Ghostrunner's intense first-person parkour platforming demands perfection. Whether you're clearing out a neon cityscape of cyberpunk goons or racing on walls and sliding through vents of a gigantic factory, even a small miscalculation will get you killed. Your jumps need to be precise. Every swing of your sword should be deadly. Anything less isn't up to robot ninja spec. Ghostrunner is quick to punish, but it's also more than willing to reward players who rise to its challenge. Bouncing from wall to wall feels like flying. Running circles around gunmen, dodging bullets, and cutting them down without a scratch is exhilarating. It's a high-risk, high-reward situation: Struggling with failure after failure, even on simple tasks, is incredibly frustrating early on, but that anger eventually dissipates as your skill grows to reveal a thrilling test of your abilities.
Set in a cyberpunk-style post-apocalyptic world, Ghostrunner puts you in control of a robot ninja assassin on a mission to kill his world's authoritarian ruler. (She also nearly killed him a while back, so it's a twofer! Revolution and revenge.) There's a twisty, turny plot, but it's often very detached from what you're actually playing, as it's told almost exclusively through voiceover.
Ghostrunner adheres quite closely to tenets of cyberpunk's visual aesthetic. You run through dirty dilapidated cities with dark corners, contrasted with neon signs and bright screens lighting up the night. Some of the enemies you face are literal cyborg punks. Don't worry; there are also plenty of robots. There have been enough cyberpunk stories in games that this look isn't especially fresh, but that doesn't stop it from looking cool. It helps that, on a technical level, Ghostrunner looks very sharp. The environments, enemies, and your sword, which is always sticking out in front of you, are all incredibly detailed. It may not be the most creatively constructed, but it is appealing all the same.
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