The biggest feature for Project Hel, because it was at Ghostrunner itself, may be the seamless mix of laser speed traversal and combat which has seen some evolution in the base game. Parkour is clearly still one of the game's big focuses and Hel's capacity to move swiftly with the tightly-designed maps is immense, even greater than Jack's was. Not only can Hel cover greater ground together with her leap, having the ability to home precisely on a landing point constitutes a large amount of the platforming, which felt more brutal and plentiful within the original campaign, much more manageable here.
With the eponymous cyborg serving as a literal killing machine of Terminator-like persistence, Project Hel rightly places a greater focus on the game's combat. There's still a slick blade at hand you can use offensively and defensively, but the overhauling of the battle systems for Hel is probably her greatest departure from Jack. Having a Rage metre that ticks over and done with each kill and parry, it can either be accustomed to power a power burst or kept in reserve being an over shield, able to absorbing what can get a kill shot. One of the things I liked most about Ghostrunner was the rinse and repeat nature from the one-hit kill combat. Jack felt fragile, the encounters felt insurmountable, and the inevitable relief was palpable. To state an over shield completely discards that sense of reward could be hyperbole, it just feels different.
It certainly allowed One More Level to create larger and much more elaborate arenas to fight in. I certainly felt as though Project Hel had much bigger encounters where the odds are stacked firmly against Hel, with as many as twenty enemies to dispatch at times. The enemy variety continues to be pretty serviceable for an expansion only seven levels long, with a handful of new variants, like the cleverly named Hammer guards, among returning headaches like the long-leaping Sluggers. The moments in between these frenetic fights are identical deftly designed routes that made the original's ceaseless movement this type of joy, so even if the combat seems like a deviation I'm glad they stuck to the playbook to get around Dharma City.
The other area One More Level resisted reinventing the wheel is incorporated in the skill upgrades, which remains the same tactical exercise players went through with Jack. Each of the tetrominoes, for want of the better term, around the grid has a skill allotted to it, and it's up to you the way you construct your character. Will still be an excellent risk-reward system and it's fun tinkering with builds depending on what the encounter demands.
Ghostrunner, its its gaudy neon signage and contrasting grimdark alleys, would be a gorgeous game and Project Hel does little to dispel that. It is the same stunning cityscape, suspended within the indeterminable and incomprehensible space from the cybervoid. The game's fictional ads still adorn this middling rung from the Tower's societal ladder even though it had been nice to become back and find out old stomping grounds among the many new levels, I really hope we venture elsewhere the next time we have seen Ghostrunner.
