THE EVIL WITHOUT

Ghostwire: Tokyo rediscovers a haunted city as Tango Gameworks moves beyond survival horror

- Edwin Evans-ThirlwEll

You’re unlikely to feel haunted in a crowd, especially in the crowds of the most populated city in the world, so the first thing that happens in Ghostwire: Tokyo is the elimination of all the people. As Tango Gameworks’ paranormal action game begins, the streets are engulfed by a fog that disembodies anyone it touches, leaving behind a sad little heap of clothes and the sparkling blue afterimage of a soul. A man in a Hannya mask gloats from the enormous TV screens at Shibuya Crossing, once the Earth’s busiest intersection: humanity, he promises, stands on “the precipice of transcendence”. But not everybody has gone to the rapture. Your character, Akito, is saved from evaporation when his body is possessed by a mysterious phantom, KK. The experience leaves his face branded with fizzing black energy and his knuckles coursing with elemental magic – just the thing to wield against the hordes of demons, or yokai, that now wander Tokyo in the citizenry’s stead.

Ghostwire is not a work of horror, but its bestiary of folkloric monsters stands comparison with the worst of Tango’s previous The Evil Within. Take the kuchisake-onna, a vengeful spirit with a bandaged face wielding a huge pair of scissors. In legend, the creature asks its victims “Am I beautiful?” before carving them up.