Minor gameplay spoilers ahead.

So, I just finished Ghostrunner. Take Superhot and Mirror's Edge, smash them together and coat it in Cyberpunk 2077's grimy aesthetic. It took me about six hours to complete. The game has extremely solid level design. Everything is built to let you parkour off of it, even things you wouldn't expect to. Encounters and rooms are built like playgrounds, giving you multiple routes, movement options, and powerups to take advantage of. Anyone who might be interested in playing through levels again to get a better time or fewer deaths will very much enjoy this aspect. I do wish there was an additional scoring system on top of this which encouraged more combos and fluid gameplay, but that only really detracts from potential replay value outside of speedrunning.

The general rule of thumb is "one hit, one kill", and that goes for you too, which really just enhances the whole "cyberpunk ninja" aesthetic. You get hit? Dead. You then restart, usually from a very close checkpoint. Instantly too, thankfully. If there were any load times in-between deaths, the game would be much worse overall. That annoyance can still be felt at times, usually during long sequences of combat. The most frustrating example of this was about halfway through the game, where there was a rather infuriating platforming section as part of a boss battle.

Gameplay in Ghostrunner is fast and intense, usually broken up by longer platforming segments that serve as lulls in the action to let you recover, dump exposition, and display the absolutely gorgeous scenery that this game has to offer. There's a multitude of abilities and enemy types, which get trickled in level after level and expand both your available tools and force you to adapt to the abilities of the new threats. Out of all of the enemies, I only really disliked one of the later ones which had a teleportation gimmick. As far as the abilities go, they're much more drip-fed, and can completely change a hard area into a joke if you use them properly. You can attach power-ups to your abilities and basic movement options through a Tetris-esque grid at the cost of increasing the cooldown of your abilities. These can range from giving yourself an extra charge to use instantly, or another dash, or just locating the collectables on your radar. Yeah, you can find audio-logs, flavor text items, and some sword skins around too. So if you want to collect all of them, that's some additional gameplay time.

As far as the story goes, it's nothing that'll blow your mind. It's rather standard cyberpunk fare, and the ending felt a bit weak to me. I think additional DLC levels, or some kind of level editor would be wonderful to expand on Ghostrunner. It doesn't really leave much room for a direct sequel, either.

Overall I'd say it was a positive experience, the enjoyment of the fast, action-packed gameplay outweighed the few minor issues I had with it. I would recommend it to those that enjoyed games like Hotline Miami, Katana Zero, or Superhot.