The firehouse is great. It is bigger than necessary (you never really DO anything at the firehouse), which makes it one of the parts of the game where you can tell the developers took the time for some great thematic detailing.

There's a Q-Bert machine... but unfortunately it is unplayable. Would have been a nice gimme to actually include the ROM, but Q-Bert is one of those arcade classics that both Sony and Microsoft have on sale, so it's obvious why Ghostbusters would not be allowed to hand it out for free.

The facial animation is fantastic. There is a great deal of effort put into having the characters act like the real-life actors. Like Bill Murray's raised eyebrow there. This and the voice acting MAKE the game. It is great hearing these actors get back into these characters. I've always been a big Dan Aykroyd fan, so I love getting to hang with him again. It's been too long.

The only rough spot in the voice work is that Murray has a few too many lines that he tries to deliver in a hushed, confidential tone... and that just doesn't work as presented. Instead of seeming conspiratorial - the way it would be shot and edited in a real movie - it sounds like he wasn't quite in the right voice booth. That aside, after all these recent years of Bill Murray very purposefully not taking on smartass roles like his work in Stripes and Ghostbusters, it is a joy to hear him slip back into that cocky delivery.

But here's a problem. The game wants to rest on the laurels of the first movie way too much. Slimer escapes and goes right back to that hotel. You're back in the library after that old woman, and the card catalog freaks out as you walk by. The Stay Puft Marshmellow Man stomps through NYC again. It is lazy pandering and any efforts to explain WHY this all seems so familiar comes too late in the game and is way too convenient and simplistic.

If they wanted to revisit the classic beats of the movie, why not just do an adaptation, instead of pretending this is something new.

Which brings up another point of contention: the hype train keeps calling this Ghostbusters 3. It is not. There are still plans for a third Ghostbusters movie and when that comes out, THAT will be Ghostbusters 3. This game's continuity will be ignored in any future feature films (and that's probably a fine thing since nothing particularly new or inventive occurs during the game). And even though the game states "written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis", in a ToyFare interview Ramis himself reveals that the script was written by the game developers and they were only asked in to help polish it up.

I also have a problem with the game's signature macguffin that you are a nameless new recruit who has been hired to test out Egon's new experimental ghostbusting equipment... and then it turns out that the other guys all have the same equipment anyway.

The first time I played the level from that left screenshot, the tanker truck you see there was invisible. You just saw the stream of gas flowing out of nowhere. That's the only random vanishing I saw throughout the game, but still, that's a pretty obvious and obnoxious bug. At the time, I did not know about the game supporting screenshotting, so I did not snap a pick of it.

Occasionally, your AI teammates will go do something stupid while they wait for you to flush out baddies or trigger scripted events. On the right, Ray was mindlessly sliming a lamp post and I think he would have been happy to do that forever.

In one of the game's all-new sections, you have to investigate a haunted museum, which contained ghosts from the Civil War and ancient Egypt. The museum display cases repeated like crazy, but the few elements in them were done well. In Egypt, they had canopic jars, which I thought was a nice touch.

This game brought to you by Doritos. Everywhere.

Alyssa Milano is the voice of the game's female lead. It would have been nice if they could have used her likeness as well, instead of the average-looking female model they went with.

On the right is an example of one of the game's biggest problems: the stupid team resurrection mechanic. If one of the 'Busters goes down, you can go over and bring him back to life via kneeling. (If you don't, eventually he'll pop back up on his own.) When you die, you're expected to wait for one of them to wander over and bring you back to life.

But when you're all in the middle of a huge ghost firefight in a large arena, the odds are far greater that the other guys will just die, thus ending the level. And just to make sure things are really frustrating, you can't pan the camera around to see if anybody is getting close to you. You're locked into that downward view, waiting for an AI dude to find you. Although I sort of dig that team-building here, it is beyond stupid to be stuck looking at your near-dead body and reliant on some knucklehead computer characters. Drop the faux resurrection and just give me a longer life bar.

But hey, here's that famed library bug (which is, I believe, EXCLUSIVE to the PS3 version). What happens is you and the team enter the lower levels of the library... which should be very familiar if you've seen the first movie.

Once you get a few steps in, the ghost effects take over. What is supposed to happen is you see the books and paper flying around and the bookcases slamming into each other.

What happens instead is that the game's visuals slow down to a freeze, and there's nothing you can do. You can't even hit the PS button to quit. But the audio is still playing, so if you hang out and try to walk forward (even though you can't see yourself move), the game will snap back before too long.

It may also help to point the camera at the ceiling as you walk into this scene, so the game doesn't have to render the apparently difficult animation of sliding bookcases.

There's no excuse for a game shipping with this kind of massive bug in it. (In level three!) Between the library glitch, the stupid healing thing, and a seriously useless save feature (You get one save slot. ONE. And even though you can replay earlier missions, you do not get to maintain your earned weaponry level.), there's no way this game is worth $60. No way.

The Week in Links posted by Joe 07.03.09 11:38AM

Luke Jackson: Goodbye London (YouTube)
I quite like this video that Cartoon Brew pushed earlier in the week.

It's a Secret to Everybody (Back of the Cereal Box)
You know that lengthy video game name etymology article that went 'round the circuit the other week? Well, it totally linked to my Mappy site.

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is back from the dead (Joystiq)
Wow, I no idea how many hacks were out there doing complete rips on Penny Arcade until I clicked through this gaming webcomic article. Seriously gang, go find your own art style.

Logo Study: AQUAMAN Part 1 (kleinletters.com)
Oooo, another great logo study. This time's it's almost seventy years worth of Aquaman logos! I love reading these.

Trippy Spongebob MTV IDs from Pepper Melon (Cartoon Brew)
Wow, these are some seriously great SpongeBob commercials.

the styrofoam cup king (Angry Asian Man)
Dude etches beautiful works of art into styrofoam cups and then sells them for $200 each. He also does bananas.

In Defense Of The Classic Controller (Kotaku)
Leigh Alexander with a brilliant article about why controllers are good for gaming.

Nightmare Spectacles (Post-Modern Barney)
This is really cool. Dorian found a 1943 comic that featured an adult African-American character that wasn't a disgusting racist stereotype. The important thing is to remember that racist caricatures were very terribly common in the first generation of comics, so finding one from the Golden Age that manages to treat a minority like an actual human being is quite a coup. Black, Asian, Native American... minority groups endured a lot of awful bullshit for at least thirty years of American comics. Whoever did this comic was ahead of his time.

The game Clark made. posted by Joe 07.02.09 11:19PM

I had mentioned that Clark sort of invented a dice game while we were in Ohio. He dictated it to Rhonda and made her write it down on hotel stationery. All you need is one single six-sided die. I'm going to do my best to present the rules as he said them. Here's how you play.

You roll the die and consult the following chart.

"If you get 5, that's the right answer."

"1 is the rules."

"2 is the game."

"6 is different."

"3 is not hard."

"4, you turn on the light."

I think he has an unclear setup phase if you're supposed to begin the game with the lights off, but I'm sure we can work this out in the betatest.

My advice to you is, roll a lot of 5's.

COSI... Clark's mummy in Columbus | Joe, 06.30.09
As we wrapped up our Origins trip, we had half an eye towards doing something fun on our way out of town. We were considering heading north to the famous Columbus Zoo (Jack Hannah's stomping grounds) when I flipped through the hotel's city tourism guide and found an ad for a temporary Egyptian exhibit at COSI, a nearby museum. With Clark still gripped by a fascination with King Tut, this became the Saturday trip. There are actually a pair of Egypt exhibits in Columbus at the moment: this one and a pure artifacts show at an art museum. We figured that Clark would enjoy the kid-friendly angle of COSI more, although I'm sure he would have been entertained by any sizable collection of Egyptian treasures.

Not knowing what to expect from COSI, we were blown away by the expanse of the place. We've certainly been to smallish kids museums, and boringish adult museums, but this one is massive and family-focused. [more]

Origins 2009, Part 3 | Joe, 06.28.09
And now, the inevitable freebies and boughtbies picture:

Vapor's Gambit looms pretty large, doesn't it? Have I mentioned the embarrassingly trite slogan: "Screaming Hoverboard Racing"? Incidentally, during our final epic five-player Vapor's Gambit game of the con, I took the opportunity to investigate some of the backstory. Turns out that the hoverboard track is called the gambit and I believe the city (or country, or planet) is called Vapor. Thus, Vapor's Gambit. Probably more on this one later. [more]

"That's me right now." | Joe, 06.28.09
Back at the Columbus Hyatt, Clark saw this picture of himself on my first weblog entry about Origins 2009, and he said "That's me right now."

 [more]

Origins 2009, Part 2 | Joe, 06.27.09
Usual fun junk today. I bought some random cheap stuff at a booth that always has great prices. The guys also bought a bunch more stuff. Alex participated in a Pokemon DS tourney.

Here's Clark at the Bandai booth going for the choose-a-card game again. We all played today and did not do extremely well... but they give you free cards regardless, so it's fun for Clark. He has a HUGE stack of cards this year. Dragon Ball, Naruto, Power Rangers, even some of that castoff Doomtown stock. Megan and Alex found a booth that was handing out free Yu-Gi-Oh boosters like water, and they shared the bounty with Clark, which he thought was fantastic. [more]

Origins 2009, Part 1 | Joe, 06.26.09
'm wrapping up our first full day at Origins with a website update. I have to pay for WiFi, so I hope you appreciate the timeliness. I could have waited until we returned home or relied solely on my Twitter feed. Clark was excellent for the drive. He played some DS, he watched some movies. He really likes the novelty of being able to watch stuff in the car. Here he is watching Bolt.

Bolt was the beginning of the trip. He also watched about half of the first Pokemon movie (the sweet one with Mewtwo) and four episodes of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I let him choose the DVDs for the trip... in addition to those mentioned he selected one disk of TaleSpin episodes and the Final Fantasy Advent Children movie, neither of which he has ever seen. We also brought one of the Bach-based Baby Einstein disks to engage super calm down at night, and we definitely needed it. Clark has been wired. [more]

Full archives available at fourhman.com.

game reviews:
Bully | ps2
game review by Joe 01/13/07
When I initially walked through the gates of Bullworth Academy, the first student to walk past me yelled "I hate you!" Later on, I had that same kid eating out the palm of my hand. That's pretty much the character arc of Bully. You, as career ne'er-do-well Jimmy Hopkins, show up at a new school full of fools, and you end up as Mr. Popular. Not really the school slaying simulator that certain crusading lawyers and easily-swayed-by-the-press-release media outlets would have had us believe. Whether Rockstar intended Bully as a colossal bait and switch for the video luddite crowed, or... [continued at fourhman.com]

Cooking Mama | nds
game review by Joe 11/09/06
Two years out, the DS has nicely matured. We’re past the days of tech demos being sold as full games (ahem, Yoshi’s Touch-n-Go). We have enough new-concept, high-profile games to outweigh the launch day panic of N64 ports ahem, Super Mario 64DS). And thanks to the GBA’s agonizingly slow price point death, Nintendo finally feels confident enough to stop selling their first-party DS games at the $35 level (ahem, Pokemon Trozei). The DS rode out that initial wave of gimmicky criticism and has positioned itself as a must-have, just in time to lateral a little of that mindshare over to... [continued at fourhman.com]

Starfox Command | nds
game review by Joe 09/12/06
I've been sitting out on the Starfox franchise for years, thanks to all the lackluster offerings during the GameCube era. It sucks, because I really liked Starfox 64 and I really want a new hip iteration in that style. For some reason, Nintendo is bound and determined to avoid that classic, blistering on-rails shooting action... giving us Starfox-as-Zelda and Starfox-as-Rogue-Leader-2 instead. Starfox Command is a return to the game's roots, but not in the way we all expected. Most franchises are ridiculed for not offering enough change-up. Starfox is the rare bird that gets smacked around for not maintaining enough... [continued at fourhman.com]

Odama | gcn
game review by Joe 05/24/06
I'm only about ten minutes into the first level when the thought occurs: "This is a pretty crappy game." That's never a joyous realization - especially when $50 was tossed like so much salt over the shoulder - but it is particularly grating when the game in question is something you've been anticipating for months. Odama is exactly the kind of offbeat, undefinable game that pulls me in. Games that offer up more than just various degrees of running / jumping / shooting / driving. I live for the thrill of locating games like this. They're underappreciated, underplayed... and in... [continued at fourhman.com]

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