Ghostrunner plot upgrade#

Her fantastic move set makes it even more disappointing that she can’t be played in any of the main game’s optional modes and is locked to her campaign an oversight that will hopefully change in the future. Going back to the simple bunny hop in the main game is very jarring and shows the strengths of this upgraded and more exact jump. It helps close the distance during combat, evade attacks, salvage a botched run, and leads to more involved and trickier parkour segments. Being able to aim leaps with such precision gives players much more control and can lead to even more thrilling platforming and tight squeezes. She can hop significantly farther than the main game’s protagonist and this jump can be aimed in mid-air, something that’s made more manageable with slow-mo and a handy reticule. Hel’s free-running skills are mostly the same, with the exception of her giant jump, which is a game changer.

Ghostrunner plot upgrade#

The choices also extend to its puzzle-like upgrade system that can radically change some moves, granted players can use their Tetris skills to get the most out of it.

The meter can also be spent offensively with a ranged projectile, giving players a simple but effective choice to make. The shield has to be earned, is only a temporary savior, and will drain quickly if the bloodshed stops, so it doesn’t become a crutch that hampers the rewarding gameplay. This fits with the game’s increased focus on combat since it makes her more capable without cheapening the experience. Hel, the protagonist, has a rage meter that fills when getting kills or finding special power-ups and filling it over halfway grants her a shield.

Project Hel tweaks that formula just a bit without sacrificing that gratification. Success is predicated on being a badass cyber ninja capable of perfectly traversing the environment and slicing through opponents and it’s not possible to stumble through it and miss that power fantasy.

The fragile protagonist means that players have to get through sections in one go and the journey to getting good enough to do that is a worthy and satisfying challenge. Ghostrunner is tough, with a plentiful amount of one-hit kills, but it’s made painless by its instant restarts, frequent checkpoints, and exceptionally tight controls. Wall-running, jumping, and athletically using other bits of the environment together in one unbroken string is utterly exhilarating not only for how easy it is to slip into a flow state but also because of how the game ensures that players get into that state in the first place. Project Hel is still Ghostrunner at its core and that means the parkour at the center is utterly fantastic. Project Hel, the game’s first significant expansion, does have a tough act to follow, but keeps up and even surpasses that main campaign at times with its more nimble moveset.

Unlike some other parkour games, it had a constant forward momentum paired with a difficulty curve and tough enemies that forced players to play the title flawlessly and see it at its best. 2020’s Ghostrunner nailed first-person platforming and let players live out the fantasy of being an agile cyber ninja traversing a neon-lit cyberpunk dystopia.