Ghostrunner is a very simple game, and that's not a bad thing! In a similar vein to the Portal games, it knows what it is and doesn't try to be much more than that. A game with a tight and concise focus is a breath of fresh air in an industry thats seems obsessed with open world gather-craftathons and live service failures.

Graduating from the Hotline Miami school of thought, Ghostrunner is a mutual one hit kill game, except crucially unlike Hotline Miami, Ghostrunner never deviates from this rule (I mean did anyone like those big enemies in Hotline? Be honest). Instead, Ghostrunner adds challenge to its enemy design based around your movest. There are enemies with shields from the front, so you have to use your platforming skills to get behind them, there are ninja-like enemies that you have to parry to open them up to the kill. there are guys with a crazy jacked up arm that'll take the aggression to you, so you might wanna bait them to jump and kill them while they're recovering.

There's never a shortage of challenge in each and every combat encounter, which makes me wish there was some platforming challenge to go along with it. Excluding the first "boss" and the final sequence of the game the platforming boils down to holding forward, pressing jump at the end of the wall you're running on, and pressing L2 to grappling hook or slow down the movement of certain geometry. Which I suppose explains why people generally say the final sequence was such a difficulty spike, the platforming mechanics don't really demand you engage with them after the first boss in the same way the combat does. So I went into the end of the game thrilled to see a big, tough platforming challenge because I really enjoyed using all my movement skills during the combat encounters and was sincerely hoping for another platforming boss like TOM.

Being honest, although they are much more cinematic, the combat boss fights are much less interesting to replay than the platforming bosses, one is just a parry timing check, and the other is just surviving until you can bait a certain attack to hit a certain part of the arena. Fairly unengaging stuff, but wow, the T-073-M boss fight is easily my favourite, it's actually a challenge and the most replayable by far.

Likely due to the gameplay being the main focus of Ghostrunner, the story has quite the backseat role, being little more than justification to keep the gameplay train chugging along and for the level design to change locales. Eventually the story takes you into the city of Dharma tower, and the world design is just incredible, especially considering how little of it you'll see as you race through each level without a second thought, it really could've done with giving the player an opportunity and a good reason to stop, like if right at the peak of the city you get a wide, expansive view of all of it all, accompanied by a swell of music to really drive the moment home, ah well.

Overall, Ghostrunner isn't particularly innovative, nor does it have a moving narrative, it just sets out with a single minded goal and achieves it with flying colours, and I respect that.

Ghostrunner is a very simple game, and that's not a bad thing! In a similar vein to the Portal games, it knows what it is and doesn't try to be much more than that. A game with a tight and concise focus is a breath of fresh air in an industry thats seems obsessed with open world gather-craftathons and live service failures.

Graduating from the Hotline Miami school of thought, Ghostrunner is a mutual one hit kill game, except crucially unlike Hotline Miami, Ghostrunner never deviates from this rule (I mean did anyone like those big enemies in Hotline? Be honest). Instead, Ghostrunner adds challenge to its enemy design based around your movest. There are enemies with shields from the front, so you have to use your platforming skills to get behind them, there are ninja-like enemies that you have to parry to open them up to the kill. there are guys with a crazy jacked up arm that'll take the aggression to you, so you might wanna bait them to jump and kill them while they're recovering.

There's never a shortage of challenge in each and every combat encounter, which makes me wish there was some platforming challenge to go along with it. Excluding the first "boss" and the final sequence of the game the platforming boils down to holding forward, pressing jump at the end of the wall you're running on, and pressing L2 to grappling hook or slow down the movement of certain geometry. Which I suppose explains why people generally say the final sequence was such a difficulty spike, the platforming mechanics don't really demand you engage with them after the first boss in the same way the combat does. So I went into the end of the game thrilled to see a big, tough platforming challenge because I really enjoyed using all my movement skills during the combat encounters and was sincerely hoping for another platforming boss like TOM.

Being honest, although they are much more cinematic, the combat boss fights are much less interesting to replay than the platforming bosses, one is just a parry timing check, and the other is just surviving until you can bait a certain attack to hit a certain part of the arena. Fairly unengaging stuff, but wow, the T-073-M boss fight is easily my favourite, it's actually a challenge and the most replayable by far.

Likely due to the gameplay being the main focus of Ghostrunner, the story has quite the backseat role, being little more than justification to keep the gameplay train chugging along and for the level design to change locales. Eventually the story takes you into the city of Dharma tower, and the world design is just incredible, especially considering how little of it you'll see as you race through each level without a second thought, it really could've done with giving the player an opportunity and a good reason to stop, like if right at the peak of the city you get a wide, expansive view of all of it all, accompanied by a swell of music to really drive the moment home, ah well.

Overall, Ghostrunner isn't particularly innovative, nor does it have a moving narrative, it just sets out with a single minded goal and achieves it with flying colours, and I respect that.

I'm not going to attach a score to this review because I don't feel like I played anywhere close to enough of this game to properly assess the quality of it, but maaaaan. So many features, weapons and QoL are just absent from this first iteration of Monster Hunter. There are only 7 weapons, Greatsword, Lance, Sword and Shield, Dual Blades, Hammer, and the Bowguns.

So, in Monster Hunter I primarily play Insect Glaive (which obviously ain't here that shit's 4th gen) and I like to play Bow too (2nd gen) so that left me without an immediate weapon choice going into Freedom. I chose Greatsword. Now there's just one issue with Greatsword in this game, and I did go in knowing this; Greatsword cannot charge, so you just get a really slow standard attack, realistically far too slow to use (I mean holy fuck have you seen Cephadrome in this game???). So I ended up devising another way of playing GS, a hit and run style where I use the unsheath attack which is shockingly fast and seems to still output decent damage. There's just one issue here, the nature of an unsheath attack is that it can only be used while sheathed (duh), so after my one (1) attack I would instantly sheath my weapon and run around waiting for another chance to get my single (one (1)) hit in.

This style was actually quite effective and fun when playing local co-op with my girlfriend, as we could split aggro and allow each other to get heals or better hits in, was genuinely very fun and engaging... But that's during local co-op, and Monster Hunter Freedom kind of necessitates the completion of low rank village (also known as singleplager content) to really have the kind of gear capable of dealing with hub low rank. Now let me tell you, this hit and run method in singleplayer was just agony, I hardly ever got my chance to swing, and the issue of this game having fucked up hitboxes is only exacerbated when there's no one else to take aggro. A very frustating experience overall. I don't think I even completed village 2 star...

Honestly though, I only played this game cuz my girlfriend is a Monster Hunter FIEND, a certifiable nut for this series, so I think I'll be skipping ahead to Freedom Unite and reunite (haha) with my beloved Bow. Though I certainly would want to return to Freedom and give it a proper crack after playing the rest of what Monster Hunter has to offer, maybe I'll play SnS instead when the time comes though...