One of the things I liked most about Ghostrunner was the rinse and repeat nature of the one-hit kill combat. With a Rage metre that ticks over with each kill and parry, it can either be used to power an energy burst or kept in reserve as an over shield, capable of absorbing what would regularly be a kill shot. There’s still a slick blade in hand that can be used offensively and defensively, but the overhauling of the battle systems for Hel is perhaps her greatest departure from Jack. With the eponymous cyborg serving as a literal killing machine of Terminator-like persistence, Project Hel rightly places a greater emphasis on the game’s combat. Not only can Hel cover greater ground with her leap, being able to home precisely on a landing point makes a lot of the platforming, which felt more brutal and plentiful in the original campaign, a lot more manageable here. Parkour is clearly still one of the game’s big focuses and Hel’s capacity to move swiftly through the tightly-designed maps is immense, even greater than Jack’s was. The biggest selling point for Project Hel, as it was in Ghostrunner itself, is the seamless mix of laser speed traversal and combat which has seen some evolution from the base game. Although I feel Project Hel tackles a lot of fascinating existential ideas within its dialogue, the story itself feels a tad inconsequential in the grander scheme of things – as is often the case for a lot of prequels. Unlike Jack, whose sentience shone through almost instantly, Hel’s harsh, logical nature serves as a scary foil to Jack’s optimism. If the title wasn’t a giveaway, the expansion casts you as Hel, the original game’s second boss and an absolute nightmare of clinical machine menace. Project Hel mostly serves as a prequel to the base game, though by the end it does run concurrently to Jack’s story. It was like Mirror’s Edge met Katana Zero in a harmonious, ultraviolent cocktail, and part of its allure was that it was hard as nails and hosed with style. It was a sleek and stylish action game where parkour, lightning reflexes, and mastery of the blade were key to surviving its dystopian world. In a year that promised the second coming of cyberpunk Jesus, the only game that came close to that lofty ambition was Ghostrunner.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |