When I spoke to the developers behind Ghostwire: Tokyo earlier this year, they insisted that it wasn’t a horror game. Despite coming from Tango Gameworks, a studio run by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, the team was eager to distance it from the genre it’s best known for. When I played the game’s first chapter, I was convinced they were lying. The eerie opening had me jumping out of my seat with sudden scary visuals and terrifying creatures.
Then I heard a dog barking. My brain went into panic mode, assuming I was about to run into some grotesque dog enemy just like I would in Resident Evil. Instead, I found a totally normal Shiba Inu wandering the game’s empty streets. As I approached it, I got the one button prompt everyone wants to see: Pet. Then I noticed a second option, asking if I wanted to read the dog’s mind by feeding it. I pulled out a can of dog food and the pup happily thanked me via subtitles before digging up some buried money for me.
After playing the first two chapters of Ghostwire: Tokyo, I’m loving the way the game balances the freaky and the whimsical. It’s made me laugh just as much as it’s made me jump so far.
Ghostwire: Tokyo has an eerie opening. I watched as everyone in Tokyo suddenly vanished, leaving the streets disconcertingly empty. The atmosphere is immediately striking. The game is a first-person adventure game where players traverse the foggy city, and it’s an unsettling world to explore. Environments are littered with clothing as outfits dropped off of people when they disappeared.
Even creepier is the game’s use of music. You’d think that a game about an empty city would have no sound, but the opposite is true. Clashing music blares from buildings as you explore, which makes perfect
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