in the lab
Ghostwire Tokyo
The city that doesn’t want you to sleep
An FPS with finger guns that fire spells is... outlandish.
© BETHESDA SOFTWORKS
A CURIOSITY IN FORM as well as function, Ghostwire Tokyo is in some ways a callback to Japanese horror games of the early 2000s (although this is much more of an action game), and also a graphical monster capable of serving up spectacular slices of neon lights and raytraced reflections.
To call the story outlandish would be something of an understatement, but it’s a good word to start the review off with.
Everyone in Tokyo is dead, or at least gone, reduced to piles of clothing that lay where they fell when the body was somehow removed from them. Instead of its once bustling population, Tokyo is now home to a huge population of escaped pets looking for attention and rather a lot of ghosts and other visitors taken straight from Japanese folklore.
A first-person shooter with finger guns that fire spells instead of little bits of metal, Ghostwire Tokyo's main character Akita has gained supernatural powers and the ability not to be one of those piles of clothing on the sidewalk, having been saved from a motorcycle crash by a spirit detective. His sister’s been kidnapped too, providing more motivation than one man needs to go up against a ghost army.