Ghostbusters seems like it should be a very good game, all original voice actors, fairly good digital rendering, and new gadgets added on to the standard proton pack.  The game plays fairly well, and the story is decent enough to keep you interested.

I just quit the game in frustration and I really doubt I’ll put it on again, let me explain why.

I’ve heard a lot of other reviewers remark on how the game is basically a montage of all the good parts from the movie with some new parts that don’t make a lot of sense and don’t flow well.  This wasn’t a big concern for me, the story moved along well enough that I didn’t dislike capturing Slimer, or destroying the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

One of my big problems with Metal Gear Solid 4 was that you basically are playing a movie, you walk down a hall, 15 minute cut scene, you jump down an elevator shaft, 15 minute cut scene.  After playing it for 5 or so hours, I really would have preferred just watching an animated mini-series, and I think it’s mainly because of my lack of investment in the story.  Ghostbusters does a very similar thing, run into a hotel lobby and you get a short cut scene, capture a few ghosts and another cut scene, but the difference is I like the story and I understand what’s going on.  I might have felt the same way if I’d never seen Ghostbusters (the movie) because there is no real attempt to explain what is going on.

There is a setting in the game (the lowest difficulty) which basically says “just watch the movie”, which for the most part it did.  The fights weren’t that hard, I didn’t die a lot, and the fights were short.  I was happy with that and if I’d reached the end of the game on that setting I’d probably give this game a better review.  Unfortunately I came up against the fight most people are complaining about – near the end there is a fight with a dozen or so flying, flaming cherubs shooting flaming arrows at you while different little creatures attack you on the ground.  You have to use one proton pack setting to quickly get rid of the ones on the ground and the normal setting for the flying cherubs.  You must also tether the cherubs and slam them into a gate to open it, unfortunately the slam mechanism isn’t all that precise and as soon as they slam into anything they explode, which means you need to grab another one.  The entire time you are trying to fling these things into the gate, the rest of them are attacking you and if you get knocked down, Ray can save you, unless he gets knocked down, at which point you restart the fight.  I tried this a half-dozen times then decided the end of the story isn’t that important to me.

Summary: The game was sort of fun while it lasted, but as soon as it got a little frustrating the fun wasn’t enough to keep me playing.  If you are interested in another story of the Ghostbusters, rent the game and see if you make it past this one super annoying part.  Otherwise you could skip it.

Edit: I got up this morning and decided to give it one more shot, and also to take a look at the extras on the disk.  I’m never a big fan of cross-promotion, because a couple months down the road and the cross-promo seems antiquated, like seeing “coming soon” trailers before a 1985 movie on VHS it’s a bit laughable.  This disk has a promo for “Year One” which I think is because Harold Ramis directed it.

There is a really good “Restoring the Ecto-1″ video on the disk though that I’m glad I went back to watch, amazing job.

Here’s my new biggest problem with the game, last night when it asked if I wanted to try again or quit, I chose quit, went back to the main menu and turned off the PS3.  This morning when I went to career mode, my only option was “New Career”.  I guess it deleted my save game, so I definately didn’t want to play all the way through it again.  The worst bug you can have in a game is accidentally deleting the only save game it allows.

I also wanted to mention that this game has a great engine, I had forgotten until I watched a vignet about it that at times there are what seems like hundreds of items floating around the screen with realistic physics.  Some creatures are made up entirely of real world items stuck together (like books, etc.).  This is not something to be overlooked, nor is the particle system, which is fantastic, you really feel like you are playing the movie.

I just wish the game played a bit better.

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I don’t know, anyway long story short the game blows.  I started as an autobot, which means you play as Bumblebee (fail already).  Literally within 5 seconds of playing the game, all the cars in town got into a huge pile up, and I was no where near them (bad game AI).  I eventually tried out the Decepticon side, you play as Blackhawk, it was a bit better since your basic goal is to shoot and blow stuff up, but ultimately that got old very fast.

Regardless of which side you choose the game is basically this: turn into a vehicle, race to a destination, turn into a robot and shoot stuff, repeat.  That wouldn’t be a bad formula is racing was fun, it’s not much different from a bad racing game or GTA 3; or if the shooting and blowing stuff up was fun, which it isn’t.  The targeting system is busted and only targets things when they are very close and basically run past your reticle, and the weapons are boring, either a fast shooting weapon or a slower rocket launcher type weapon.  Basically everything you need to kill is vulnerable to one of the two types, it doesn’t take long to figure out which.

I got this from GameAccess.ca today, played it for an hour and will ultimately send it back to them tomorrow.

Summary: Not really even worth a rental, I’ll probably see if they fixed the problems in the sequel, it’s in my queue.

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I just finished the Prince of Persia game for PS3, it was a fantastic game, right up my alley.

The game is basically a platformer/puzzle solving game, with a little battle thrown in to add some variety, and the free running and platforming play really well and are forgiving enough to not be annoying.  For instance when you run past a ring, you can press O before, during or after it and it will not penalize you, but if you don’t press it at all, you will falll down.

In the game you have a companion who will save you whenever you fall and drop you off at the last bit of solid ground you were standing, this may seem like making it too simple and never having the fear of death, but it’s always an unrealistic fear anyway, better to focus on the fun aspects.

One of the best parts of the game is the writing.  The story plays out with great twists and story arcs.  The voice acting is fantastic, with some humour mixed in with great delivery of witty comments.  This will make a great movie someday (they are currently making one based on the Sands of Time) if it has the same great writing.

Summary: I rented this game, I probably wouldn’t play it a second time if I owned it, but it is definately something to play.

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FPS on the PC bug me, I just don’t play well with a mouse and keyboard; maybe they are at the wrong position and I just don’t get confortable.  It seems the PC games are geared more for multiplayer and by the time I get into a game the community on the whole is rediculously good.  This usually gives you little chance to advance and become better, and I typically feel I’m wasting my time.

These games seem a lot more fun on a console, probably because I’m in a more confortable position, I can pause whenever I like, bigger screen, etc.  Resistance is no different, when I got into it, I found myself wanting to play it all the time, and I spent quite a few late nights finishing off a section.

I think what made the game so addicting, and if I remember correctly Gears and Halo do this also, is that there aren’t levels as such.  There are lots of sections where you have a goal, and some of the larger goals have checkpoints midway, but mostly they are broken up into easily manageable chunks.  This makes it a lot easier to pick up for an hour, but also easily draws you in for another hour after it.

One big problem with the game is the first level you are advancing with your squad, you only have a crappy weapon and you don’t regen any health like later in the game.  This is to explain how fragile a human you are, but it creates a huge block for people to get into the real part of the game.  Regardless of your dying a lot at the beginning, to move on you must make it to the end of the section.  Afterward there are generous amounts of health and you regen a certain amount if you get out of combat for a few seconds.  After the first section (where I died at least 7 times) I only died about 7 more times in the entire game.

What I think they should do in games like this is have a full section that you could go through, but if you happen to get blown up by a mine early on, just progress the story from there naturally.  I think this goes for respawns as well; I wish there was a realistic way to explain how after you lost all your health and “died” that you just start back at the beginning of the level (or checkpoint) with all your health and ammo again.  One thing I thought of while playing Resistance was that specifically for this game, since the aliens keep bodies they find on the battlefield for mutating, you could be carried off when assumed dead and just heal up enough that you can get up and sneak away.  This might get tiresome eventually though and makes little sense during a boss fight.

Summary: I think this was a great game, I had no issues with the gameplay except the difficulty at the beginning, and felt it was fun and suspensful to play through.

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I was also impressed that this disc includes the original Escape from Butcher Bay game in it’s entirety.  I think they cleaned up the graphics for the PS3, because it was originally an xbox/ps2 game.  This makes it a tremendous value if have never played the original and you like this type of game.  This is important for story games, and I think every game like this should do it, are you afraid of losing out on sales of a 5 year old game now?

The voice acting and motion capture are excellent, really good casting also for the main roles.  There are a few AI glitches in the game, where people will run into a spot and get stuck and you can walk right by them and then kill them, but it’s definately the exception.  Some of the puzzles are difficult to figure out, but a really great feature they added is if you don’t progress for a while and it looks like you are circling, a help entry will be made in the pause menu; that’s a great idea.

Something else I really like that more games should implement, if you hit a save point with only one health bar and there are no refill stations handy and you start a boss fight, the odds are you will die, but instead of being stuck like this, after you die two or three times to the same boss, it will give you more health when you restart.

Summary: If you like this type of stealth gameplay, you should not miss this game.  If you really like the character of Riddick, and want to feel like you are him, get it.

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There were several frustrating moments where I didn’t know what to do, and I was just running around or dying over and over, I found it very necessary to look up certain tactics or what to do next in the walk-through.  

The final boss fight I chose to fight the emperor and I just died several times and was going to give up when I read the easiest strategy which allowed me to win the next attempt.  There was also a glitch where during my fight with Vader, he suddenly stopped attacking and nothing I did would damage him, I had to die in the elemental damage area.

Another thing that bugged me, the guy is a Sith/Jedi and when he gets knocked on the ground it takes him like 4 seconds to get up, and then he’s kinda groggy which sometimes leads to being combo’d over and over until you are dead.

Probably the worst part of the game was the loading times, even in the menu system, go from one menu to a sub-menu and there is a loading screen, ridiculous.  Sometimes the loading of the next cut scene leaves out any kind of segue such that you will jump down a hole and the next cut scene loads up and you are walking into a room, they should have spent another second or two showing him landing and walking in a door or something.

Summary: It was a fun game, but I don’t think it’s worth taking the time to beat it, and I wouldn’t want to play it again now.

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Some of the really interesting things they did with Dead Space that I hope show up in other games is the lack of a HUD cluttering up the screen.  All relevant information is displayed in the game world.  The weapons have ammo counters on them, there is a health indicator on the character’s back, and any actual menu’s show up as 3d panes in front of the character, as if a hologram generator was displaying it in the real world.  The game wasn’t exactly scary, though I imagine it could be for some people, but I found myself getting tense at certain spots when I wasn’t sure what was around the corner.

When you beat the game you can play on “Impossible” level with all the weapons and armor you collected from the first time, but I still don’t think it has a lot of replayability.

Definately worth a rental, 9/10.

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I finally got around to cancelling my World of Warcraft game account today.  I forget all about it until I get my credit card bill, which unfortunately is sent out the day before the subscription is charged.  This means the statement I’m looking at is the charge from December 15, and I’ve already been charged for January 15; I’ll get that statement in a month.

When I finally got out of playing Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, and Anarchy Online I figured I was done with persistent MMORPG titles that require a monthly subscription and never end.  Then Jason got me into WoW with their free trial account.  I spent two years playing WoW, I started about a month before the first expansion pack came out, and stopped about a month after the last one came out.  I just stopped having fun playing it, and what’s the point of a game if it isn’t fun?  The problem is you get talking with other people, and it becomes something you do for them instead of with them.  This is basically the feeling you get when you help a real-life friend do something that you would rather not, but instead of having the benefits that come with helping out friends, there are no real-world reciprocity in online games.  With real friends, you would feel bad if you decided to not hang out with them anymore, but I don’t about these online friends (really more like acquaintances).

Right now I’m enjoying playing games that have an end (of sorts), I just finished Assassin’s Creed, I’m halfway through Mercenaries 2, and now I have plenty of time to try out different games because I’m not spending all my free time playing WoW.

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I still get messed up every now and again when I don’t know a shortcut and just try one of the combo’s I know which makes a bit of a mess, but in 6.5 minutes I was able to fix the mess and continue on my way… twice. At some point I might look into the shortcuts which will probably reduce my time a lot.

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