You may not realize it, but Ghostwire: Tokyo, developed by Tango Gameworks, is an action-adventure game. The Evil Within" series. But if you want a neon Japanese-style adventure game where you get cool psychic powers and interact with lots of dogs, here you go.

Ghostwire's Biggest Attraction Is Combat: The biggest draw of Ghostwire:Tokyo is the combat: in 2022, we've seen a lot of very precise, punishing, combat-driven games. The Eldenrings and Sifus of the world love to hurt you and make you learn the rules of play in brutal ways. In Ghostwire Tokyo, they just want to give you a cool magic hand, light you up against some fucked-up bad guys, and watch them melt away.

Combat is a lot of fun. It's not overly complicated or intricate. It's a mix of neon pulses of various shades, a few amulets that act as a grenade of sorts, and my favorite of the main character Akito's utilities, the spirit bow. Eventually, you'll be able to take out most enemies with a clean headshot, whether from a rooftop or an adjacent alley, before they can spot you.

Not all enemies are so clean. Crouch behind an abandoned car, draw your bow, and try to take down enemies floating above your next objective. After running out of arrows, I sneak up behind the suited ghost and perform a quick purge, tearing its core apart and drawing the attention of the other three wandering ghouls to attack. I switch to wind power and charge up a burst to attack them, but they keep coming closer and closer. I switch to fire power and charge a flaming orb, which I release at the group. My blast does enough damage to expose their core and I grab the core with an ethereal weave, tearing the undead dwellers clean off. Pretty cool.

Ghostwire City: Tokyo is a marvel. The environment is detailed and intricate, littered with residents' clothes, bags, and cell phones, and is truly abandoned. Details can get hazy as you sprint through the streets, but Tango Gameworks does a great job of making the city feel fresh and distinctive in various areas. Akito is able to walk through alleyways and jump over any fence. Also, when an entire city is patrolled by ghosts, every nook and cranny can be hidden from the ghosts, making the layout feel much more realistic.

There are many things about Ghostwire that, sadly, don't work. The story is, well, okay. You play Akito, a man on a mission to save his sister. Akito is in a car accident just before Tokyo turns into a spirit, and KK, the ghost of a recently deceased spirit hunter, possesses Akito's weakened body; KK needs a physical body, because Akito would die without KK's power. Their relationship is built on their grievances about being stuck with each other. They are dynamic men, so of course they never talk about their feelings or history. Akito's relationship with his sister Mari is told through flashbacks; KK doesn't trust Akito and doesn't want to talk about his family either. It's just two moody people hanging out.

Most well portrayed are the bad guy Hannya and Akito and KK's allies Ed and Rinko. The latter in particular is explored in more detail, as the protagonists go back and forth on whether they trust Prajna or not. Akito and KK cannot talk about themselves, but they are happy to talk about others. His cruelty and unusual approach to life and death contrasts with the rest of the game's atmosphere and is truly unsettling.

Ghostwire Tokyo is creepy, but that's as far as it goes. It's action, not horror, and while Tango Gameworks is primarily known for The Evil Within, there's not much scary in Ghostwire: Tokyo: Tokyo, even though it's full of ghosts. I'm a baby when it comes to horror. I always had to watch horror movies from between my fingers or behind my pillow. When I watch or play something with horror elements, my brain is ablaze with the possibility of how many different wicked ways it can shake me to my core. In Ghostwire, I jumped twice, including inadvertently scaring myself.

Strange things happen and you may be unnerved by going to the home of a malevolent specter. Even if you said "what the heck" three or four times when you saw a new enemy or one of the few bosses in this game.

But it could get scary. When Akito was suddenly left at the bottom of the underground tunnels with his spirit power gone, there was a moment when I really started to worry. Then he realizes that the path he has come down is full of monsters, and for a moment he holds his breath, suddenly feeling alone and intimidated by the task at hand. Prajna could really win. I can't.

But ten minutes into the game, I can either run through a crowd of spirits or use my handy sneaking ability to get my powers back from the temple. From then on, losing powers is a normal part of some battles and not a big deal. The initial fear you felt disappears. Therein lies the heart of the mundane horror of Ghostwire: Tokyo. It has a lot of potential, but it doesn't follow through.

What's unfortunate about the scope of this project is that a single trailer for the game tells you almost everything you're going to see. It's like an action movie trailer, ruining much of the set-piece before you even get to enjoy it in the cinema. The game has a couple of cool bosses and a few recurring quest situations that feel fresh, but other than that, you know at a glance what you're going to see.

My time playing "Ghostwire" was about 10.5 hours. I did complete a few side missions, but mostly I ran through the second half of the game. If I did all the side missions, it would probably be closer to 20 hours. And there are some collector's items. In a time when games are getting longer and more expansive all the time, it was nice to be able to complete this in a couple of days.

I missed a lot of the side missions, but to be honest, I wasn't too impressed. When you are given these quests, they are given to you by a heavenly mass of blue essence in the vaguely human form. You never know if they are sad or frustrated or anything like that. You can get some cool little stories out of these adventures, but most of them are along the lines of "I died and I regret it," or "There was something bad in this part of town, so go fight the enemy and purify the bad energy."

We also experienced performance problems here and there from time to time. In particular, when the fighting became particularly tedious, there were times when severe stuttering would occur. Additionally, when playing the game on a near-new laptop, there were strange latency issues between the trackpad and the game, as well as severe stuttering and asset loading issues. On my main PC, however, neither of these problems were true.

Ghostwire: Ghostwire:Tokyo is the best PlayStation 3 game I've played in years; it's like a Japanese take on Infamous, with the same great gameplay, but with a more modern twist. It's like getting a ghost-inspired "Watch Dogs" or a neon-infused "Bioshock"; Ghostwire has the spirit of these old action games by the bucketload, and while it's by no means perfect, it's like a Coke after a long walk in the sun. It's like a Coke after a long walk in the sun. Water may be good for you, but despite repeated health warnings, you can't help but want to drink something sweet. There are better games than Ghostwire in terms of theme, horror, and graphics, but this is fun, plain and simple.