Skip to main content

You can pet the dog (and read its mind) in Ghostwire: Tokyo

When I spoke to the developers behind Ghostwire: Tokyo earlier this year, they insisted that it wasn’t a horror game. Despite coming from Tango Gameworks, a studio run by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, the team was eager to distance it from the genre it’s best known for. When I played the game’s first chapter, I was convinced they were lying. The eerie opening had me jumping out of my seat with sudden scary visuals and terrifying creatures.

Ghostwire: Tokyo - February 2022 Official Showcase | PS5

Then I heard a dog barking. My brain went into panic mode, assuming I was about to run into some grotesque dog enemy just like I would in Resident Evil. Instead, I found a totally normal Shiba Inu wandering the game’s empty streets. As I approached it, I got the one button prompt everyone wants to see: Pet. Then I noticed a second option, asking if I wanted to read the dog’s mind by feeding it. I pulled out a can of dog food and the pup happily thanked me via subtitles before digging up some buried money for me.

Related Videos

After playing the first two chapters of Ghostwire: Tokyo, I’m loving the way the game balances the freaky and the whimsical. It’s made me laugh just as much as it’s made me jump so far.

Disappearing act

Ghostwire: Tokyo has an eerie opening. I watched as everyone in Tokyo suddenly vanished, leaving the streets disconcertingly empty. The atmosphere is immediately striking. The game is a first-person adventure game where players traverse the foggy city, and it’s an unsettling world to explore. Environments are littered with clothing as outfits dropped off of people when they disappeared.

A spirit in a yellow raincoat stands on a street in Ghostwire: Tokyo.

Even creepier is the game’s use of music. You’d think that a game about an empty city would have no sound, but the opposite is true. Clashing music blares from buildings as you explore, which makes perfect sense. No one had time to turn their speakers off as they were vanishing into the ether. It really feels like wandering through the aftermath of a sudden extinction event and seeing what humanity was doing in its last moments, which are now preserved in amber.

What really ups the fear factor is the game’s psychological terror. The most basic enemies, for example, are lanky, faceless spirits wielding umbrellas. They move slowly, making it easy to shoot them down from afar with magic attacks (the game is essentially a shooter without the guns), but they’re a haunting sight. Sneak up behind one for a stealth kill and you’ll see its pale face momentarily scream, which is scarier than actually letting it attack you.

A spirit attacks in Ghostwire: Tokyo.

The game also features spooky visual tricks that give it a whole Poltergeist vibe. In the opening chapter, I’m walking through a hospital as fluorescent lights flicker. At the end of one hallway, a swarm of metal folding chairs suddenly flies in out of nowhere, forming a path-blocking wall. When talking to a spirit out in the world, I notice the shutters on a building in the background slamming up and down.

While I have experienced a few jump scares early on, I get why the developers don’t want to paint it as a horror game. It’s unsettling, but it’s not trying to scare players. Battles can be won with relative ease and there’s no resource scarcity, so it’s not the tense experience you’d expect from a typical horror game. Instead, it’s a master class in atmosphere, turning Tokyo into a city that truly feels possessed.

Yōkai watch

Not all spirits are evil — in fact, some of them are downright zany. Ghostwire: Tokyo is heavily rooted in Japanese folklore and features several yōkai. Some are practical, like flying tengu that players can grapple onto to reach high buildings. Others are hilarious, like magical cats who run convenience stores and are always eager to shake some cash out of me.

Yōkai play a big role in subquests based on my time so far. I find one spirit crying about how their umbrella ran away. Sure enough, I walk forward and see an umbrella creature hopping around a construction site. In another mission, I need to trick a kappa into eating a cucumber so I can capture it. I’ve loved seeing how the game adapts various bits of folklore into creative quests and characters so far, and it’s what I’m most eager to experience more of in the full game.

A spirit with a dog paw attacks in Ghostwire: Tokyo.

The absolute best, and funniest, thing I’ve come across so far is tanuki. During chapter2, I meet a raccoon spirit who complains that all of his friends have scattered. I was tasked with tracking them down in a standard “find the hidden objects” running quest, but it’s much more delightful than your average game. I need to look for random inanimate objects that have a raccoon tail on them and are scattered around the world to find the hidden tanuki.

So far, Ghostwire: Tokyo is filled with hidden charm like that, making it more whimsical than you might expect from its dark trailers. The unsettling psychological horror is still there (one subquest set in a hoarder’s fly-infested house had my stomach churning), but Tango Gameworks seems to be having a blast reimaging Tokyo as a city overrun by eccentric spirits who just want to sell you some dango. Stock up on dog food, because you’re going to feed a whole lot of dogs.

Ghostwire: Tokyo launches on March 25 for PlayStation 5 and PC. A visual novel prelude is available for free right now.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Escape Academy’s competitive escape room mode is the Mario Kart of puzzle games
A plaza in Escape Academy.

Last year, I fell in love with Escape Academy the moment I first played it. I was instantly smitten by its well-constructed digital escape rooms, which were accessible and intuitive without being too easy. Though I adored the core gameplay loop, the package around it was a little lacking. It was over in a few hours and there wasn’t much reason to go back – there’s no fun in replaying a puzzle box you’ve already solved. Developer Coin Crew Games have worked to remedy those issues in the past year with additional DLC, but its upcoming Tournament of Puzzles DLC feels like the last missing piece.

Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles is a free update coming to the game sometime this year, after its second paid DLC launches. It adds a new multiplayer mode to the game, which has two players competing to solve escape rooms. That makes for a tense puzzle race that its developers hope will inspire Mario Kart-style trash-talking. Though the most exciting feature is that rooms will have a procedural element to them, potentially solving the base game’s biggest weakness.

Read more
How to get the TMP in Resident Evil 4
Leon Kennedy walking in the Resident Evil 4 remake.

Resident Evil 4 has a handful of really great guns to pick from as you slay hundreds of baddies throughout its spooky Spanish village, and in most cases, you'll need to push through a lot of chapters to get to some of the best ones the game has to offer. But in the case of the TMP – Resident Evil 4's small and deadly SMG – you'll actually be able to get it relatively early in the adventure. While it may not be the best weapon in the game, it's a nice option to have on you for filling larger enemies with bullets. We'll tell you where you can get your hands on it below.
Where to buy the TMP and why you should
The TMP is available beginning in Chapter 3 of the campaign. Simply speak to the merchant once you come across him, and he'll have the TMP for sale. If you need some extra money to pick it up, sell a few treasures or slay some enemies.

The real question is whether or not the TMP is worth the investment, and the answer is a resounding "yes" for most players. Given Resident Evil 4's penchant for throwing large groups of foes at you at once, it can be very useful to have a weapon that can handle such onslaughts. The TMP is great for spraying these mobs of enemies with bullets to keep them at bay, especially given that the gun has a very large magazine, meaning that you can keep firing for quite a while without worrying about reloading.

Read more
All Resident Evil games, ranked from best to worst
A zombie crawls after someone in Resident Evil 2.

Many people credit the Resident Evil games with the birth of the survival-horror genre in video games. From spinoffs to sequels to remakes, sifting through all the Resident Evil games can be a challenge. If you’ve never played one before, you want to make sure you start with the right game. 

Everyone might have their own ideas about the “best” or “worst” Resident Evil games, but we’ve done our best to rank the games in the series for you. Keep in mind that we’ll only consider games with "Resident Evil" in the title, so we won’t include spinoff titles like Operation Raccoon City or Umbrella Chronicles.

Read more