GHOSTWARE: Arena of the Dead

A story far too vague and confusing and gameplay far too boring for its own good.

Would I recommend this game to any FPS or boomer shooter fan? No, probably not. Then again, I do however wholeheartedly recommend it to the kind of player who likes games that allow the player to dig a little deeper into the lore and worldbuilding than normal. Ghostware may at first glance look just like a boomer shooter homage to the arena shooters of old, and while that is indeed true, there is also a lot more to it than just that. In fact, much more, but only if you are up for the very much optional task of hunting down and piece together the full story from many lore-fragments uncovered over the course of the game. After having completed the main game loop twice and spent little over 10h total in the game, finding all secrets but one, I have come to the conclusion that I really like this game. The backstory, plot and lore has many similarities with another game I like, Bedlam (now sadly delisted from Steam). Turns out, what drew me into both games was the genre blending gameplay, the complex story elements involving transhumanism and jumping between realities. If you decide to give this game a chance, you should pause a few minutes and read the lore bits every time you uncover one. The meta story that slowly grows bit by bit by doing so, really lifts the gameplay experience.

eh its decent

this game looked cool but like this sucks. It was almost cool when the game would let you play the game, but everything that isn't shooting is just bad, and the game is mostly not shooting. isn't that crazy? a first person arena shooter that doesn't let you shoot things. instead the game focuses on the story, and the worst part is that the story also sucks.... like what were they thinking with this?

think it dream it do it really enjoyed this going in expecting an arena shooter even though I couldn't tell you exactly what is happening in the story despite reading tons of in-game lore bits, computer screens, etc. finally a good game. my only complaint is some of the bossfights feel pretty bad and occasionally I'd be able to just cheese the mob enemies like they didn't care I was shooting at them. still worth playing imo.

I could not finish it. he beginning section were good but as the game went on the flaws became more and more apparent. personally i would advise skipping this one and checking out the developers second project as it seems that is a massive improvement over the previous one

The description made it look worthwhile however it is anything but. Waste of time and money.

All style with no substance, even if some of the jankiness is charming, doesn't leave much of an impression after the first hour.

This starts out fine but quickly unravels into being a very boring and shallow shooter with a plot that feels like a first draft and goes nowhere with characters so paper thin that I forgot that there was more outside of Molly and The Wizard until the final mission. The campaign will take you about 2-3 hours, maybe less, and the vain "metroidvania" elements (which is just a glorified, broken level select) pad the runtime. There's a level that, every time you go in, will play an unskippable cutscene. There's The Island level that becomes completely inaccessible after you complete it even though there's collectibles you can miss. The abilities you can get are useless: from the starting "sand throw" that requires you to be one foot from your target to the "dash" which is only available much deeper when you're 30 minutes from the conclusion, or the "super jump" that is never required to get anything and is useless. It's not fun having to wander through empty levels to pick up vague lore notes or, at the worst, dumb jokes that add nothing to the experience. Combat is rough, enemies are spongey, the bosses are easy and take anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes tops to beat (the final took me just under a minute on "Nightmare"). The only "extra mode" is the Arcade, and it's just straight dogs**t as you can only fight NPCs. Speaking of, enemies are incredibly stupid and a shore to fight. Every gun you get has utterly useless alt-fires or ones that should have been the primary. There's an undercooked "virtual world/real world" gimmick that stretched the 2 devs' attentions thin resulting in both being arbitrary & shallow. The Navigator (level select) also just doesn't work on a couple of the later levels and either crashed the game or kicked me to the main menu. After Chapter 3, you can tell they just rushed development to get to TEXNOPLAZM with the final boss using some of the animations from it. The "Alternate Ending" is a zero budget inclusion to also pad your playtime and changes nothing by making you run back through the final level as a "different" character who still uses Molly's loadout/abilities while everything else is the same. The soundtrack is fine but the looping is broken as there's a one second pop-gap between when tracks start/stop. Some people didn't understand the story but I did, and it's terrible & moronic. Basically every inspiration and genre tag thrown at this is surface level: Cyberpunk? there's an evil megacorporation, robots and a hacker guy, oh and it takes place in the Matrix! Did you see we made the megacorp's lobby The Matrix lobby! See we know stuff!!!! Horror? There's ghosts, I guess, and the main crew are ghouls, ooh spooky. Metroidvania? You get a hammer that lets you open secret passages in 3-4 levels to get more pointless abilities and waste your time! In my opinion, the store description is just exaggerated lies. And just because you point out that the women, or the word they overuse in their high school-level script "ladies" have big chests/butts doesn't make it any less lame. You could've added a "The Wizard Blog" post about how he has mommy issues hence why they look like muscle mommies combined with tryna achieve the true "90s arena shooter look" i.e. how those nerds designed Crash from Unreal III. But no, it's just Mothership self-reporting. And the audacity to charge f**king $19 for this dumpster (I got it for $10, which was too much, should be $8 tops and on sale for $1), what a scam. Played a chunk of TEXNOPLAZM and that's looking like it'll be the same deal here. Don't buy this, just look it up on YouTube as the only interesting parts are the voiced cutscenes, anything else is just padding.