Ghostrunner 2 -PS5- 9

December 20, 2023

I just beat Ghostrunner 2 this afternoon, and I thought it was just as badass as the original Ghostrunner. This sequel expands the horizons of its predecessor with more enemy varity, more expansive environments, and some cool new ways to parkour. The flow of the game in the first half is very similar to the original, but the levels are broken up by breaks you take in the protagonists’ hideout. There’s dialogue to listen to, but thankfully you can skip it quickly if you just want to get back to the gameplay segments and level progression. I never followed the story very closely in GR1, and the same was true during my playthrough of GR2. The meat and potatoes of these games is the parkour, platforming, and dicing through enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible. GR1 had the best first person freerunning around, and GR2 continues that same quality. I got such a high every time I would stick a landing off a complex series of jumps into a wall run through the beautifully designed courses. Half way through the campaign, the environment changes as you exit the cyberpunk city into an open desert with an awesome new motorcycle. The visits to your hub are also dropped. And for a couple chapters, the game dabbles with a slightly open world format where you choose what objective to tackle next. I got lost a couple times during these few chapters, but thankfully GR2 goes back to its linear nature in the last several chapters. The new motorcycle segments throughout the game were particularly thrilling, including a chase between you and a giant mechanical sandworm. You also get a gliding ability in the late game, which opens up even more freedom in how you control your character. There were also more melee-focused boss battles than there were in the original, and these were quite challenging. Fighting bosses and killing enemies with a perfect parry or standard sword slash was always satisfying to pull off. There were many encounters that involved several enemies in one giant room, and these force you to plan how to zip around and defeat everyone in the best order. It gets quite challenging, and you need patience, quick reflexes, and mastery of the tight controls to make it through. This game, just like the original, is not for everyone. You have to be dedicated and enjoy hard games. Even with the frequent checkpoints, you will constantly get killed until you learn and get better. GR2 reminds me of old cult classics like Hagane on SNES and Shinobi on PS2 in that you’re playing as a ninja with tight controls, but it has the first person viewpoint and wall running of Mirror’s Edge. I love hardcore action platformers like this, so I’m giving GR2 a 9 out of ten, which is the same score I gave the original.