Ghostrunner is definitely a gameplay-first proposition. If you're hoping to be whisked away to a dystopian cyberpunk setting then you may be disappointed, as Ghostrunner is only really interested in ticking boxes: there's a ton of neon, a class struggle set in a tower clearly inspired by High-Rise (the movie), and the odd foray into cyberspace. Fortunately, the setting won't matter a lick once you're chaining together high-speed wall-runs and slapping your katana through goons like water balloons of viscera.
Your toolset is pretty simple. You can wall-run, slide, lasso across large gaps, slow time and strafe through the air, and attack with your insta-kill katana. Over the course of the roughly six-hour story, you'll also pick up a handful of abilities like Blink, which lets you dash a considerable distance forward carving through any enemies in your path, and Overlord, which lets you hack enemies and force them to attack each other. You'll never need these abilities to clear an area, but they can be handy for instantly eliminating a particularly tricky enemy type.
However, for the vast majority of Ghostrunner, wall-running, sliding to gain speed, slowing time to avoid projectiles, and your standard katana attack are all you'll need to slay in style. That's good, because developer One More Level has made those four movements feel impossibly slick. You can quickly pick up speed by launching into a slide, jumping out of it, and landing straight back into another slide. Use that to launch yourself into a wall-run and you'll carry that momentum with you, letting you slingshot around the architecture and pick enemies off with aerial strikes.
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Ghostrunner has a free demo that lets you test your cyberpunk ninja skills
