The year of highs and lows. But the lows are more fun to read about. 2009 was the year the phenomenal growth the games industry slowed markedly, Activision sharpened their horns and thousands of games developers spent the year searching for new jobs or making iPhone games.
Wolfenstein: Sequel to the beloved 2000 game proved to disappoint many who where nostalgic for the bygone era of 2000. A good, though flawed, singleplayer campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the terrible multiplayer. Every time someone tried to speak about the game, the answer would be “I heard it sucks.” It didn’t suck completely, only half sucked. Activision also charging the same for PC as the console versions was proof positive that douching five times a day is profitable.
Tom Clancy’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2- Take the most anticipated game of the year. It’s the sequel to a series that did very well as a WWII-based game, but did phenomonally well as a modern-era game with a grounding in current events. Ramp up the hyperbole 1 000 000%, dial down the realism, amp up the absurdity and you have a fun single player marred by a story that’s only told in skippable loading screens. The multiplayer is fantastic, if you can overlook the perk combos, killstreaks than ramp down the enjoyment for many players, plus IW’s inability to take your connection speed into account when searching for hosts. Playing online outside of the US is almost pointless 90% of the time since that’s roughly the amount of time you will be shunted into a game where the host is located under the Stars and Stripes even if you’re across the Pacific. PC is even more of a clusterfuck since it’s inability to handle any lag coupled with the stubborn determination that dedicated servers aren’t needed for the game to be good makes the Game of the year, in a word or two, utter bullshit.
ODST- I liked the single player of Halo 3 ODST. It took a short while for it to get going but the action was great. It was just waaayyy too short. The Multiplayer, mostly being recycled from Halo 3 and its DLC was great, but, if like me you already had the DLC, ODST’s multiplayer wasn’t much of a selling point. There was at least Firefight mode as well to lengthen proceedings. Really, it should have been a downloadable expansion, just as it was originally planned to be, not full priced.
Killzone 2- It didn’t save the PS3 nor did it really give it much of a shot in the arm (that would be the one-two punch of the PS3 Slim and Uncharted 2). It was pretty and played well enough, but its story was generic, characters forced and gameplay so by the numbers that you’re half expecting this logo to appear at boot-up.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. A sleeper hit of a few years ago is a by the numbers, soulless exercise into pointless prequel. Charmless and boring.
Saboteur: looking a little rough around the gills (see also: LOTR: Conquest). Pandemic’s swansong tells a tale of Irishman with bad accents in a Paris with bad French accents occupied by Nazi’s by bad German accents.
Resident Evil 5: The Black Panthers aren’t around today. But if they were, they would be pissed off. Also, the control scheme that would be called rustic if it were in a real estate listing means only long time fans should apply.
Tony Hawk Ride: What can you say that hasn’t already be said. Activision may have made a lot of money with Tony Hawk over the years. 2009 is not one of those years.
Brutal Legend: So brilliant presentation and an umlaut cannot make up for lousy gameplay. Who knew? It is a pity it turned out that way since I’d love to play this, but I’d love to have had fun doing so.
Eat Led: The Return of Matt Hazard: Well, a joke is enough. The Snake on a Plane of the gaming world were people were willing this to be good. See also: Scribblenauts.
DJ Hero: In the scheme of things. Activision sold a lot of MW2. They didn’t sell a lotof DJ Hero, Tony Hawk Ride, GH5 or Band Hero. Payback’s a bitch
Bionic Commando: Well, even though there were two of these, neither was great. Because BC was never any good.
Ghostbusters: So the presentation was top notch, except the story wasn’t that good, it was a retread of the Ghostbusters movies, the cinematics looked like they were directed by someone who directed live TV drama in the 50′s and the gameplay just wasn’t all that good. I like rinse and repeat only when i’m in the shower. On the couch, it just gets messy.
Overall, it was a really good year, coming after a few years of really good years. Can 2010 top it? Time will tell.
What are your gaming disappointments for 2009?
Reviewed on Xbox 360 (Also on: PC, 360, Wii, PS2, PS3, PSP) Developed by Terminal Reality. Published by Atari (Playstation versions published by Sony in Europe)
So Ghostbusters, one of the biggest grossing films of 1984, has made into a 2009 video game. Despite there being a Ghostbusters game on the Comedy 64, Terminal Reality though they could improve on this (get out of my head with your thought control, Cameron!), accquired the license and then made this game thinking they had a deal with Vivendi to publish. Then many things happened. Vivendi merged with Activision and the resulting Activision-Blizzard behemoth dropped a number of titles from their portfolio including 50 Cent, Scarface, Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters: The Game. The developers continue, secure a deal with Activision, show off the cute Wii version, proclaim how much better the PS3 is. And then Five minutes before the release of the game comes the whammy for PAL gamers, Only the PS3, PSP and PS2 versions would be available at first since Sony was now co-publishing this as a timed exclusive. Yada, yada, yada, here we are with a review of this game reviewing the region-free 360 version on a PAL console.
So Ghostbusters is that unique beast. It is very faithful to its source material. So faithful it fails. Rather than tell a new Ghostbusters story with all new and exciting demons, the game sees fit to basically revisit the more popular hauntings from the films and expand upon them. So the first three levels consist of Slimer in the Hotel, Mr Staypuft and the Ghostly Librarian. In other words, its Back to the Future part 2. If this is meant to be the third film, why is it a clip show?
Set in 1991, you play as a rookie Ghostbuster being trained by Igon, Stantz, Venkmann and Zeddimore (all voiced by the original cast members) as you learn the ropes. Of course, this being a game you have more than just a proton pack and trap in your arsenal but can use different element beams, use slime and fireballs and even shotgun-style blasts. you generally find yourself in a linear corridor, using your PKE meter to search for paranormal manifestations before zapping ghosts in various ways with your gizmos, all the while being entertained by a really very dull Ghostbusters outing. It’s like Pirates of the Caribbean. Everyone loved the first one since it was so refreshing and funny, but by the thiurd film it was so bloated and full of itself it forget the funny.
While the graphics, sound, atmosphere, design and stroy are all authentic to the first film, the gameplay is where things start to fall apart. It does play a lot Luigi’s Mansion (ironically) but it’s nowhere near as much fun as Nintendo’s game. It becomes repetitive rather quickly- like Assassin’s Creed. You feel like you’re a Ghostbuster all right but like any dream job, it quickly becomes work.
Also of note, is the lack of balance. Playing this on normal is excruciatingly frustrating due to the ghosts knocking you down and killing you with little chance. Knocking the difficulty down to casual gives you a better chance to experience the storyline (and this means a restart of the game). Of course, that’s when you realise the story isn’t much cop. Comedy is all about timing. The timing here is off. Cutscenes drag and its almost as if the developers left gaps for the laugh track (like they forgot which Ghostbusters franchise they were working on. Larry Storch’s unused voice work for this game was phenomenal)
So while its actually fun to play in short bursts, there’s nothing driving you to complete it, unless of course you’re a huge Ghostbusters fan. It also seems slightly buggy in that it can take an eternity for triggers that allow you to proceed to activate. You can often stand around for a while, waiting for some dialogue to trigger which means you can continue. Then you might have to wait for another interminable dialogue exchange before you can continue.
The graphics are relatively decent and the character models are pretty decent. You hear the actual score of the movie rather than Ray Parker Jr’s song over and over again. The sound effects are authentic as are the voices, as mentioned earlier. The main crime of the game is that it makes Ghostbusters boring. A followup with a different structure (this is crying out for an open world games with lots of smaller missions rather than a few missions strung out past their use-by date.
Controller1.com Rating 1/3 (3/3 if you’re a fan of Ghostbusters II. If you can make it through that, you’re fine to put up with this)
In this Post Red Faction: Guerrilla world, I am avoiding open world single player experiences in favour of the highly directed and cinematic Ghostbusters game. So far I’m having a mixed reaction to it. Against the prevailing wisdom, I’m playing on Normal which is relatively difficult. Coupled with a system freeze whilst playing hasn’t made a 100% positive impression.
But it does hold promise. It feels like Ghostbusters- which isn’t a natural fit for most of today’s most popular genres. It’s not a platformer, a shooter or a brawler. At least it isn’t where I’m up to. And at least someone learned lessons from Luigi’s Mansion.
What I’m liking:
- They got the Ghostbusting bit right and the Ghostbusters right
- Original cast providing the voices
- All of the music from the film is used and not just Ray Parker Jr’s song on repeat
- Gameplay is different from every other game
What I’m not liking:
-Cinematics seem lacking in cinemacity. They’re as lifeless as most ingame cutscenes. You know why. Animators are good at animating people, they’re not necessarily good directors, camera operators or editors.
-It seems the difficulty is a bit much on normal.
I’ll stick with it for a bit.
Battlefield 1943 got a bit more playtime. It’s a lot of fun to just dip in and out of. I missed most of the original Battlefield hype in 2002 as I wasn’t that thrilled about multiplayer gaming but I eventually played a bit of it and its expansions as well as Desert Combat in the lead up to BF Vietnam. So unlike many, I’m not reliving anything by playing BF1943, its a newish experience for me. I loved Bad Company and its great to see its engine being used with the ‘classic’ BF1942 maps. And boy does it work nicely on a console. I had BC on PS3 and I’m playing this on 360 can I can’t pick which one is better. I also believe EA is running servers for the game, WHICH HELPS A LOT! I only wish Activision would follow this lead on MW2.
Tomb Raider underworld arrived and I played about 10 minutes after installing. It should make for a pleasant diversion after Ghostbusters becomes too tiresome.
So who you gonna yada yada. Busting makes me fell yada yada. A Twinkie the size of Clint.
Its all here in our latest Focus Test. Hopefully, normal service has been resumed.
also, if you haven’t already seen it, c1.com’s own Gothbusters in HD
