Summary
It fell on my shoulders to playGhostrunner 2for my final appointment at Gamescom after a week of hardly any sleep and back-to-back games. The original was notorious for its difficulty, and drove me to the edge of frustration and back when I first picked it up a couple of years ago.
My sleepless state didn’t hinder me much. I mean 85 deaths in 31 minutes is totally reasonable, although that is close to three deaths a minute. I wasn’t ashamed as I scribbled down my score and stuck it on the wall of shame outside the booth.
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Mine was a little worse than average compared to other players, but nothing major. Naming no names, there were a few there who’d absolutely smashed it - with as few as 15 deaths, and others that went over the 100 mark. One thing’s for certain, Ghostrunner 2 is brutal, and more of the same in every way, with slick motion, katana-spinning, wall-running, and thumping soundtrack.
While I played, a member of the dev team sat next to me and offered the occasional tip, but mostly just watched me suffer. At the end of the session, he told me that he loves watching people die repeatedly - but also eventually figure out the best tactic to clear a level. It’ll take some time to get to grips with the controls and tools at your disposal, but that’s okay because you reset instantly. The thrill of stringing together a successful combo with your katana, a leaping grappling hook jump, and a slide into the chaos, feels fantastic.
Deaths feel mostly fair, although the pistol-wielding baddies would sometimes blast me out of the air with a precision that made me grind my teeth. As I perfected my parry with the katana and honed my skills with the shurikens, I was able to make short work of them - sometimes.
The cyberpunk aesthetic is back with extra polish in Ghostrunner 2: I had to stop a couple of times to admire the architecture and neon lights, and it’s great to see so much detail put into a background that mostly just passes by in a blur as you hop and skip your way through each new stage. Levels are designed to offer you some creative freedom in tackling enemies, and traversing between combat areas is where you get to do a bit more of the sightseeing.
Even though I died almost three times a minute, I did spend several of those trying to complete a couple of environmental puzzles. These weren’t particularly tricky, but switching your mind from the fast-paced combat to something more slow and methodical did throw me off for a moment. The developer told me that they introduced puzzles to provide at least some sort of pacing to the game - the relentless deaths and frenetic combat only feel that way when juxtaposed against something slower, and for that reason I can still get behind them, even if I just wanted to get back to slicing enemies to pieces after a few seconds.
Ghostrunner 2’s main new mechanic is the motorbike. I played through the scene where you first acquire it, and it’s badass. Much like melee combat, surviving your first ride isn’t easy - quick reactions and an understanding of the level are essential. There are obstacles to dodge and ramps to judge perfectly, otherwise you’ll lose signal quickly and be reset to a previous checkpoint. When the motorbike works, it’s enthralling, but I did struggle with the motion of the camera. I can imagine that during more intense motorbike levels, you’ll be spinning around and weaving a lot. You might be able to adjust the camera in the settings, but I wasn’t able to check in the preview build.
Overall, Ghostrunner 2 is exactly what you’d expect it to be: more of the same cyberpunk, wall-running goodness, with some fresh graphics upgrades and a couple of new mechanics thrown in.
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