The year 2020 gave us a game inspired by the cyberpunk genre with a decent story and intense gameplay... and it wasn't Cyberpunk 2077. At that time, CD Projekt Red's creation was little more than a meme, but two months earlier Ghostrunner had appeared. Interpreted as a hybrid of Dishonored, Superhot, and Mirror's Edge, Ghostrunner throws us into a dystopian future with great forces fighting to subdue and control what little remains of humanity. That is your free game of the weekend, available on the Epic Games Store.
If we think about it for a moment, the latest examples of the cyberpunk genre do nothing but take reality and move its extremist dial up to 11. Corrupt and failed governments, megacorporations that control everything on multiple levels, tyrants disguised as heroes, poverty, destitution, crime, oppression, unmet basic needs, unemployment, exclusion... In short, the highest technology combined with the worst of humanity. A perfect breeding ground for a story with constant action, mystery, incredible abilities, and of course, violence as the main resource. And so we arrive at Ghostrunner, the free game of the weekend on the Epic Games Store.
Ghostrunner: A Word... 'Speed'
From the outset it's clear that we don't control an ordinary character. A voice in our head begins to share information, while at the same time demanding its release. The main character is a Ghostrunner, number 74 to be precise. Ghostrunners are peacemakers, police, arbiters in Dharma Tower, where the last humans live. A cataclysmic event, The Burst, almost wiped out our species, but thanks to the vision of two scientists, The Architect and Mara, the loss wasn't absolute.
The Architect is the voice in our head. He explains that he suffered a coup d'état at the hands of Mara, and when we tried to save him we ended up falling to the lower levels of the tower, surviving by a miracle. A group of rebels, the Climbers, tried to make some repairs to our body, an effort that the Architect called “incompetent”.
That means that in the early stages of the game, the Ghostrunner's priority is to restore/optimize its abilities. Walking on walls and covering impossible distances are just the tip of the iceberg, but its vulnerability state is much deeper than it seems. Bullet Time is essential to survive (both enemy attacks and environmental hazards), and the truth is that there is more than one voice competing for the Ghostrunner's attention...
The press has said that Ghostrunner successfully combines elements from games like Superhot, Mirror's Edge, and Dishonored. A particularly skilled player can reach the end in less than three hours, and I've seen speedruns that are truly impressive. Finally, this isn't the first time Ghostrunner has appeared for free on the Epic Store, and anyone who forgot to click last Christmas now has a new opportunity. The download for Ghostrunner amounts to (almost) 19 gigabytes, and it requires about 35 GB on disk.
Available until next Thursday. Don't let it pass you by!
