Ghostwire: Tokyo has up to 10 graphics modes – so which is best?

Ghostwire: Tokyo sees acclaimed Japanese developer Tango Gameworks striking out in new directions. For one, it’s an actual next-gen/current-gen exclusive – it’s only available on PlayStation 5 and PC, tapping into cutting-edge features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Secondly, the developer has shifted away from its internal STEM engine, based on idTech, instead favouring Unreal Engine 4. On balance, it’s an excellent move – Epic’s technology merged with this developer’s unique vision delivers a beautiful game. In today’s coverage, we’ll be looking exclusively at PlayStation 5 before moving onto PC in a separate piece – and there’s certainly much to cover. While there are six ‘official’ graphics modes to choose from, there are actually an unofficial ten in total.

First up, I wanted to share some impressions about the game overall. The shift to Unreal Engine 4 surprised me, but not as much as the core design itself which sees the surprisingly evocative and detailed world Tango Gameworks has created focused on a concept that is very much Far Cry-like in nature. Yes, there’s a main mission path to follow, but it’s also a game rich in side missions and other explorable elements, backed by an Ubi-style icon-packed map that overwhelms. It’s not to my tastes but I’m aware that many love this style of experience.

In another shift from the studio’s prior The Evil Within titles, it’s a first-person game with much to commend it in terms of its game mechanics – and I loved its first-person animations, enhanced with superb motion blur. However, an area I really hope can be improved is in controller response, which feels muddy and slow. Ghostwire: Tokyo has received criticism for input lag issues, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case, more that the analogue sticks are poorly tuned in terms of their acceleration/deceleration curves. Customisation is available in a feature-rich menu system, but it’s still not enough to get the interface into a comfortably responsive state.

Moving on to the game’s visual make-up, Ghostwire: Tokyo is built around a rain-soaked cityscape that is tailor-made for hardware RT reflections – and that’s exactly what you get in the game’s quality mode, which provides stunning reflections that aren’t just limited to puddles: more diffuse reflections are also present on rougher materials. The only drawback here is that reflections mapped onto transparent surfaces – such as glass – fall back to screen-space reflections, or cube-maps. Hardware RT is also deployed on shadows too, but very selectively: some objects use RT, others do not.