Aesthetically, Ghostwire is phenomenal, easily one of the best looking games I've played this year. I loved the technological overlay against all the supernatural elements, and every creature design was stellar (the umbrella man's prim little speed walk might be one of the scariest things I've seen a video game creature do). The city design is really well done, filled with a lot of variety and fun little details, my favourite being occasional ghostly phenomena. At one point while watching me play a friend also pointed out that even being a big grey concrete city, it didn't feel like a big grey concrete city.

In terms of gameplay, it's very much an open world collectathon. By the end I was mostly comparing it to the recent Spider-Man games in terms of mission variety and the sheer amount of Stuff there is to find in the world. I did really appreciate how compact everything is, with a focus on verticality over trying to have the biggest map possible. I found the traversal controls to be a bit touchy though, but I suspect that's a result of using a Mouse/Keyboard for what I presume was a Made For Playstation game. Combat was fine, might have been more involved at higher difficulties but I mostly just blasted my way through everything. The game did include a small balancing mechanic that I'm fascinated with, in which healing items provide a tiny permanent boost to health. The idea that the hardest fights in the game made me stronger just through mass healing is really cool to me.

The narrative is what let me down the most I think. I don't know that it was particularly bad, but I simply did not care.