Ghost 1.0 Reviews

Metroidvanias are my favourite genre. And if it has a great story, the better. This game surprised me with a really nice story and likeable characters.

Enjoyed it quite a bit, but probably a somewhat niche title. Definitely more of a sale candidate if you are not in dire need of a half-serious cyberpunk metroidvania. [i]Ghost 1.0[/i] straddles a strange line, it wants to be something of a twinstick shooter, a metroidvania, a serious cyberpunk story, a tongue-in-check cyberpunk story and nostalgic all at the same time while also attempting to innovate here and there. Does not quite work out, honestly. The gameplay is solid, but also janky at times. When I recently got back into it and tried my hand at some of the extra challenges, I noticed this somewhat severely, as the regular storymode is comparatively forgiving there with all the upgrades to make your life easier. But then again, getting those can be an outright chore, as every room has a “hidden” loot that can be unlocked in the wildest ways. Shooting a specific spot, floating somewhere in ghost form, use a lift 3 times, kill enemies in less than 5 seconds, kill all enemies EXCEPT one specific type, kill ONLY a specific type… the list goes on. It often feels random and very much “just use a guide”. What I mean to say is, the gameplay is mostly solid, very much what you would expect, but it is also trying very hard to make you find secrets in very unintuitive ways that often feel like this has to be in it because of the genre and to keep you busy, rather than engaging you with intricately interconnected map design, secret passages and such. This is fine, considering that the setting is a space station which only allows so much variety, of which there is ultimately quite a lot. Bottom line is, I did not find this groundbreakingly awesome, but sufficiently enjoyable most of the time. What I will say is that I rather like the idea of the “ghost” that can possess most of the robots that populate the space station. In this sense we can get lots of variety, for instance by playing as the combat droid for a spell. But let us proceed to what actually drew me in. In a trailer, we see an early section wherein Ghost explodes a robot, is called out for what the hell this was supposed to be and gleefully goes “Stealth!”. That kind of blatant, unapologetic cringey humor felt just lighthearted enough for me to interest me. And oh boy, did the game deliver on this front. It is rather interesting, for as the plot progresses, we see lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and eye rolling, only missing a laugh track. We get traditional tropes… but we also get very different tones when it comes to them. The trio is developed somewhat thoroughly and actually interesting and relevant questions of the cyberpunk genre ala [i]Ghost in the Shell[/i] come up, alongside the tropey mentioning of “[i]Blade Runner[/i] rules” or whatever. We are told stories by and of other characters only for another to interject and correct that no, this was not an epic adventure, it was just D&D night. This game is [i]nerdy as hell[/i] and just runs with it. And I gotta say, I rather enjoy it for what it is here. It does not take itself too seriously, since it is after all a kind of silly shootey game, complete with the somewhat deliberately cringe voice acting and an episodic format where you are told “Last time on [i]Ghost 1.0[/i] . . . and now the conclusion!” whenever you reload, as if watching an endlessly ongoing TV show. Yet the writers showed themselves adept enough to keep from falling into the super ironic self-awareness trap and make it into one big laughing track. Again, while not groundbreaking or genre defining, I rather enjoyed it for what it is and how deliberately it celebrates a lot of 80s and 90s geek culture whenever it is not asking somewhat profound questions. Definitely a solid, fun cyberpunk experience for me. If a bit janky, but maybe that is just part of the deal.

-Utterly broken zipline controls in an area you are forced to do after the first boss. Who thought these controls made sense? -Game drops to 22fps at random, alt tabbing fixes it, absolutely destroys your abililty to play when it happens in the middle of combat. I'm on a 4070 TI this game should run at 6000fps -Cringe-inducing DND guy making references like a peanut gallery, should have an option to entirely remove these conversations from the game perhaps having no one talk ever honestly I would have had more fun that way -"Previously on Ghost 1.0" your game is like 15 hours long it doesn't need recaps fool -Infinitely respawning enemies that respawn while you're trying to platform through a god damn room with the broken zipline controls -The devs don't really understand the exploratory nature of this type of game. The game is too focused on collecting money to buy skills and abilities rather than finding skills and abilities as you explore. This changes the gameplay loop from going to new areas and looking around exploring, to exploring for a bit, getting money, then backtracking again and again to a shop to buy stuff over and over. Every room has a "secret" in it, but it's often nonsensical what you must do to unlock it. Yeah, we get it, metroidvanias sometimes required you to shoot some random block to open a passage unexpectedly. However in these games there is a limited, known set of secrets that can exist. Usually shoot a hidden box, go to a hard to reach area. It's limited because typically the game shows you really simple to find ones via all those methods early on, so you will look for them in harder to find places later. It's not the game just trying to confuse you stupidly by having secrets unlocked by crouching in a corner for 5 seconds in a random room or running back and forth a bunch in a specific spot. These are stupid secrets that are only found by looking them up online. Not interesting or engaging. -The devs of course needed to add pointless missions no one will ever do because it was the mid 2010s and adding a pointless mission mode had to be in every game at this time. These missions make me want to put a bullet in my head. The very first mission has an achievement to only break 20 boxes, but your drones will automatically shoot boxes without you being able to do anything about it when trying to kill enemies, so it's basically impossible to get this one. It's like they want to piss off the player as much as possible.