Ghostbusters: The Videogame

73/100

(I played the version for the Wii, so I can't comment on the graphics of the other versions, or if there's much difference otherwise.)

Ghostbusters is a fun game that uses a single mechanic too much while treading ultimately blocky repetitive levels. What the game does well is really give you a solid mechanic for tackling a variety of ghosts that are, in general, fairly similar. They either fly around in circles ocassionally swooping in to attack or they run/drift at you, trying to swarm you. You hit them repeatedly with various forms of energy until they either disappear right there or can then be wrestled with until they lose the fight and you can drop them into a trap. It's a fairly simple mechanic of shooting enemies without draining all of your energy and having to let it replenish. I felt energy drained slightly too fast, but still, once you had knocked enough out of the ghost to get a lock on with your proton pack, you would swing the remote in different directions, slamming the ghost against walls until you had defeated it. That was a lot of fun, I thought, and, unfortunately, it was the only really satisfying part of the game to me.

The story was decently clever, and the various actors did a good job of bringing it to life. Except Bill Murray, who seemed far too calm and quiet during the whole affair; it almost seemed as if he were whispering out his lines. I do wish they had recorded a little more idle chatter, however, as they were fairly quiet when the cutscenes weren't occurring.

As a level designer/environment artist, I was somewhat disappointed by the all-around blocky levels. They were bright and colorful and interesting for a couple minutes, and then many would descend into the same routine of extending the levels by copying sections and then pasting them over a few more times so you had more distance to cover. In particular, I wasn't a fan of the graveyard and its strangely tight corridors. I guess I've never been to graveyards with winding corridors of stone walls... Although I should say there were also decent levels, my favorite being the museum with its open halls.

Much of what annoyed me doesn't seem so bad in retrospect (a week after playing the game), but I distinctly came out of the game just glad it was done. I felt engaged for parts of the game, but at other points it was just slogging through to the next interesting checkpoint. I played through with a friend and we decided it was a good game to rent, but not to buy.

Up. My review

My review will be very short in my writing, rather start by reading Matthew Sorento's review here: http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=11758

I agree with the points that Matthew makes and it really does hit the nail on the head that Up seems to take a great concept and throw it into a blender with a bunch of other random ideas. Three questions that arose in my head over the course of the movie.
-Why do the dogs always yell squirrel when they've been raised in a jungle where I doubt squirrels exist?
-Why is a man who is at least 25 years older than the main character at least as spry?
-Why do we see the main characters trudging through jungle when every time we see their environment from afar they are at the top of a huge rocky ridge?

I thought the movie failed to really explore its exploration concept further and instead went on a more typical romp for the second half, however the mood of the first half was strong enough to carry through the characters for most of the movie and I did indeed come out of the movie wanting to accomplish something with my life. The movie was very strong emotionally, and hopefully they can tie that up next time with just as cohesive a narrative.

Angry at game-makers

I am angry for two reasons this evening:

1. Seeming ignorance of real-world issues. I was reading about Max Payne 3 a week ago and I came across a comment that really stirred me up. Rockstar's VP of Development talks about going down to Sao Paulo, the new location for Max, and getting tons of real-world documentation for the game. They scanned people living in the favelas, they did 3d scans of locals to be authentic!

'Oh, I'm sorry, you're a Brazilian in America, you're a little too thick to model our game characters after. We want thin sickly people, so we're actually going to grab some locals just to make sure they look right. And to get their tattered clothes.' And continuing on, Barrera, the VP, says, "The favelas are like little mazes. We looked at the structures and how they are built and said, 'Oh this would be fun.'

There is something about the article, which you can check out in GameInformer #195, that just doesn't sit right with me. I know you want to go grab reference, I know you are there to get the mood and documentation to help create a game in that setting. But, whether or not it was just the reporting or the reported, these are opportunities to actually bring to light real-world issues in a more constructive manner. Go out on a limb, bring awareness of Sao Paulo's troubles to a teen male audience and see if you can get the issue to resonate... I doubt it will, but I'd love to see Max Payne 3 do just that.

2. Plagiarism is repulsive. I'll keep this short since it's quite late, but I spotted on TIGSource a sidebar noting that the new iPhone game Blopo is actually a complete ripoff of the game Tumbledrop.

Tumbledrop is a cute, well-put-together flash physics puzzle game made in Unity and freely available at: http://www.tumbledrop.com/

Blopo (originally named Blogo), is a not very cute, not very clean or flashy version of Tumbledrop, and you can see it in action here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7wcLLRW0A8

Ripoff? So incredibly obviously a ripoff. I just think it's sad that people who can make games don't come up with their own ideas. COME ON! Be creative! Make your own damn work. I can't deal with this anymore, I'm going to sleep.

http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/flyGuy.swf

Rich moms driving unnecessary luxury SUVs OR My time with Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 spoils its amazingly diverse world by trying to too hard to maintain the reins as a leading First Person Shooter.  It's really too bad that the game doesn't do exactly what it attempts to set up in the beginning "cinematic".  The intro sequence creates villages of normal people tending animals, rolls your vehicle through aggressive checkpoints where the NPCs scrutinize you but let you go and shows you how gorgeous the world of Far Cry 2 is.

Then you get your first mission and you find out that apparently everyone, including the people on "your side", will shoot at you.  This is the most frustrating element of FC2: you are supposed to choose sides and yet it never matters.  Everyone outside of the cities will fire at you and no one in the cities will.  Perhaps the point is that no one can be trusted, and yet it immediately destroys this fascinating take on a video game that the opening presents you with.  Perhaps that's just the way games have always worked.  Let the opening build a cohesive world and then drop you in the game where the systems have to balance and be entertaining.

But wouldn't it be more entertaining to have those safe outposts that you could flee to?  Then when an enemy jeep is hot on your tail you can arrive safely to have the barricades and friendly guns take out your aggressors?  It's unfortunate that this was not how the game went, because otherwise the game is quite full-bodied and such a meta element to the world would have tied in its shooting so well.  And believe me, the shooting is very solid.  The game offers such fun gunplay because of its open world.  Stealth is a much more tenuous game in the outdoors and the variety of guns and different ideas FC2 brings to the table make it all the more addictive.  It's fun to replay certain sequences with such innovations as buddy back-ups and weapons jamming.  Or just to light the grass on fire and watch it sweep across a field of enemies and perhaps burn down a tree.

The game looks gorgeous when burning things down or blowing things up.  It even looks gorgeous just driving boats and jeeps around or sneaking through the jungles.  It has a dreary color pallet of greens and browns but makes up for it with fantastic lighting and texturing and foliage.  However I do have one gripe with the terrain.  In an effort to make you take certain routes the game does something that has always annoyed me: it puts up impenetrable cliffs.  I detest that solution.  Especially when the map so clearly outlines where giant unwalkable areas are.  Please, put some random routes through those mountains.  I HATE being funneled through regions when I feel that a game is better when it doesn't put artificial barriers in any way.  If I want to spend the time to climb the mountains where no jeep can go just so I can assault a fortress from above, give me that option please.  Don't always route me through chokepoints, especially when you're touting such open-world scenarios.  Chokepoints don't always exist in the real world.

But I like Far Cry 2.  I have invested considerable time into it, even learning how to play a shooter on a console.  I still prefer the ease of mouse and keyboard, but FC2 has lots going for it: new gameplay elements for shooters, an incredibly expansive world, and a gorgeous engine.  It's just too bad it can't break free of certain traditional shooter elements: everyone is an enemy and you always have to pass chokepoints.  Give it a try, I am sure you'll love it.  It's the FPS equivalent of TES4: Oblivion.  Just be wary, it doesn't break as much ground as it clearly wanted to.

2d side-strollers

There are as many 2d platformers produced every minute as babies. Until my recent foray into indie games, I had believed, like so many others, that 3d was the way of the world now. But I have discovered that it is not. No, indeed, it seems that the mass majority of games are in 2d. And I'm trying to decide how I feel about that. So I think it's great that indie developers are making 2d platformers because they are producing games. But it seems like almost ALL of them are making platformers.

It must be due to Gamemaker, I just don't know. Please, though, stretch your horizons. I want to play some new types of games. And I know there are a billion other games out there. But half the time I go to tigsource I see a new sidescrolling platformer. I just don't know how to feel.

Bottle caps

I think the decision by bottle manufacturers to remove the grip from their plastic caps was one of the most ass-backwards move of recent years. I can't open a 20oz bottle of soda anymore. Who made this decision? And who is still backing it? "Hey, let's make it so people can't open their soda bottles unless they have sandpaper on their fingertips!" Bottle caps worked fine 3 years ago, and now they don't. THEY DON'T WORK ANYMORE! The only possible explanation I can muster up is that someone hurt someone by scraping the rough surface against their eyeball and the soda companies determined that they could get in trouble for having a slightly rough surface on their bottle caps. WTF.

All I know is that it just took me far too long to open my iced tea.