GhostWire: Tokyo

For the duration of its story, it grips like a grasping, otherworldly arm. [Issue#371, p.104]

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a game that we greatly enjoyed. Unfortunately, Tango Gameworks' approach was to create a game where style is dominant and little substance is offered. In terms of setting and art design it is one of the most unique games we have seen in a long time. However, it is a bland and run-of-the-mill title gameplay-wise.

Ghostwire Tokyo has some weaknesses, but with its fun to play combat and the beautiful presentation of Shibuya and its “visitors”, it will definitely pique your interest.

Ghostwire: Tokyo turns out to be a huge disappointment. Despite its fascinating setting and its interesting plot, the open-world-gameplay turns out to be boring and monotone. The overall game lacks variety and depth.

Quotation forthcoming.

Ghostwire: Tokyo doesn't tap into all of its potential. There's nothing wrong with it per se (save for some repetitiveness) but there's nothing really unique about it either. Maybe except the visuals? It looks really nice, and all in all, it is a sturdy, by-the-book game with mediocre gameplay.

Ghostwire: Tokyo has a unique "modern ghost" cultural setting, but the tedious open-world design dilutes this feature, leaving the gaming experience repetitive and monotonous. The boring battle experience and dull main storyline will down its rating from "worth a try" to "not very recommended". Of course, for players who love Japanese "oni" culture and various urban legends, or who don't feel repulsed by checklist-based open-world games, this game is still worth watching.

When it comes to presenting an accurate and impressively detailed version of Tokyo, Ghostwire makes a great first impression. Despite literally being a ghost town, the city feels alive and captures neon-soaked pop-culture as well as ancient mythology and folklore. The two main characters deliver a convincing performance, too, and their story is entertaining, despite being quite short. Everything else, though – the combat system, the progression and the quest design – is the bare minimum of what’s acceptable from a big budget open world game. The combat, while fun to a degree, is especially thin with just three laughable spells and enemies without any special tactics or weakpoints. The unlockable upgrades are boring and unoriginal and the side quests, while having interesting setups, are mostly short and lack satisfying payoffs. Still, there is fun to be had in exploring ghost-infested Tokyo – it’s just not a creative, unique sort of fun, but rather a pretty mindless and extremely familiar one.

Most potent of all, there is a strain of urban fear running through its design—not of monsters but of the city itself as an isolating entity, rendering you unreachable.

Ultimately, Ghostwire: Tokyo's world-building, Japanese folklore, and character dynamics are engaging, but the pacing and combat weigh down the middle section.

Tango Gameworks' latest outing won't scratch that survival horror itch the same way The Evil Within does, but Ghostwire: Tokyo has more than enough going for it to warrant at least one playthrough. A creative skill set keeps combat fresh and engaging even if enemies aren't the most in-depth when it comes to challenging the player. Exploration is enhanced by parkour-esque platforming that makes navigating in first-person a thrill. Tokyo is a moody, lonely setting dripping in atmosphere at all times. Level design is perhaps too restrained when it comes to eclectic set pieces, but the open world packs itself full of secrets while pacing its main content out appropriately. Ghostwire: Tokyo is a worthy entry in Tango Gameworks' catalogue.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is an odd but thrilling adventure that mixes action, horror and Japanese traditions. Exploring a demon-filled Tokyo is decently frightening, while the battles are both intense and somewhat original. Some repetitive moments and an uneven story lower the experience a few notches, but in the end, the positive parts outweigh the bad ones.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a gobsmackingly gorgeous action-horror with enemies that you won’t forget any time soon, not only for their eclectic appearances but their formidable ferocity in combat too. It’s a moreish game, and I want to trawl through every inch of this odd facsimile of the capital city, though I hope that Tango Gameworks rolls out an accessibility settings update to allow even more fans to enjoy this glittery and ghostly game.

Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like a throwback to a different era of action game design. It takes an off-beat approach to world design, story encounters, and combat pacing that won't be for everyone, but if you can get it to click into place you'll have a resoundingly chill time hunting ghosts throughout Tokyo.

With superb visual design and an incredibly well-realised rendition of Tokyo, Ghostwire gets a lot right, but just doesn't quite have the gameplay chops to push it over the top.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is at its best when it's reimagining Japanese folklore in visually astonishing ways and delivering moving visualizations of what it’s like to pass on. It’s less compelling as a checkbox-driven open-world game, with limited content stretched too thin across its apocalyptic version of Shibuya.

You’re going to have fun with this game. For the criticisms I list above, I do think that Tango Gameworks has, with guidance from Bethesda (no doubt), created a refined and highly playable open-world game. It’s one that ticks all the boxes and does so in such a way that’s hard to actively fault. Yet, it's also so frustrating. The hints of what the developers wanted it to be are there. They wanted to make a Noh-inspired, yurei-and-yokai drenched blend of Shinto, Buddhism and neon-modern Japan. That would have been incredible. Sadly that didn't happen. Instead, I was left with the impression that I’d just played a Ubisoft Goes To Tokyo farce, and that left me feeling very deflated indeed.

Ghostwire Tokyo is a pretty good game, entertaining, but it shouldn't be unforgettable. Artistically, it is very beautiful, the city of Tokyo is pleasant to explore but gameplay mechanics do not follow and are a bit outdated.

The moments in-between -- especially those the game deems most critical to plot and progression -- may not have the same punch, but Ghostwire: Tokyo though briefly just about shines through where it matters. A journey you will actively and quickly decide against sprinting through.

Ghostwire: Tokyo’s vision of Shibuya is eccentric and captivating. Exploring every nook and cranny to learn more about the Japanese myths and legends that inspired the game makes for a compelling gameplay hook. It’s a shame that despite some interesting ideas, parts of the story campaign feel like they were left on the cutting room floor.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a thrilling paranormal rollercoaster with ups and downs. Exploring the city of Tokyo is fun and defeating your first few enemies is a blast, its flaws also become apparent very quickly. The game lacks enemy variety and the same goes for Akito's weapon arsenal. Ghostwire gets a little repetitive and sadly doesn't find a way to fix that problem before the credits roll.

Ghostwire: Tokyo offers a lot of good but it’s hidden behind even more tedium. I'm left wishing that the team had more time to polish their ideas, so it's hard for me to recommend Ghostwire: Tokyo. That isn’t to say I didn’t have fun with what's well made. What doesn’t, though, feels like a patch was thrown on instead of fixing the larger issues, which ultimately bogged down my experience.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is now representative of games that have been severely damaged by an open world.

Without being catastrophic, the result is unsatisfactory in almost all areas, and we are saddened to see so many good ideas badly exploited, and with wasted potential. The combat system is original but badly balanced. The atmosphere is intriguing and the city has a real verticality, but it is completely flooded with repetitive fights and items to collect. The narration could have saved the whole thing, but it quickly stumbles, and ends after only a few hours without giving any reason to be interested. The direction is equally inconsistent, with significant ups and downs. If instead of investing its limited resources in a failed open world, the studio had focused on the rest, maybe Ghostwire Tokyo would have been a good game.

Ghostwire: Tokyo has an interesting setting, but a lackluster story, monotonous combat, and disappointing visuals make for a forgettable adventure that doesn't justify its next-gen-only status, or the full asking price.

One's feelings about the game start with "oh my God, what did I buy", move on to "hey, it's not all bad - let's destroy one more tree", only to realize in the end that you're actually doing the same thing over and over again and that you could spend your time in a more entertaining way. [Issue#318]

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a horror-themed shooter that features a cool, ghostly premise and a lavishly rendered open-world Tokyo. However, it doesn't provide many scares or particularly engaging action.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is not a bad game. I was interested enough to stick with it and engage with as much of it as possible. If you have more patience for open-world exploration and tedious collectable-finding than I do, then you might get more out of it. I didn’t go into detail about this, but the story is decent and well-told, and that counts for something. This game is also bursting with visual flavor and interest, the kind of which you won’t find elsewhere. But the majority of the game is spent in that open-world formula. Clear fog, gather items and souls, turn in for XP and money, do sidequests and tasks for that area. It’s all in the service of filling a percentage bar, and it just gets boring after a while. No matter how pretty or interesting the surroundings were, once I got well and truly stuck in the rut, I honestly stopped noticing.

Ghostwire Tokyo is a good game. It nails atmosphere and looks next-generation on the PS5.There’s clever use of the new controller options. But when it comes to video games, gameplay is ultimately everything and this title simply won’t blow you away.

This quest for the future of a cursed Tokyo is unfortunately a little bland, accompanied by a silly story and a combat system that feels too easy. If you like your Japanese mythology and eastern religions, however, this might just end up being a real treat for you.

There are plenty of action and horror games on PS5 that give you a much more varied experience and are paced in such a way that the engagement will last throughout a full runtime. Why Ghostwire: Tokyo couldn’t do that will always be a mystery.

Ghostwire: Tokyo could have been something really special, but Tango Gameworks misses the mark. There's a ton of work put in the creepy atmosphere of the game. But things get boring very quickly with very repetitive gameplay and frustrating combats. A true missed opportunity.

Ghostwire: Tokyo envisions a world that is wonderful and interesting to explore at first glance, but soon reveals itself to be shallow and lacking in its writing and combat.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a good open-world adventure that wishes it was a great scripted horror story. The game is at its best when it straps you on rails and breaks down reality around you, but all too often you’re left to wander an empty Tokyo with little to say for it.

Ghostwire Tokyo is not a bad game but it sounds hollow when we put down the controller after the few 10h of game he offers. His Tokyo is very beautiful and wonderfully transcribed, the power-based gameplay is effective, but it lacks possibilities and we repeat all the time the same thing and the same actions which makes the overall adventure redundant. In addition, it doesn’t tell much... Too bad, because the theme and the atmosphere are there!

Ghostwire: Tokyo’s open world city is beautiful, and its world-building, environment and creature designs are also excellent. But even with a sensible runtime and a brisk plot, the game spends too much time engaging you in repeating, unchanging, and unexciting activities. It’s the terrible and taxing curse of open world monotony, plaguing a piece of work that otherwise has so many unique and original ideas.

Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like a step back from what Tango Gameworks has produced in the past. While its combat system is fun in bursts, it becomes repetitive far too quickly. The open world is jam-packed with busywork, and the story doesn't go anywhere interesting either. Excellent PS5 DualSense controller support, haunting elements, and nice visuals aside, Ghostwire: Tokyo will have to go down as a miss.

I’d love to see what the initial vision for Ghostwire: Tokyo was, before former creative director Ikumi Nakamura’s sudden departure from Tango Gameworks, because what we ended up getting feels like the shell of a different, far more interesting game. A rendition of Shibuya that’s authentic, atmospheric, eerie, and brimming personality deserves better than the most banal version of a generic open-world formula that ran out of steam a decade ago. Despite all the potential in its concept, the Ghostwire we got is—despite its ghostly theme—soulless.

An unfocused jaunt around Tokyo’s unnecessarily open world will provide for a solid way to while away the hours, but don’t expect the nail-biting survival-horror experience that Tango Gameworks is known for as you pound the pavement ticking off boxes.

At times it feels like the game’s incredible art direction, music and visual style deserve a game that’s better mechanically, but when it all comes together, Ghostwire Tokyo is one of the more unique games in the triple-A space, if you can ignore its gameplay stumbles.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is, heartbreakingly, not spooky. It's also not particularly interesting, and I certainly didn't find it very fun to play. I'm sure genre-fanatics will find something to latch on to, but nothing ever quite hooked me enough to make the journey feel compelling.