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Don’t let her fool you, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a delightful, engrossing ride through Shibuya. (Photo: Bethesda Softworks, Image Design: Archi Banal)
Don’t let her fool you, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a delightful, engrossing ride through Shibuya. (Photo: Bethesda Softworks, Image Design: Archi Banal)

ReviewMarch 22, 2022

Review: Ghostwire: Tokyo might be Bethesda’s best game yet

Don’t let her fool you, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a delightful, engrossing ride through Shibuya. (Photo: Bethesda Softworks, Image Design: Archi Banal)
Don’t let her fool you, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a delightful, engrossing ride through Shibuya. (Photo: Bethesda Softworks, Image Design: Archi Banal)

A game as delightfully assured and well-rounded as Ghostwire: Tokyo deserves to be a massive hit, writes Sam Brooks.

It’s strange to feel sympathy for a video game, an inanimate object with no thoughts or feelings, but here I am anyway. I feel sorry for Ghostwire: Tokyo, despite it being one of the fullest, surest triple-A experiences to be released this generation. That’s because it’s coming out in the wake of Elden Ring, which has sold over 12 million copies in less than a month and has swallowed the gaming internet whole. No matter how good it is, this game will struggle to compete.

That’s the context. Let’s talk about the content. Ghostwire: Tokyo slots neatly into genre that Bethesda Softworks, the studio famous for games like Elder Scrolls, Dishonoured and, most recently, Deathloop, has cornered the market on. Their speciality is narrative-driven, first person shooters that let the player explore a richly designed open world. These games feel extremely good to play, with low barriers to entry and pick up, but a high threshold to reach proficiency. Ghostwire: Tokyo might be the most seamless entry yet into this deeply specific genre (with the caveat that I, personally, did not have a great time with Deathloop, although everybody else seemed to).

One of the more terrifying images in Ghostwire: Tokyo… (Photo: Bethesda Softworks)

Although published by Bethesda, Ghostwire: Tokyo was developed by Tango Gameworks, the studio that also made the Evil Within series, and it’s easy to see the connective tissue between the two: both are survival horror with action elements. You play as Akito, an every man who gets possessed by KK, a spirit detective, after Tokyo’s entire citizenry vanishes and otherworldly spirits invade the city. KK endows Akito with a range of abilities, which in gameplay terms translates to shooting light of varying colours from his hands to neutralise enemies, absorb energy and purge the city of invasive spirits. It’s all very fun – and, as an added bonus, it is equally well voice-acted in English and Japanese, though your experience will obviously vary depending on which one you prefer to play in.

Ghostwire: Tokyo’s plays extremely smoothly, and its open world has just the right amount of things to do so – enough that the player wants to do them, rather than feels overwhelmed by choice. Even though it’s set in a never-ending midnight, it looks and sounds vivid, never dull. While these are significant strengths, they aren’t what sets it apart, however. What makes Ghostwire: Tokyo shine is how appealingly goofy it is.

It might seem from the game’s premise and design that we’re in for a creepy, unremittingly bleak horror, but Ghostwire: Tokyo is much more cheerful and silly than you would expect. This is a game where the merchants dotted across Shibuya’s convenience stores are anthropomorphic nekomata (cat demons) who laze about while they serve you. It’s also a game where the player can feed and pet dogs, who then dig up coins for you to spend with said cats. Even the elements that suggest horror instead lean towards  the bizarre – more than once you have to purge a couch demon, literally a couch with two massive eyes, that stands in your way. Even as the core narrative deals with undeniably heavy stuff – grief, gore, existential dread, the whole gamut from sad to mad – the game never feels weighed down by it. There’s always a dog to pet around the corner.

… and one of the least terrifying sights. (Photo: Bethesda Softworks)

This balance in tone speaks to how well pitched Ghostwire: Tokyo is. There’s a version of this game that is a slog – think back to something like Silent Hill, where the awkward gameplay and comparatively lacklustre graphics contributed to the oppressive terror – but Ghostwire: Tokyo is never not fun to play. It feels as good to shoot the faceless, sometimes even headless spirits of Shibuya as it does to glide across rooftops. Hell, completing the surprisingly deep, even wholesome side quests doesn’t feel like a diversion from the main narrative like in most games. Solving one errant spirit’s dilemma resonates as much as saving the entirety of Tokyo.

If there’s one thing that will be held against Ghostwire: Tokyo it’s that it’s very good in no specific way, but in many general ways. In the overcrowded gaming space of the opening months of 2022, that might as well be a death sentence. Even the buzz around Horizon: Forbidden West, which would be a contender for the biggest game of any year, has been drowned out by Elden Ring. If you look at the games coming down the pipeline soon – Kirby, Warhammer 40K, Nintendo Switch Sports – there’s a solid chance that Ghostwire: Tokyo might end up being a cult classic rather than the blockbuster hit it deserves to be.

That’s a sign of a crowded release window more than any issue with the game itself, though. A game as splendidly assured and delightfully fun as Ghostwire: Tokyo is worthy of celebration, any time of year.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is available on PS5 and Microsoft Windows now.

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Image: Netflix (additional design by Archi Banal)
Image: Netflix (additional design by Archi Banal)

Pop CultureMarch 18, 2022

Review: Byron Baes is a buzzy trip to wellness influencer purgatory

Image: Netflix (additional design by Archi Banal)
Image: Netflix (additional design by Archi Banal)

Alex Casey watches Byron Baes, the controversial new Netflix reality show that follows a group of Australian wellness influencers up to… not much. 

Among the many moments in Byron Baes where you have to wonder whether or not every character is actually being played by a Chris Lilley type, one stands out in particular. Jade Kevin Foster, who claims to be the most followed male influencer in Australia, crawls into a giant amethyst egg with fashion designer Hannah Brauer. She pads at the “120 million year-old” walls around her in awe. “If the word ‘vibe’ was invented, this would be why,” she gushes. Jade is not so convinced, questioning the validity of carbon dating because “people weren’t around back then”.

“It’s like when they find dragon bones,” says Hannah. 

Byron Baes might not be a strong scientific resource, but it does provide a fascinating and often excruciating window into the cushy lives of influencers in the Australian coastal town. “Byron attracts creative types,” singer/songwriter Sarah Tangye explains, “people who want to create and collaborate”. As she drives into the town, her new home after living in the Gold Coast for years, she passes a sign saying “SLOW DOWN AND CHILL OUT”. If we were to localise it, think Raglan or Waiheke. 

The energy of both the show and the talent matches this slogan. Everyone from Simba the spiritual healer to “Frimmy”, who runs a boutique airline that plays vinyl and serves cocktails, all talk… very… very… slowly. Compared to the breakneck, glass-smashing drama of Married at First Sight Australia, where two of the contestants seem poised to, frankly, murder each other on network television, it’s a soothing change of pace from our friends across the Tasman. 

No smashed glasses to be seen. (Photo: Netflix)

Perhaps it is because not a lot happens on Byron Baes and the stakes are so desperately low. Three episodes are devoted to the group figuring out whether one person said that another person was “fake” (spoiler alert: they did). The climax of the series happens at a launch for fake tan. There’s a fair amount of meditation, beach yoga, and even an evening sound bath while the partygoers sip champagne, because “music changes molecular cellular levels”. It is, to be clear, all absolutely absurd. 

Nonetheless, there is clearly serious money to be made in their online influencer spheres. Jessica, one of the famed “Bell sisters”, runs a fashion label that made $100,000 in the first hour of launching. Jade gained a following of millions after Kim Kardashian posted a photo with him on her Instagram story. He and Jessica bond over their Kardashian Konnection – Kendall wore Jessica’s clothes on Instagram. Later, Hannah gives Jessica a card depicting Kylie and Kendall. The celebrity sisters hover as a spectre over the show, their influence over this generation impossible to ignore. 

The Kardashian influence is strong. (Photo: Netflix)

What struck me the most by comparison to the glitz and drama of observational reality franchises like Keeping Up With the Kardashians or Selling Sunset is that Byron Baes doesn’t appear to want to make their lives look particularly appealing. Nobody seems to ever be having that much fun and their world, like their clothes, mostly comes across as literally and figuratively beige. When Elle – “the most open-hearted person I know” – gets herself 3D scanned as a mermaid to “bring more attention to the coral reefs”, the show feels like it is in on the joke. 

Moments later, another motive is revealed – “can you make my boobs bigger?”

The most sympathetic character on Byron Baes is probably Alex, the slightly older talent manager with frosted tips who ices every sentence with a “darl” and isn’t afraid to be honest in a setting that feels quite far away from anything remotely close to truth. He mutters that a creepy sound bath looks like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale, he runs Jade’s Instagram followers through a bot finder and confronts him with the (very funny) results and he uses delightfully Australian references like “you can’t get David Jones talent with Big W money”.

Its a memorable phrase, and one that sums up where Byron Baes sits in the reality pantheon. To translate for a local audience: don’t go in expecting Smith and Caughey’s quality, because you’re going to get something closer to The Warehouse, darl. 

Byron Baes is available to watch on Netflix

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