There’s something strange in the PC neighbourhood of this johnny-come-lately movie adaptation, and it don’t look good. The surely vital co-op mode the consoles enjoyed has been axed entirely from the PC port, and the European version delayed by nearly half a year. Yes, it’s true. These men have no dicks. Nonetheless, I took a very quick look at the US version to get some sense of whether it’ll be worth the wait for Euro-folk…
Killed! By candlesticks! I don’t remember any Ghostbusters being a) killed b) killed by haunted wax and brass in the movies, but that’s where the game most deviates from the celluloid inspirations it otherwise pays so much lip service to.
It’s why this was such an odd property to turn into a game, regardless of the 20 year time-gap. While they might regularly bring New York to the brink of apocalypse, Venkman et al didn’t get into a whole lot of life-threatening situations themselves. They just stumbled haphazardly between ineptitude and absurd good fortune, and everything worked out okay in the end. In a videogame, though – there has to be death. There has to be game over. There are, it seems, very few ways around that if a developer wants to retain a meaningful level of challenge. It’s usually either that or a bloody countdown timer and waypoints.
Game over really doesn’t suit Ghostbusters, alas. The whole idea of the films were that these were guys who would always somehow survive failure, that real peril barely even touched them. Imagine if Egon died. Hell, even imagine if Rick Moranis died. It’d upset the whole film entirely.
I must, of course, nod back at the title of this piece. I’ve only played it for an hour: this isn’t a review. There’s every chance the hard-stop fails I encountered towards the end of that hour aren’t all that regular later on. My hourish did, though, involve a couple such game-overs, and eventually ground to a frustrated halt when I was killed by the same horde of candles six times over, which drained away any inclination I had to lend the game any more of my free time.
Before that, I’d grinned – though not laughed out loud – pretty regularly at the dialogue, a returning Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd clearly very comfortable in their old boiler suits, and a companionable blend of wry, silly, bitchy and chummy. Even my character, a pleasingly mute, goon-faced new recruit, seemed to fit in well. I’d admired the look of the thing – not super high-tech, but colourful and characterful, and definitely Ghostbusters. I’d enjoyed the casual carnage I could unleash with the agreeably out-of-control proton packs- trashing sofas, carving flaming graffiti into the walls, atomising priceless porcelain… A ticker top-left of the screen kept count of what I was costing the city in insurance bills, and trying to push this as high as possible proved a gloriously pointless, but hugely satisfying mini-game in itself.
What I hadn’t enjoyed, sadly, was the character movement – Gears of War meets milkfloat – or the combat. Proton packs are a good time, but taking down ghosts seemed a bit of a grind – zap ‘em a bit, then switch to a kind of physics laser to bash ‘em into walls and floors, then throw a trap, then struggle to hold them over that trap until it sucks ‘em in. Classic Ghostbusting. Except it felt horrible – intangible and vague, a chore rather than a joy. And you don’t even get to triumphantly close the trap yourself; unbelievable.
I would imagine it feels an awful lot better on gamepad or on console, the thing rumbling away crazily and evoking trying to contain an angry, flailing ghost. DIdn’t feel satisfying on keyboard and mouse at all, sadly. The ghosts seemed too powerful, too – repeatedly knocking me and my famous fellows off our feet (requiring revival by another ‘buster), bombarding us with thrown furniture and ectoplasmic projectiles… Again, I don’t know what the alternative is, but being thumped to death just seemed at odds with the cheery, anarchic tone of Ghostbusters. And if it was like this in the early stages, I shuddered to think what later bosses could be like.
I dug the vibe, but not the practicalities. The straw that broke my faltering back was being sent off on my own – no famous-faced chums for moral support, or to revive me if I got knocked down. If I failed, game over.
I failed, repeatedly, at the same scripted fight. Killed by a swarm of candlesticks. Candlesticks! Given more time, maybe I’d have better mastered the apparently imprecise dodge manoeuvre or ill-explained use of cover. But I dunno – and hour into the game and I’m being killed by candlesticks? That’s not the kind of busting that makes me feel good. If you’re going to kill me, at least kill me with something epic.
It’s not that I’m afraid of no game – I’m simply an impatient gamer when it comes to pop, action fare like this. I want instant gratification and Ghostbusterian posturing, not punishing hoop-jumping. I could beat those candles, I have no doubt, but I don’t want to have another go at it because I’m not enjoying the experience. And that’s an important distinction anyone readying a tiresome “you’re just crap at games” comment may fail to grasp. Perhaps, though, I should restart at a low difficulty rather than an intermediate one.
Though I look forward to the inevitable youtube video that chops out all the fighting and running around corridors, leaving us with a semi-official and, going on this, very entertaining Ghostbusters 3, right now I don’t want to cross any more streams myself. I am curious to see how it evolves, but I’ve really had enough of the candlesticks.
And I didn’t even get to meet Winston yet.
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@Piispa – if that’s true, it’s hilarious. It’s also sad if the pirates complaining about over-tough enemies from a bugged cracked version (anyone else reminded of the complaints online about an earlier ripped version of Deus Ex that never let the player leave Liberty Island?) are putting off potential legitimate buyers.
I seem to remember some quite prominent difficulty spikes in the original Spectrum 48k game. Dammit, i really got quite obsessed with that game, (even though it was a bit shite really). I was kinda looking forward to the co-op in this one. Ah well.
Am I the only one who finds the models of the characters slightly disturbing? Especially Dan Ackroyd. It’s the same sort of disturbation that I get from watching that episode of The Simpsons where Homer’s in 3D at the end. Freaky.
I agree with Alec about dying though – it feels so wrong. Perhaps Ghostbusters may have worked better as an episodic adventure game – or is that considered blasphemy?
The candlesticks are only made worse by their very broken hitbox, and the terribly crappy mouse acceleration/smoothing… not to mention the terrible engine’s ridiculous framerate.
Why does Egon not look like Egon?
Man, I tried to read this article. I mean really, I read the first sentence or two, but wow, what a horrible experience. I’m not gonna read the rest of it, and instead just talk about how bad the article is based on only those two sentences. It might get better if I stuck with it and saw it to the end, but I’m not going to bother.
I would like to see more games available at a discount with missing multiplayer. I HATE multiplayer.
“I would like to see more games available at a discount with missing multiplayer. I HATE multiplayer.”
I kinda agree; I would gladly buy most games without multiplayer in exchange for a discount. In this case, though, they were swearing all along that the PC version would have multiplayer, and to my knowledge never said otherwise until after it had already shipped and people started calling them on it. At least they cut the price down by $10, but they should have said something ahead of time.
What I don’t quite get is that last year at E3, when the game was scheduled to ship in four months, they were still talking about multiplayer on all platforms… but now they say they “didn’t have time” to implement it on PC. What, so it wasn’t in the game yet, they thought they could do it in four more months, and it turned out that twelve months wasn’t enough? (I’ve heard that they were able to continue working on the game up until its new release date, at least, but that might not be the case.)
[Spoilarz below]
I found the Cherubs right near the end so hard I nearly gave up on the game / cried. Here’s the tip for the day:
It’s too bloody hard trying to goop enough of them into the gates while avoiding the two-hit-kills arrows, or one-hit-kills charges. Ray is useless here. I found that running/dodging back and forth like a muppet right in front of the gates causes the cherubs to charge you, miss, and destroy the gates for you.
Works like a voodoo charm.
[/Spoilarz]
Alec Meer says:
“I’m sorry, I’ll be more positive about negative experiences next time”
Alec what exactly is that in response to? No one criticized your viewpoint, or said you were wrong. Matter of fact nearly all (up to your reply) agreed with you. There’s no point in even giving us response options if you guys are going to be so hyper-sensitive to dissenting opinions.
And if you do pick it up again, try it with a gamepad, like a 360 or a Logitech. I played with a Rumblepad 2 and it’s very smooth and intuitive. I do agree with the candlestick criticism; the game play balance is one of the primary criticisms I have. They just throw too many enemies at you at once. It gets better, then worse, then better…But I enjoyed the “better” parts.
It’s just reasons like this that I have been playing it on easy- I didn’t want that kind of grinding nonsense- I wanted fun and to hear the comments and watch the story. And so far, that’s about what I’ve been getting.
Jonathan – read the comment above the one of mine you’re referring to, won’t you?
Fair enough, my fault, I skipped the whining accusations in his post the first readthrough. But if you do try the game again, grab an analog controller, I think you’ll like it better. The run mechanic is still garbage, but the sidejuke helps avoid projectiles, and the analog movement just feels better than mouse & keyboard.
JonFitt says:
“[Spoilarz below]
I found the Cherubs right near the end so hard I nearly gave up on the game / cried.”
I second this, it nearly brought me to tears as a (sort-of) adult male. My very similar strategy was to stand facing the gate, juking left and right when projectiles are fired. Then when a cherub flies in for a melee attack, juke and tether. It’s actually quite easy this way. Impossible by any other method (I know I restarted 50 times at least).
I don’t view this as a spoiler as much as suicide prevention assistance.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game fuckin’ sucks. A friend and I somehow struggled past the rather boring little game of cat and mouse with the fisherman, made it to the flaming marshmallows, then vowed never to power up the game again.
There’s just something so tiring and uninspiring about each of the battles.
I don’t know if anyone mentioned this above, but as you play you earn money you can buy upgrades with. After you get some of the better upgrades, slamming ghosts and getting them into the trap becomes a lot easier.
@ those who are saying “YAY FINALLY A FUCKING CHALLENGING GAME, EVERYTHINGS TOO EASY LOLOL U PLEH COUNTERSTRIKE?!”, a game whose challenge is derived from shitty controls, tiny hitboxes, unclear targeting, crappy field of view (Your character blocks 1/4 of the screen!) and shit frame rates is not what designers should be aiming for.
I mean, if you sat down to play Super Mario Brothers, and were handed a controller that made you randomly jump, would that be a good challenge? No, it’d be shit.
I can see, in 5 years or so, the Angry Video Game Nerd will take a piece out of this game, just like he took the other Ghostbusters franchise games to school.
Rent it on console to get your nostalgia rocks off, return it and forget it.