HANDS ON - Ghostrunner 2 retains its slice and dice polish, with a zippy new motorbike

Start your engines, and sharpen your blade.
By Jonathan Garrett
07/09/23
Previewed on PC.
Preview code provided by 505 Games.

Ghostrunner 2 is as audacious with its combat flow as you’d want from a game where decapitation is the norm. From the moment our hands on time began, and we’re sent almost immediately into the action, it was apparent that removing the shackles early is a clear design intention. Within seconds, you’re dodging, slicing, and chaining parkour leaps with well timed finishers. It’s every bit as focused as you’d expect, but there’s some appreciated smoothing of the originals rougher edges, alongside the addition of some instantly enjoyable vehicular action, that makes this sequel in its present state very promising indeed.

The high stakes of the rapid respawn one hit kill mechanic will test your patience at times, particularly in moments where the checkpoint placements are a bit wonky and punish you after you’ve made what feels like reasonable progress. However, the speed of your restart ensures you’ve back in almost immediately, and ready to try a different flank or indulge one of your secondary attacks. In fact, the level design has been opened up considerably; the mainline path is always clear, but alternate vertical drops or secret blindsiding routes present themselves on a regular basis.

Then of course there’s the big new toy, in the form of your souped up motorbike which is used during a rather dramatic escape sequence. Combining sword combat with GRIP style twitch driving reactions, it’s an extremely effective feature, and totally fits within this world. There’s an expanded attempt to introduce more nuanced conversations and context via radio chatter, and the voice acting is on point. Some of the lore is quite dense, but the effort is welcome.

Performance wise, the build on PC is highly customisable (as you’d expect) but the default motion blurring needed adjusting, as it felt too strong during pacey camera swivels. This is a game that thrives on higher frame rates, so if you’ve got the tech and a monitor with an appropriately fast refresh rate to match, it’s worth having a fiddle to optimise where it makes sense.

There is something that Ghostrunner 2 does with its “just one more go” mentality that kept me hooked in. It’s a testament to what co-developers One More Level and Slipgate Ironworks have managed to cultivate with this iterative winner that we simply can’t wait to play more.

TARPS?

At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.