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The RPS Advent Calendar 2022, December 18thThe line’s dead
The line’s dead
On the eighteenth day of our Advent Calendar you find yourself curiously, suddenly alone. A fog rolled through town and suddenly everyone has disappeared. Oh, wait, that looks like a bunch of school kids over there, maybe they’ll hel- OH GOD OH NO.
Lot of dead people clogging up the lines inGhostwire: Tokyo!
A Walk In The Rain In Ghostwire: TokyoOne of the best parts of Ghostwire: Tokyo is exploring the spooky, rainy city.Watch on YouTube
A Walk In The Rain In Ghostwire: Tokyo
James:Not that it was a New Year’s resolution to change my tastes, but I do feel less inclined towardsopen world gamesthan I did at the start of 2022. Between a busier schedule and my rekindled fixation on class-based team shooters from 2007, I’m less motivated than ever to traipse across vast lands doing chores for randos. Ghostwire: Tokyo, however, has been a shining exception.
The action is decent, making a charming use of literal finger guns, and as dull as our protagonist is, there’s something quite touching about the blooming bromance between him and the deceased cop co-inhabiting his body. But it’s the city of Tokyo, and the cast of ghoulies within it, that stole my heart like a kappa steals bum balls. Wait, no, hang on.
Rebecca:Ghostwire: Tokyo isn’t a scary game, but it is a spooky game. It’s an important distinction. I’m definitely one of those anxiety-ridden oddballs who regard horror as their comfort genre, but I prefer a good slow-burn spookening to straight-up running for my life from a chainsaw-wielding zombie. It’s not that there’s no peril in this game, far from it; but nevertheless, it’s a game that feels as though it wants to work with you, not against you. It wants you to walk through the empty city streets together taking in the sights, and while it aims to keep you nicely creeped out, it would hate to strike such fear into your heart that you neglected to have a proper look around.
I had nothing but praise for Ghostwire back in ourGOTFHOTY list, and everything I said back then still applies, basically. There are just so many things I love in this game, from the opportunities for digital tourism in a realistically rendered Tokyo — a wanderlusty lifeline when I haven’t ventured further afield than North Wales since the start of the pandemic — to the endlessly intriguing enemy designs. The Students of Pain and Misery deserve a special shout-out as my new favourite video game mooks: deeply sinister as they mooch about the streets in their spectral teen gangs, yet somehow still so adorably gawky that I just want to give their cheeks a materteral squishing… except, oops, they don’t have faces, do they? Nor heads, even. Best shoot them with my elementally-infused finger guns instead then.
