Me and Hotline Miami have a love-hate relationship going. I love her and she hates me with every bone in her body. Why else would she hit me, burn me or toss me out of a window but I still did my best to love her. Why did I still love her so? Because I’m a glutton for punishment and am attracted to pain. I’m such a level of broken that there eventually came a moment where I felt that the pain Hotline was delivering wasn’t enough. I went on to look for redder pastures within the more unforgiving of the video game world. Initially I hooked up with Party Hard who was too basic before finding Katana Zero who was more violent but neither of them really hurt me like Hotline Did.

Hotline’s suspected younger sister Ghostrunner has just entered my little world. So, I wandered off to meet her. She is a lot more beautiful than her elder sister; she sees more than her elder sister; she tries so much to step out of her sister’s shadow but most importantly she is more unforgiving than I could have imagined. Let me tell you how our dates went.

Story:

The Ghostrunner 74, a cyborg and one of a 100 other Ghostrunners; has failed his job as a bodyguard for the Architect. Mara, the Architect’s former partner, has carried out a coup d’etat against the Architect killing the Architect and his bodyguards in the process. The Architect, now just a computer program without a body, calls on Ghostrunner 74 to avenge him by killing Mara.

The story is delivered via in-game radio calls and one final cinematic at the end. The delivery is good and I really have nothing to complain about in such a barebones story.

Sound:

The background track is a combination of rock and techno, it does a damn good job of making you feel awake and that is good because Ghostrunner rarely lets you relax. There are very few sound effects since they don’t have any reason to exist. The few sound effects that exist, namely the sound of slashes against different enemy types, of grappling and the like all sound great. I have no complaints about any of them.

The sound is highly focused and while the background tracks can get annoying you don’t notice them because you are too busy killing. The voice acting while not the best is not bad at all. It does its job and delivers enough.

Graphics:

I’m confused about what to say here. Usually games have something really good or really bad to talk about but Ghostrunner is weirdly well balanced. From the start it shows off the graphics and never does anything better or worse than what you see from the get-go. The world looks good, enemies look good, points of interest are easily noticeable and the special effects are fun. There is nothing to complain about when it comes to the graphics. This is the advantage of making a highly focused, linear game: you know exactly what the player is going to see, permitting you to make everything look as good as you can without sacrificing anything.

It’s really strange to not have anything to bitch about.

Gameplay:

Ghostrunner follows Hotline Miami’s 1 hit 1 kill mechanic. Pulling this mechanic off is not easy especially when the Ghostrunner’s only weapon is a sword and his special abilities. In a 2D space this can be done by letting the player see what is ahead which is what Hotline and Katana Zero do but in a 3D space you need to find a different answer. Ghostrunner’s answer is the freedom of movement. Ghostrunner lets the player run on walls, dash, slide and grapple to dodge enemies. There has been a lot of effort put into the movement to make the game feel fair and not overly frustrating. That is not to say there are no problems with the movement: The wall running needs you to hit the walls hard, if you don’t you are going to fall to your death. Another problem with the wall running is that if you move onto a wall too early you will find yourself running a little too high which can be a problem causing you to miss targets or just miss the next wall. The same problems occur when grappling. If you are not lined up properly with the grapple point, you can overshoot or go in the completely wrong direction.

Movement alone does not a killer make: to keep his slick moves company the Ghostrunner has his sword and abilities so that he can wage war against the offensive masses. When you attack with the sword the Ghostrunner does a little dash to close the gap, this means that you don’t have to be right next to the target to kill them. The next major ability is a dash that propels the Ghostrunner in a particular direction, the dash can also slow time and let the Ghostrunner change direction in a heartbeat. While initially underwhelming the dash becomes the arrowhead of the moves available. Besides these two there are a few more special abilities that need to be unlocked which I will describe below:

Blink: A slashing attack in a straight direction that can take out anyone straight ahead.
Tempest: A shockwave attack that can kill enemies and return projectiles that are within range.
Surge: A wave of energy that can take out multiple enemies.
Overload: A brainwash ability that turns enemies against their companions.

Honestly, the addon abilities are secondary, they don’t change the gameplay much since they take a lifetime and a half to be usable. It is much better to save them for sections where you know you need them. They all have a perfect place and time to be used but you never know that on the first playthrough of a section or even the first run of a level, you need to die a few times to figure out the perfect point to use them in each level.

Upgrades can be added to your Ghostrunner. There are upgrades to improve your dash, all the special abilities as well as a way to deflect bullets. These upgrades need to be added to the Ghostrunner who has limited slots. All the upgrades are in the form of tetrominoes that can be turned before being positioned. The limited slots available to the Ghostrunner make the upgrade system a puzzle forcing you to find the best way to position the upgrades so that you can force as many in as possible.

There is one more ability that the Ghostrunner has that I haven’t mentioned yet which is his ability instantaneously respawn. Like in Hotline and Katana zero; after dying you can respawn instantaneously. This is what makes Ghostrunner great. If there had been a loading screen after each death then the momentum of the gameplay would have been ripped to shreds while amping the frustration levels but since you can just get back to the furball there is no fear of dying making you more aggressive each time you die and that is exactly what the game wants. You even keep your focus bar when you die letting you prepare a special ability after a few deaths to get through areas where you can’t figure out what to do next.

The enemies start off being idiots with pistols and go to being heavies with rapid-fire weapons, guys with shields, melee strikers, droids, ninjas and finally robots which can burn an area down. There is a different way to take each of these assholes down which you must learn to git good. These different methods of killing each enemy makes you scrutinize the battlefield instead of going in braindead. The variation between each of them makes you contemplate who to drop first and if you or a special ability can help take the rest on. This adds an element of strategy which would else be a breakneck speed hack and slash, I’m not sure if that is a good thing but I did enjoy this element.

The levels show off the movement further. I can safely say that Ghostrunner’s levels were designed with the movement in mind. The levels are a mix of combat sections and traversal sections. Each designed to show off the movement. The traversal sections are built of split-second decisions of where to move to next since you can’t see far ahead, they are highly linear since there is only the correct choice making timing critical. The combat sections are a tad bit more open but not by much. The combat sections are designed to be multi-directional so that the player doesn’t have to kill the enemies in a set order but that is not always the case as the cleanest route seems to have been pre-defined by the developers, discovering this path can be a pain in the arse but is fulfilling when you clear an area without dying even if it is only the 1st of 10.

There is one last aspect to some levels and that is the virtual areas. They are equal to dream sequences in most games and like those other games, they are annoying puzzles. In these sections you can’t wall run, dash or any of the other things that makes Ghostrunner fun. The objective in these levels is either to collect orbs or make your way to the end. That would be fine if the levels weren’t doing so many things that the normal abilities would make child’s play. Without the wall running and dashing these sections become frustrating beyond belief. Thankfully there are only 5 of them but they can reduce the game to unplayable by existing especially the section “Echoes”.

The gameplay in Ghostrunner is what makes this game beautiful. It keeps your heart pumping, keeps your brain planning while never boring you. The focused level design backed up by instantons respawning along with easy to learn but difficult to master controls makes this game one for the ages.

Conclusion:

Ghostrunner looked like it was going to take on Serious Sam 4 for my game of the year but the annoying as hell virtual level in “Echoes” along with problems in the detection for traversal and some combat levels feeling like there is only one way to take them on annoyed the hell out of me. It is still a great game and a must buy though it might not be for everyone.