Ghostwire: Tokyo preview – a very Japanese FPS

metro.co.uk:

GameCentral gets a sneak peak at the first 30 minutes of the new game from the creators of Resident Evil and The Evil Within.

The question of why Japanese developers, and therefore presumably Japanese gamers, are so uninterested in first person games has never been satisfactorily answered. It’s always been that way but Ghostwire: Tokyo happens to arrive just as first person shooters in general are at a low ebb in terms of quality, if not popularity, following the disappointment of Battlefield 2042 and Call Of Duty: Vanguard. Not that this seems to be exclusively a shooter but after having seen half an hour of unbroken footage we’re not really sure what else to call it.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is the latest game from Tango Gameworks, the studio set up by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami and which up till now has only produced the two The Evil Within games. Mikami doesn’t seem to be heavily involved with Ghostwire and instead the director is Kenji Kimura, whose most significant credit is as a scripter on Metal Gear Solid 4 and a level designer on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

That fits with Mikami’s previously stated goal to promote new talent in the industry, although given how few notable first person Japanese games there are you can’t help but wonder if his collaboration with Suda51 for killer7 was at least a minor influence. Ghostwire isn’t quite that surreal but it’s certainly not a military shooter either, as you try to navigate an impressively realistic version of Tokyo that has been taken over by demonic forces.

The problem with this preview is that not only was it hands-off but we didn’t even get to speak to anyone, just watch a brief pre-recorded video from Kimura and then streaming footage of someone playing the game.