Ghostrunner 2 – Review

The original Ghostrunner was released back in 2020, bringing high-speed, ninja gameplay with a nod to titles like Mirrors Edge, it was an instant hit and despite my ageing reactions, I was able to work through the challenging levels, often with a little trial and error and no doubt, a lot of luck.

One year after the events of the first game the Keymaster might be gone, but the resulting power vacuum has sucked together a new challenge bringing a few new spectral sprinters to the opposition, so thank the cyberpunk gods that Jack is back with his first person, wall running antics.

When you first step back into Jack’s shoes, you’re thrown in at the deep end and within seconds you’ll be parkour’ing your way through levels, dodging incoming projectiles and using your gap-jammer (grapple). Returning players will immediately feel at home and while I haven’t touched the original Ghostrunner for a few years I was soon up to speed and pulling off gravity defying ninja jumps to slash whatever enemies I came across.
There are a few levels crammed together but at the end of these you’ll be thrown into your first boss battle with another Ghostrunner who’s just revived one of the many other enemies you’ll encounter, it’s a spike in difficulty and a clear sign your re-introduction is over.

On the way to this point, I’d encountered a few deaths, usually down to my own stupidity, miss-timing a jump or ignoring a projectile heading straight towards my face, but this first boss was when things really started to feel tough another quick, agile and deadly ninja who will kill you with a single hit, but takes a few dozen slashes to defeat isn’t the easiest foe.
Add in the dynamic attacks that don’t always follow the same pattern and it’s almost souls-like as you dodge, block and grapple your way into range to unleash a chunk of slashes at a time. Sure-enough patience prevails and after victory, you’re introduced to a few friends at the interface council in an out-of-mission hub which help fill some backstory.

Progressing forward with the speed of a shuriken, most of the levels you’ll encounter are one again “semi-open” there’s a linear route from start to finish but a variety of paths you can take within each segmented area, this works well to offer a range of options when attacking a situation, such as staying high and mobile or heading straight for the kill, or deciding which order you dispatch the small groups of enemies, but the downside is you’ll sometimes lose your bearing and then spend a little too long looking for the exit, which isn’t always as clearly marked as I would have liked.

I also found, I occasionally felt forced into a certain approach, either through the placement of enemy groups or a lack of paths to a certain area, meaning when I got a little stuck rather than trying a new approach, my only option was to keep repeating the same section again and again until I perfected it.

While there’s a great feeling of accomplishment when you do fluently breeze through a section slicing enemies as you pass, I just didn’t find myself hitting the same flowas consistently as the first game.
There are some punishing difficulty spikes and then when your patience is at an all-time low, you’re suddenly thrown back into a beautifully fluent massacre as you time your jumps and kills to perfection and enemies seem to be positioned and attacking at the perfect moments to make that section feel like a piece of art as you seamlessly transition from one side to the other taking down everything in your path.

Another area worth mentioning is the occasionally weak AI, which left me edging forward to get a few cheap shuriken’s kills before I triggered the enemy to actually realise, I was nearby. These proximity triggers are almost bug-like in the way enemies completely ignore the guy dying by a massive explosion a few feet away, all because you haven’t hit that proximity trigger, but sadly manipulating this weakness was unfortunately easier than dying a dozen times because you’ve been forced to tackle a level in a way, you’re not familiar or comfortable with.

As you progress through the game, you’ll start to uncover new abilities that can be equipped, each ability has a cost but you can collect memory chips to increase the range and strength of available abilities, it’s a rewarding way of doing a skill tree, and encouraging the player to explore and find the memory chips rather than just race through every section.
The downside is, because of the difficulty early on, you start to feel obliged to find as many chips as possible, there’s also another skill tree, for your sword and abilities, which can be purchased and unlocked whenever you find a suitable console, combined with also unlocking abilities, and finding cosmetics such as new swords and gloves, there’s quite alot to work through and purists wont have any problem revisiting levels later to search out some more collectibles.

The new bike sections are a pleasant change, with the only negative being how long it takes to find it, but once you’ve found your new best friend, there’s a fun and challenging linear section before you head outside of the main complex and the game opens up considerably, both on and off the bike.

Before this point, everythign had felt a little run of the mill, but it’s a distinct turning point and when Ghostrunner 2 cements itself as a sequel and not just a fancy update to the first game.

Graphically the original Ghostrunner was already pretty impressive with its cyberpunk setting and fluent first-person action, but when seeing the recommended pc requirements of a i7 9900k, 16gb ram and a 2070 super GPU, I wasn’t sure how well things would run. That was soon answered in game. Performance mode prioritises 60fps at 2160p on Series X and 1080p on Series S, while quality mode sticks to 2160p on both consoles at 30fps but unlocked to hit up to 60fps. Finally, High framerate mode sticks to 1080p on both consoles but allows up to 120fps.

I found myself sticking with Quality mode, and on Series X didn’t find any noticeable framerate drops, but it’s worth bearing in mind that Ray-Tracing isn’t available at launch on consoles (and is only activated day 1 on PC), so performance could be impacted when ray-tracing is added, but it’s more likely RT will be a 4th optional mode, and any chance things could look even better definitely isn’t anything bad.
The screenshots will give you an idea of what to expect, with dark lifeless buildings brought to life by bright neon signs, but when you consider the blistering pace of the game there’s few criticisms unless you want to pixel peep a few stills.

Through the duration of the game there’s some impressive locations, which continue the cyberpunk aesthetics, and while character faces leave a little to be desired, the core gameplay, dashing and slicing through Dharma tower at high speed is consistently impressive.

Audio is another area that’s important to the franchise and another area where it delivers, the background music does a great job of setting the pace of the game, it’s hard to take a stroll when you’re accompanied by a thumping beat which better matches the high-speed combat.

The soundtrack is up-tempo and suits the gameplay perfectly well, with plenty of audio clues for incoming attacks, I suggest cranking the volume up. This is helped by some above average voice acting, there’s a few flatter performances, I dare say Jack was one of the weaker characters for me, but overall, it all combines for some very good audio delivery across the board.

Like it’s predecessor, Ghostrunner 2 is competitively priced at only £34.99.
Providing better gameplay and longevity than the price suggests, for a sequel it does feel like they’ve played it a little too safe which leaves some levels feeling a little too repetitive.

The first few hours of Ghostrunner 2 will feel pretty brutal even to seasons players, but once you get to grips with the way the game allows you to play and especially when you find a bike and things open up a little the game keeps pace with it’s predecessor.
I would have loved to see a little more, but the introduction of the bike has been done incredibly well and combined with the overall feel and momentum of the franchise fans are in for a treat.

Due to some early difficulty spikes Ghostrunner 2 loses it’s footing a little, but thanks to the smart introduciton of the bikes and the slight change to how the game plays with your new tool, Ghostrunner 2 catches up with its predeccessor to provide another thrilling, cyber-ninja slasher.

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