‘Ghostwire: Tokyo’ is a creepy and quirky paranormal adventure

The magic in Ghostwire: Tokyo is fat and tangible, glowing between Akito’s palms and streaming from his fingertips in sturdy golden ropes, binding enemies to one another before exploding them into pieces. From a first-person perspective, Akito rapidly contorts his hands into a series of precise shapes, forming orbs of elemental energy and supernatural strings before unleashing their power on the ghosts and demons sauntering along the streets of Tokyo. Magic isn’t the only weapon at Akito’s disposal, but it’s certainly the most stylish one.

Developers at Tango Gameworks, the studio founded by Resident Evil and Devil May Cry veteran Shinji Mikami, shared a video on Thursday demonstrating the basic gameplay mechanics of Ghostwire: Tokyo, but they also held a private briefing for press where they showed off about 30 minutes of additional beta footage. The private demo focused on world-building, battle strategies and the mind-melting Utena Spaces that turn some buildings into time-sensitive psychedelic death traps.

In Ghostwire: Tokyo, a mysterious fog rolls through the city and devours everyone it touches, trapping their souls in the process, until Tokyo is deserted. Hordes of well-dressed demonic creatures move in, taking the place of the living. Akito is a young man who wakes up in the center of the chaos with a voice named KK inside his head and supernatural powers in his veins, and he begins his mission to save his sister and take back the city.

With a realistic Tokyo as its backdrop, Ghostwire feels like a first-person, paranormal Yakuza. Among the neon signs and abandoned cars, the streets are packed with enemies that resemble Slenderman, floaty tissue-paper ghosts, headless schoolgirls and areas of corruption that Akito needs to cleanse. He travels around the city on foot, but he also has a Tengu ability that allows him to latch onto flying creatures and scale skyscrapers in a single grab.

Ghostwire: Tokyo uses an upgrade system based on soul power, using the spirits Akito saves throughout the city to make his magic hit harder. There’s also the shop, which is housed in a small convenience store and operated by a happy, floating cat (whose name is probably definitely not Garfield). Here, Akito can purchase food for health and other perks, or he can just hang out with an entrepreneurial feline for a while.

The newest bit of the press preview is contained to a single, multistory apartment building. After completing a task in one of the rooms, the world around Akito transforms into a trippy house of horrors, with black goo sliding down the walls and an oil-slick barrier keeping him trapped inside the building. A timer begins ticking down in the upper lefthand corner of the screen, offering Akito less than 10 minutes to clear the distortion before it kills him.

The building around Akito flips upside and sideways as he walks through its halls — the walls, floor and ceiling are covered in amoeba-like textures, then they shift to show a city drenched in static, and then they’re dotted with black blobs crawling like cockroaches. This section is reminiscent of the Ashtray Maze in Control, with PT vibes and goo styling by Devil May Cry. In the hands-off press demo, Akito finds the sources of the distortion and destroys them with four minutes left on his timer, leaving him free to explore more.

In the final stages of the preview, Akito completes a quest given to him by the restless soul of an old woman — he enters her apartment and rescues a helpful spirit from the ethereal clutches of a terrible, creepy landlord. The characters here are transitory, but they still have strong, slightly silly, very spooky personalities, which is perfectly in line with Tango Gameworks’ style.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is due to hit PlayStation 5 and PC on March 25. It’s a timed exclusive on PS5, and after one year it’ll be free to hit other consoles. This is a slightly messy situation, considering the game is being published by Bethesda, a studio that Microsoft purchased for $7.5 billion last year. Moving forward, it’ll be likely to see Bethesda games on Xbox platforms first (or only), but Ghostwire: Tokyo snuck its way onto PS5. Ah, the benefits of being a ghost.