Ghostrunner has, in one demo, shot from being a game I knew absolutely nothing about, to be one of my most anticipated games of the year.

In the demo, you awaken in what seems like the slums of a cyberpunk inspired city. It’s got the lights, graffiti and overall aesthetic you’d expect from the genre.

The game doesn’t spend much time dwelling on exposition however and gets straight to the chase, or in this case, the cut.

You learn the basics quickly. In your hands is a katana and one mouse click will slice enemies in half. Walls are you friends as you can run on them in similarly exciting fashion to games like Titanfall and Mirror’s Edge. Being shot from a single enemies fire will lead to your death but luckily there’s one more key ability you contain that lets you press shift to slow down time for a moment a strafe out of the way of incoming fire.

Understanding how these abilities, and later the grapple hook all work is easy enough. Learning to master them and pull off fast and fluent takedowns of enemies in a room are reminiscent of the one-life action games we’ve had over the last couple years. Hotline Miami, of course, and also this year’s Bloodroots.

In the handful of sections in the demo, I died several times until I had an understanding of where the enemies were in the room. You going from spending several minutes dying to taking out all the enemies in just a few seconds as you wall-jump, dash and slice your way around the area in an absolutely glorious display of violence.

There is some story stuff teased in the demo. A voice is speaking to you from the start of the demo; explaining how to play, and you’re on your way to break them out of prison. At the end of the demo, you do release this person, and that’s where it ends. It’s rather omniscient however, I wouldn’t say I trust them fully.

Apart from one slight FPS hiccup at the start of the demo the Ghostrunner demo ran smoothly at 60fps for me and looked gorgeously cyberpunk at the same time. There is an RTX option in the options that’d I’d love to try sometime in the near future, but I couldn’t this time around.

If you’re not excited enough by reading how great all of this sounds and don’t want to take my word for how awesome Ghostunner is, check out some gameplay below.