Come take the RPS walking tour through Ghostwire: Tokyo

For all of the spectral errand boy trappings of Ghostwire: Tokyo, good gravy, is it a looker. From the hyper-detailed backstreets to giant blazing billboards bouncing off fresh rain puddles, this take on Tokyo is eye-catching enough to ditch the sidequests and simply spend some time strolling around. Even if that stroll is sometimes interrupted by rowdy gangs of yokai.

In Matthew’s earlier preview, he noted a similarly evocative atmosphere to that of the YouTube channel Virtual Japan, which has featured one particularly calming walking tour through a rain-soaked Tokyo. Ghostwire has walking, and rain, and Tokyo, so when review code came in we thought we’d have a crack at making our own. And here it is, in 4K with maxed-out ray tracing:

Other than how the soothing sounds of rainfall are occasionally punctuated by either bad guy speeches or tengu squawks, I like to think this is a nice, relaxing way to spend six and a half minutes. Maybe with a cup of tea and a biscuit, or a haunted watermelon if you want to stay game-accurate. Also, as the YouTube comments have already pointed out, if you watch closely you can see the raindrops are actually in the shape of the Japanese kanji for rain. A neat touch, one which my withered eyes missed completely across the hours I spent testing Ghostwire: Tokyo’s PC performance.

The game is out tomorrow, if you want to wander around the city yourself, with occasional breaks to fight an invasion by demon spirits and people-vanishing fog. Fair warning, though, Matthew wasn’t a fan in his review: “What’s here just never clicks fully into place: a beautiful setting, tactile combat, tantalising hints of the beyond, but not enough to populate a city this big, leaving stodge to fill the vacuum.”