This has been a very crowded Q1, but I’m planting my flag in the sand - Ghostwire: Tokyo is my game of the year so far. It’s breezy enough to not overstay its welcome while still offering depth and plenty of opportunity to explore. It feels like a new idea for gaming, not just a more refined, better written, or more graphically enhanced take on an idea we’ve seen time and time again, and after a long time saying I want to see this medium push itself at the highest level, I’m relieved to find that I enjoy the result of that willingness to be fresh. There are still a lot of months left in the year, and it’s not infeasible that Kirby could steal Q1 first place from Ghostwire, but right now, Ghostwire is king. I’m already worried that you’re all going to annoy me in December by leaving it off your GOTY lists.
I know we’ve also had some major hits in the first three months of the year. Elden Ring, obviously. Though, as I’ve written about, it’s not for me and I cannot consider it the greatest game ever, I have to respect it and I fully expect it to top most GOTY lists. Much to my dismay, it will probably top ours. There’s also Horizon, which is great if a little too similar to its predecessor, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which is a phenomenal Pokemon game and huge evolution for the series, but only a good video game. Lots of other good ones in the mix too, I get that. I don’t expect everyone to agree with all of my opinions, but it’s not just that people don’t think Ghostwire: Tokyo is the best game of the year, it’s that I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near the conversation for the consolation prizes, and that’s hugely disappointing when you consider nothing else like it really exists.
It’s kind of Control, I guess, but you’d need to take off the trippy, sci-fi Lynchness and replace it with Japanese horror and the unsettling dread of an A24 movie. Those are some quite major changes though, plus Ghostwire: Tokyo is more of a Spider-Man open world than it is the system of levels and linear rooms Control provides. Spooky Yakuza, maybe? It’s hard to pin down, which is what makes it an excellent experience, but also a hard sell. ‘Open world Dark Souls’ instantly tells you everything you need to know about Elden Ring, even if the full experience is much deeper. ‘It’s an open world but like a small one, there are collectibles but they have good stories and you can ignore them, and it’s like a horror game but it’s not really scary and it’s a first person shooter but then it’s also not and there are no guns and…’ is much harder. But that is basically how I’d describe Ghostwire: Tokyo, because I’m not sure Spooky Yakuza quite does it justice.
I don’t mind that people think Elden Ring is better. I’m obviously in the minority and most of my issue with Elden Ring is the obtuse Soulsborne systems and menus that feel like a foreign language to me, locking me out of the game’s full potential. I can respect Elden Ring’s quality even as it passes me by, but I’m not sure Ghostwire: Tokyo will be afforded the same privilege. I’m worried it will largely sink from the public eye, possibly develop something of a cult following, but be largely ignored at The Game Awards and in every end of year list.
2022 could be a mammoth year for games. Thanks to several 2021 games being delayed into it and the feeling this is the first meaty year of the new console life-cycle, it isn’t here to mess around. Though a couple have been delayed into 2023, this year is packed, and while Ghostwire might have wriggled through in 2021’s relatively sparse year, 2022 might crowd it out. If you want to see more devs take risks and offer new experiences, you should be supporting Ghostwire: Tokyo. I look forward to writing the same thing in nine months time, complaining that you’ve all forgotten about it.