingy alleys that hardly look wide enough for two people abreast mere streets away from each other, is always a curious delight. The game’s atmosphere in the open-world sections is incredibly spooky. The fog-shrouded streets and the near-constant rain are beautiful to behold. Ray tracing powers the game’s reflection effects and the quality is superb. The near-constant rain along with all the neon lights and signs, coupled with plenty of reflective surfaces and wet spots makes Quality Mode a constant visual delight. The downside is that Quality Mode runs at 30fps.
Performance mode swaps out ray tracing reflections and higher visual quality for SS reflections and a 60fps cap. I’ve always found the jump between 30fps and 60fps to be a bit jarring and painful on the eyes, though a higher frame rate is always better for combat. This time I decided to stick with Quality Mode because the game is just so darn beautiful!
Ghostwire Tokyo also throws extra visual modes at you, such as quality mode and performance modes at higher frame rates with and without vertical sync. Performance and picture quality here were abysmal, especially with all the screen tearing going on. If you have a VRR display, it should mitigate some of these issues if you want higher frame rates but I didn’t waste my time with these options at all.
Performance-wise, Ghostwire Tokyo has two issues that really irked me. The first is poor analog calibration on the right stick. It feels downright abysmal in its default state and I had to spend a lot of time messing around with axis speed and dead-zone placement before I found a setting that was comfortable. Coupled with some poor frame pacing that makes the game look like it’s stuttering, Ghostwire Tokyo did not leave me with a good first impression. The two issues compound to make the game look very. . . shuddery and headache-inducing at first.
However, once I got the stick sensitivity right and spent enough time in the game, my performance improved to the point that I didn’t notice those original issues anymore. Changing the stick sensitivity made a huge improvement. That and me probably just getting used to the game’s frame pacing.
Has Tango managed to make a truly spooky and creepy game? Well no, but they have managed to make a really engaging one if you can set your expectations accordingly. There’s a great story, wonderfully designed enemies, gorgeous visuals and fantastic side missions to engage in that even the usual generic open-world tasks can’t bring down. Ghostwire Tokyo may not be the Silent Hill that I was hoping for, but it is a fun time on the neon-splashed, haunted streets of Tokyo all the same.
Ghostwire Tokyo Trailer
Grab your copy here https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/ghostwire-tokyo
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