61 Frames Per Second : Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters: Slimer Edition to Come with Free Plastic

Bob Mackey — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:15:00 GMT

What you're looking at right now--courtesy of 1UP.com--are the various plastic trinkets bundled with Amazon.com's Ghostbusters Exclusive Slimer Edition (not pictured: LEGO ripoff figurines of four random ghouls). How much would you pay for a collection of plastic trinkets that could easily find their way into your average McDonald's Happy Meal? 10 dollars? 20 dollars?

How about 70 dollars?

That's right, for a mere 70 dollars more than the "bare-bones" retail version, Ghostbusters: Slimer Edition will reap you the following rewards:

* An exclusive Slimer bust designed and created by the original movie sculptor, Steve Johnson. Comes complete with a certificate of authenticity signed by the sculptor himself.
* Exclusive Ghostbusters Minimates. Only be available with the Slimer Edition.
* Exclusive Ghostbusters Gamer Graffix Console Skins.
* Exclusive Ecto 1 Key Chain with lights and sound.

Along with Steve Johnson's signature, I'm wondering if the sculptor will also include a few choice words about economic responsibility. "You moron!" and "So long, suckers!" both seem to fit the bill. Of course, if you drop 70 extra dollars--let me repeat, 70 extra dollars--on this shameless and exploitative cash grab, it's possible that you deserve more than an insult scribbed on a certificate of authenticity. Food for thought.

Related Links:

Screen Test: Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: There Are No Words For How Good Bustin' Makes Me Feel
Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship

Ghostbusters: There Are No Words For How Good Bustin' Makes Me Feel

John Constantine — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Guest contributor Adam Rosenberg resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where he slaves away daily as a contributing editor for UGO’s Gamesblog as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.

I haven’t seen shit that will turn you white. The shit I have seen, namely a fresh build of Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Xbox 360 and PS3, will make you green. With slime. And envy.

Last summer, a preview build featuring a portion of the widely seen New York Public Library level made the gaming press rounds. The unfinished code appeared out of thin air, its sender listed only as “Evil PR Monkey”. The demo was raw. Very raw. But not so raw as to diminish Ghostbusters’s promise. There were Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddmore (noVenkman in the demo), fully voiced by Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Aykroyd and Ramis’ script, even just that tiny chunk, was characterized by the same wit that made the original films such classics. Then a few weeks later, Activision announced that, following their merger with Vivendi, they would not be hanging onto the Ghostbusters license.

News on the game since, even following Atari’s confirmation that they would be publishing Ghostbusters in June 2009, has been disturbingly light. No more of the actual game has been shown since that messy preview code. Until last week. While I didn’t actually get to go hands-on with it, I did get an eyes-on playthrough of the remainder of that library level. And now… well… I ain’t afraid of no Ghostbusters.

The presentation — third-person perspective, story, voice actor/likeness participation, core ghost-wranglin’ mechanics — are unchanged. What’s fresh is a new sprint button and a multi-directional quick dodge. Both significantly tighten up the gameplay. If you haven’t gotten a look at any video of play, there are two types of spooks and specters to combat.

First are capturable Ghosts, boss and mini-boss-style baddies. You wear them down with the Proton Beam — Or another weapon. More on those in a sec. — and then snare them in a Capture Beam. The captured ghost has to be slammed into walls until it is weak enough to be pulled into a trap. Then there are the more common Entities, supernatural conglomerations of physical objects, such as books, papers, lamps, and the like. These spirits can be flat-out destroyed (or is that neutronized?). They typically have shields that must be stripped away before they can be taken down. Still others manifest as hulking beasts; these must be worn down with sustained attacks until their head – glowing lamps, during the library demo – can be ripped away with the Capture Beam.

That’s the talent, so what about the tools? Weapons stem from the Proton Pack which, along with a dangling PKE Meter, serves as your HUD. The pack itself changes appearance depending on the beam type in use, and each beam now features primary and alternate modes of fire. The vanilla Proton beam is supplemented by the Boson Dart, a concentrated burst shot which works like a rocket launcher. The newly introduced Dark Matter Beam fires either a damaging shotgun-like spread or a sustained stasis beam which has the effect of slowing down targeted enemies. There’s also a Slime Blower, which is used to clear away dark, red-tinged slime. No “Higher and Higher” to accompany it though. Throughout the game, you can upgrade the ‘busters’ equipment with money earned from capturing ghosts and collateral damage. The bill for the latter goes to one Walter Peck, by the way. It’s true what you’ve heard about his genitalia. Just saying. The demo ends with a knockdown boss fight against a familiar supernatural librarian. Cornered in a cavernous space tucked away in a distant corner of the NYPL’s sub-basements, the librarian ghost mounts a final offensive from behind her shield of floating books and candelabras. After finishing her off, the team moves to investigate a trans-dimensional portal which has appeared in the center of the room. The walls peel away to reveal a hellish landscape and… the pause menu pops up. Demo over. A good portion of the game will send the Ghostbusters hurtling into these Otherworlds, though the “what” and the “why” of them remain a mystery for now.

It’s clear that Atari is giving Ghostbusters: The Video Game the triple-A attention it deserves. The publisher switch has resulted in remastered FMVs, newly written and recorded lines of dialogue, additional mo-cap work, and an apparent tightening of the gameplay. Plus, even though it wasn’t shown, I was told off-duty Ghostbusters will be able to explore the team’s iconic firehouse. No concrete details were shared, but I was promised that “rewards” await those who take the time to explore. As long as we can use the pole, all is good. The mid-June release date is creeping ever-closer, and I have to it’s very exciting to see this polish applied to Ray, Egon, Peter, Winston and Nameless New Guy’s (i.e. You) HD-console adventure.

Related links:

NYCC 2009 - Ghostbusters Wii
Screen Test: Ghostbusters
Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World is Just.

NYCC 2009 - Ghostbusters Wii

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

All New York Comic-Con weekend, there was sure to be a huge crowd at the back half of Atari's booth. What was causing all of the hubbub, distracting from Ready 2 Rumble Revolution, The Chronicles of Riddick and the nearby masseuse? Ghostbusters: The Video Game, of course! All three current-gen console SKUs were up and on display, along with the crystal Slimer seen at right and, of course, dudes in jumpsuits and proton packs. Graphical polish aside, the PS3 and XBox 360 builds looked just about the same as when we saw them last May (though the 360 version seemed to be flaunting more bloom lighting), so of course I was most interested in the Wii version. Come on, you know you've wanted Ghostbusters on Wii ever since you first saw Elebits! In my mind, Wii is the only platform worth making a Ghostbusters game on (though PS3 gets a pass as Sony owns the rights to the films).

I was fortunate enough to chat with developer Red Fly Studios' James Clarendon, a programmer and designer on Ghostbusters for Wii, as he played through the ever-popular New York Public Library level for me. Atari are still keeping a relatively tight grip on in-game footage, which relieved James as he told me repeatedly that the game as he last saw it two days before the Con looked "totally different" from the demo, which used the game's build from December.

James explained to me how Atari is heavily focus testing the Wii SKU in particular, making sure it appeals to all sorts of gamers, especially those who are unfamiliar with the films. "The Wii has a great install base and people are hungry for these games and we desire to make them that way too. We want to release some games that average people can enjoy and that are going to get some depth out of it rather than a mini-game compilation."

As we've heard elsewhere, the Wii version of Ghostbusters features the same story as the PS3/360 version, with more puzzle elements. Most interestingly, while Terminal Reality is still keeping mum about multiplayer in their higher-resolution busting of ghosts, Red Fly has already confirmed both co-op in the main game's story as well as competitive multiplayer to be detailed later. The biggest draw for the Wii version, naturally, is the controls. "We tried to exploit the Wii as much as we could," Clarendon explained, stating that the team at Red Fly had learned a lot from their previous title, the technically impressive Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. "We really put you into the jumpsuit and make you feel like a real Ghostbuster. The Wii remote becomes your Neutrona Wand, and you throw out a trap by performing a bowling motion with the nunchuck." Watching him capture ghosts look intuitive and natural, though James was noticably upset when he realized that the demo build featured neither rumble nor speaker support in the Wii remote, a fact he'd clearly forgotten from time spent with a significantly newer build in his office.

Blasting through the library, it was easy to forget that this was an inferior build of a game with months of refinement still ahead of it. The physics were expectedly sublime from the team that made Mushroom Men, lighting was gorgeous, the various ghosts encountered were both entertaining and exciting, from small flying imps throwing books from above to a spectral beast with a body built from the hardcover Shakespeare shelf to the eventual librarian boss, punishing you for making too much noise (and, I imagine, chewing gum). The Ghostbusting tools were fun, including spectral goggles that revealed ghostly platforms and PKE meter that resembled a monochromatic early 90's PDA, and the bits of dialogue we heard from the fellow 'busters was expectedly hilarious. Ah, the voices, of course! Surely the Wii can't come close to the higher-def versionsof the game regarding the audio, right James?

"You've got just as much voice and in fact probably a little bit more on the Wii. We've got custom lines recorded just for the Wii version that are in here. Storage capacity, we've still got a DVD just like the 360 does so we've got just as much room on there, we're doing some interesting streaming techniques, a wonderful audio tool called Wwise and our audio guys are going nuts! It's really awesome. If you liked the audio in Mushroom Men, you are going to be blown away with Ghostbusters. Out guys at Gleek, the sound crew, have done an amazing job."

Wow. It really looks like Ghostbusters is getting the A+ treatment on the Wii. If high-def uncanny-valley graphics really matter to you thank much, PS3/360 have got you covered, but from what I've seen, Red Fly's Wii version looks to be the best all-around Ghostbusters game of the bunch. I very much look forward to its release this June, tying in with the 25th anniversary of the original movie.

Related articles:
NYCC - Comic Authors Love Video Games!
NYCC - Sega <3s Wii
NYCC - A Brief Overview of Games
NYCC - DC Universe Online
Screen Test: Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World Is Just.
Ghostbusters is Really Ghostbusters 3!

NYCC 2009 - A Brief Overview of Games

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Without a doubt, video games were big at New York Comic Con 2009. Some publishers booths were small (Square-Enix, who only had figurines to show/sell, Aksys Games, Sony Online Entertainment), others challenged the massive booths of Marvel and DC (Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision), but all around there was a lot to see and play and ask quesitons about. While we've got more in-depth coverage to follow, here's just a quick sample of some of what we got to see and play.

If we were athletes instead of game journalists, this would totally be a training montage:

Quick, succinct thoughts:

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus: The same Guilty Gear we played ten years ago, only with more words.
Blazblue: Why not just put these characters in Guilty Gear and make a new installment of that series?
Bit.Trip Beat: MUCH more challenging than we expected, in a very, very good way. Controls are great!
Madworld: Very stylish, definitely fun. The one stage felt a little monotonous. Looking forward to playing with more variety.
Sonic & The Black Knight: For the kids, but fun.
House of the Dead Overkill: Excellent presentation, shame about those framerate dips. Still fun.
The Conduit: Everyone needs to buy this. Halo fans will finally love the Wii like I do.
Dragonball Evolution: Are these load times simulating the ridiculously long soliloquies and pregnant silences of the cartoon?
Naruto Shippuden 4: Same as the past three.
Dynasty Warrior Gundam 2: Beat up tons of robots. This could be cool...
Splatterhouse: Looks. So. Cool. Hope the Afro Samurai team does it well.
Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao: Nice 2D beat 'em up for XBLA. Fix the bugs, make it cheap, and it'll be fun.
Bomberman Ultra: PSN of the XBLA Bomberman. Excellent for parties. Zombie mode is fun!
Marble Saga: Kororinpa: Great new courses and marbles, build your own and share, balance board support. I'm all over this.
Prototype: Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on angsty steroids.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Ultra-violence does not convince me it will be fun.
DC Universe Online: What good are super-powers when everybody has them?
Velvet Assassin: Sepia-toned Metal Gear Solid with a cute drug addict.
X-Blades: Fan service Devil May Cry lite.
Roogoo: Twisted Towers: Cute kid-friendly Wii puzzler. Will probably have trouble selling, even at $29.99.
Damnation: Way smoother than Gears of War ever was.
Overlord: Dark Legend: Kid beats up bullies with his demon minions. Middle school nerds will love this.
Jumpgate Evolution: Massively Multiplayer Online Space Blaster? AWESOME!
The Godfather 2: Putting the "organized" in "organized crime".
Battlefield 1943 Pacific: Run around. Get shot. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Get fed up. Walk away.
Deadly Creatures: Very, very cool, though replay value seems limited at best.
Legends of Wrestlemania: 40 childhood idols in their pre-meltdown stages. A wet dream for fans.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars: Graphics are very impressive, movement is smooth, controls will take time to learn.
Ready 2 Rumble Revolution: Ugly and the AI is cheap as hell. If it were a kid, I'd take his controller away for being a jerk.
Ghostbusters: PS3 and 360 versions look as good as ever. Wii version has me verrrrrrrry excited. Learned from Mushroom Men and built on it.

Related articles:
NYCC 2009 - DC Universe Online
Dragonball: Evolution - The New Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game?
Trailer Review: Prototype
Whatcha Playng: Kororinpa Marble Mania

Screen Test: Ghostbusters

John Constantine — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Ghostbusters: The Videogame is a videogame based on Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters is a movie. Or a documentary shot in real-time, depending on who you ask. Ghostbusters: The Videogame, had it been a movie/documentary, would have been called Ghostbusters 3 as it follows the events of Ghostbusters 2 and the adventures of beloved characters like Ray, Winston, Egon, and Venkman. Yeah, that’s right. I’m on a first name basis with the ‘Busters. We hang out on weekends. We go to Coney Island and swim together. It’s awesome. Their videogame is going to be awesome. You’ll see!

*runs away crying*

Anyway *sniff* these new shots of Ghostbusters: The Videogame are exciting. The delay from last fall has let Terminal Reality continue to improve the game’s presentation, and it’s looking more detailed and more polished with every new look. Check out the detail on those proton packs. Sweet. There is something off though. It isn’t the cartoony exaggeration of the characters. It’s that nothing casts a shadow! Where are the shadows, Terminal Reality? Unless… unless everyone’s a ghost in Ghostbusters: The Videogame! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

*runs away crying*

Previous Screen Tests:

Duke Nukem Forever
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Takahashi’s Nobi Nobi Boy
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
Oboro Muramasa
Fable 2
Final Fantasy Dissidia
Fragile
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Silent Hill Homecoming
Fallout 3
Alone in the Dark
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

New Year’s Resolutions For a Few Of Our Favorite Publishers

John Constantine — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Now, to close out the first full week of 2009, we will do for videogame publishers what we did for console makers: we will tell them how to live their sordid, godforsaken lives! You’d think developers would make the list, but no. No, I tend to trust them, so they will be left to their own devices, free from the crushing logic of advice from 61 Frames Per Second.

In 2009, the following folks should resolve to do the following things:

EA – Stick to your guns and keep investing in new IP. 2008 was good stuff, Riccitello. Keep promoting Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, they will find their audience. And EA Sports? How about SSX4 already.

Capcom – Resolve to support Dark Void with an aggressive marketing campaign and release it during the summer. Do not let this one die during the holiday rush. Also, Street Fighter III HD Remix. You know it would be sweet.

Atari – Do not release Ghosbusters until it is perfect.

Namco – Push Klonoa like you have never pushed a game in your entire lives. Tell people it will make them lose weight, tell them it will make them smarter. And knock it off with the nickel-and-dime DLC already, what is this, 2006?

Square-Enix – S-E, I want you to go out tomorrow, hop on a train, and pay Jupiter Games a visit. You cut them a check, and you tell them to make whatever they can imagine. The people who made The World Ends With You should be allowed to make whatever they like.

Konami – Release a press statement claiming you were forced to make Rock Revolution at gun point.

Midway – Um. Hang in there?

Activision – Give Neversoft the vacation they so desperately need and deserve.

Atlus – More PS1 reprints!

Take-Two – If Bioshock 2 looks stupid, don’t be afraid to cancel it.

Ubisoft – Release Beyond Good & Evil 2 by the end of the year. Please. PLEASE!

XSEED – Keep on keepin’ on, you guys. Can’t believe you actually localized Retro Game Master. Just awesome.

Tecmo-Koei – No Dynasty Warriors: Dead or Alive games. Just don’t. I know you're thinking about it.

SEGA – Disband Sonic Team. It’s over. Enough.

And that about covers it. Happy New Year, everyone.

Related links:

Microsoft’s New Year’s Resolution
Nintendo’s New Year’s Resolution
Sony’s New Year’s Resolution
Virtual Console New Year's Resolutions

Looking Ahead: 10 Wii Games that I'm Looking Forward To in 2009. part 2

Amber Ahlborn — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Everybody is making lists this time of year (and checking them twice) so I figured I'd get in on the act. While most of the lists I'm seeing pop up reflect on games of the past year, I figured I'd wish ya'll an early Happy New Year and knock off a couple lists of games I'm looking forward to in 2009.

Continued from part 1...

5. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time – It's about damn time. The much disparaged original Chrystal Chronicles on the Gamecube was a great game crippled by a poorly considered play mechanic. I'm looking forward to seeing how this one is improved.

4. Marble Saga: Kororinpa – Better than Monkey Ball. Well okay, the first Monkey Ball was pretty good but after that...

3. Sonic & The Black Knight – Secret Rings was solid step in the right direction for the Sonic series. Here's hoping Black Knight keeps on stepping.

2. Sin and Punishment 2 – Assuming it makes it out in 2009. This game, if it's anything like the first, will kick major ass.

1. Ghostbusters – Hey, if Luigi armed with a vacuum cleaner can make a reasonably entertaining ghost hunting game, then playing with the experts should really rock, yeah?

This list is hardly exhaustive and no doubt other games not highlighted here will come out and blow me away. Still, from the perspective of speculation, these titles look promising and worth anticipating their releases. Now to compile my DS list...

Related Links:

Looking Ahead: 10 Wii Games that I'm Looking Forward To in 2009. part 1

Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 1

Top 5 Reasons Why 2009 Will Bring the End of Lists

Wet is All… Oh, Nevermind

John Constantine — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

While it was certainly distressing that promising games like Ghostbusters: The Videogame and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena fell into no-publisher limbo following Activision’s axing of Sierra Games’ line-up, we knew it wouldn’t be long before some intrepid business would give those wayward titles a home. (Of course, Sierra’s most promising game, Brutal Legend, is still homeless. Boo.) Some games lost in the fire sale, however, should probably stay lost. Take, for example, A2M’s ludicrously named Wet. Wet trades in the same bombastic violence and stars the same sort of big breasted protagonist as Hideki Kamiya’s Bayonetta, but has, from the looks of this game footage, none of that game’s humor or eccentricity. The game actually looks very similar to the John Woo and Midway collaboration Stranglehold, with an almost identical slow motion trick-shooting system. The difference? A Quentin Tarantino-style soundtrack and grainy film filter! Oh yeah, and Chow Yun Fat has been replaced by a lady in impossibly tight clothing.

Word is A2M is still hoping Wet finds a new publishing home. Either they need to spend a whole lot more time polishing this game up or they should go back to making Lizzie McGuire DS games.

Such a shame. The original trailer for Wet was pretty sweet.

(Link: NextGenPlayer via NeoGAF)

Related links:

Face-Off: Bayonetta and the Merits of Exploitation
Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World is Just.

Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World is Just.

John Constantine — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:15:00 GMT

There is a reason that this new trailer for Ghostbusters: The Videogame is not getting posted under the Trailer Review banner: I am completely incapable of judging this game with any kind of objectivity. Don’t you see? It has Walter Peck, a William Atherton voiced Walter Peck, cowering in fear and then getting possessed by a ghost. It has the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man tossing police cars about Manhattan and Ray Stantz, a Dan Ackroyd voiced and written Ray Stantz, saying it isn’t his fault this time. It has Peter Venkman.

It’s true, your honor. This game is amazing.

Related links:

Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship
Dear World, Find Ghostbusters a New Publisher Immediately

Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

John Constantine — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

While reading Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds’ sharp history of postpunk, I started thinking about videogames. I’m nothing if not predictable, I know. There’s a slight corollary between the gaming zeitgeist and punk rock. Not politically, of course. Videogames are, at least popularly, more conservative today than they’ve ever been. Just look at Bobby Kotick’s reasoning for dropping Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters from Activision’s release schedule: "[Those games] don't have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.” I realize that Activision is in the business of making money and not artifacts to inspire the human soul, but publicly stating that your publishing ethos is assembly-line-production makes it difficult to assess the creative merits of Guitar Hero: Buy This One Too, Just ‘Cause.

No, videogames in 2008 are, like punk rock in 1974, taking a medium that’s become marked by excess and stripping it back to its most basic. Even beyond Capcom’s retro efforts and traditional two-dimensional, genre exercises (Braid, Castle Crashers) on Xbox Live, designers like DICE are trying to keep games simple and raw. Mirror’s Edge, for all of its visual polish, uses only three buttons for the bulk of its action and the game’s goals are uncomplicated (run to, run away.) Games are also trying to put the power of creation back into the audience’s hands. Halo 3’s Forge, LittleBigPlanet, and Maxis’ Spore might not be putting players into the guts of design, but they are inlets for everyone to make their own games. You don’t need to know how to play guitar to rock, and you don’t need to know C++, or draw, or write to make a game. Add these mainstream juggernauts to the booming independent dev scene, the confrontational tedium of games like No More Heroes (as Goichi Suda says, punk’s not dead,) and we may look back on the 2010s as gaming’s punk rock era. But how does punk lead to postpunk, the rebellion of aestheticism through the surreal and the futurist against the simplistic and traditional? What would that game even look like?

Modern gaming’s genesis came during postpunk’s six year lifespan and the two, strangely enough, shared many of the same audio/visual tics. But where postpunk’s visual tendency toward angular, primary colored geometry and aural predilection for jittery electronics and propulsive bass lines were born of artistic statement, videogames came to them out of necessity. This is why envisioning a surrealist gaming experience is problematic; the hallmarks of surreal a/v media are traditionalist hallmarks in games. While a game like Deus Ex Machina, Mel Croucher’s 1984 Spectrum title – a game that could very well have been a Fast Product Records release a few years before – look like ready examples of surrealist design, but were it released today, it would look like little more than retro fetishism. In order for a game to be successfully surrealist, its mode of expression will have to be tied directly to play and not traditional presentation. The game has to subvert expectation based on established mechanical tropes to garner the desired subconscious effect. The seeds for this are out there, in places you might not expect. Mario tends to be associated with childlike psychedelia, but the manipulation of perspective and gravity in Super Mario Galaxy are a larval form of potential surrealist play; for twenty years, Mario would die if he jumped into a void, and here the void propels him to new heights.

A game can be most anything the designer wants it to be. In the coming years, the most difficult task for both designers and players will be looking backward, seeing what games are and have been, and figuring how they can break them to create something brand new for the future. Punk play to postpunk to whatever comes next. Now if only we could figure out how to get the vital social commentary in there…

(Thanks to 1UP for the Bobby Kotick quote and Edge Online for the Deus Ex Machina retrospective)

Related links:

Yeah, But Is It Art?: It Will Never Be the Same
Kenji Eno Is a Mule of Epic Proportions
Far Out, Man
Easy Access

Dear World, Find Ghostbusters a New Publisher Immediately

John Constantine — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:30:00 GMT

I’m almost glad that Ghostbusters: The Videogame isn’t coming out this fall. If it were, I most likely wouldn’t be paying attention to anything else coming out. My fondness for the franchise and all of its characters goes beyond mere childhood memory; Ghostbusters borders on a bonafide language between me and my older brother. Hell, not two weeks ago, Gabe and I had an hour long conversation about the merits of socialism using only quotes from the original movie:

John: “It’s true, your honor. This man has no dick.” (“That is not a valid point, dear sibling.”)

Gabe: “You can have it your way, Doctor Venkman.” (“I concede. Perhaps our current plight reveals the true flaw of free market economics.”)

John: “I’m going to send him a nice fruit basket.” (“Let us agree to disagree and drink on the matter!”)

After getting a look at the game in action this passed summer, I’m also glad that the game’s had a bit more time in the oven. The play was tight but was clearly months away from perfection. The dialogue, too, was perfect. Hearing Harold Ramis, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson talking in my ear got me downright giddy. But there was no Murray yet and I was starting to worry that his involvement was going to be more limited than we were led to believe. Of course, this video here lays those fears squarely to rest. Bill Murray tells his-baldness Al Roker that his experience making the game revitalized his enthusiasm for Peter Venkman to the point that he was uncontrollably singing the titular Ray Parker Jr. song as he walked down the street.

How can you resist when the surliest dude in Hollywood is excited?

Please, world, get this game back into the hands of a loving publisher. Then deliver its goodness to me in short order.

(Link: Kotaku)

Related links:

Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship
Games to Movies: Why Is It So Gad-Danged Hard?

Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!

John Constantine — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:20:00 GMT

So be good, for goodness’ sake! Wooooaaaaahhh ohhhhh. Somebody’s coming! Let me be the first to tell you that even watching the new Ghostbusters game leads to uncontrollable quoting. During 61FPS’ visit with Sierra last Wednesday, we got to wash the taste of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand out of our mouth with a demonstration of the sequel that’s been twenty years coming. About a month back, I talked about the momentousness of Ghostbusters: The Game’s development as a collaboration between developers Terminal Reality and franchise creators Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis. From the brief look we got, I can say wholeheartedly that the collaboration is a success. Whether or not Ghostbusters turns out to be an excellent game start to finish, its look and tone are pitch perfect, in many ways a more recognizable follow-up to the original film than Ghostbusters 2 was. Of course, the Library of New York setting in this demo, and the appearance of its resident ghoul librarian, helped reinforce the association. The voiceovers here were final (Bill Murray’s Pete Venkman was conspicuously absent) and while the dialogue was largely comprised of incidental quips and instructions made during play, it gave the impression that Ackroyd and Ramis still have a keen sense of their characters. The gameplay itself is an interesting take on the over-the-shoulder 3D shooting that’s become the genre standard since Resident Evil 4. Small ghosts are destroyed by shots but bosses are lassoed and wrestled as they are in the films, recalling GameRepublic’s Folklore in action. While Derrick and Pete thought Ghostbusters visuals weren’t too hot at this point, I thought it looked great. Then again, as you might have been able to tell, I’m a little biased.

Related Links:

50 Cent: Get Rich or Banned By Parent Groups Trying
Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship

Film to Games: Ghostbusters is the Beginning of a (Hopefully) Beautiful Friendship

John Constantine — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K. Time was that the relationship between film and videogames was one of extremes: games poached the narrative framing devices of film in an effort to grow as a medium and film poached the intellectual properties of games to make garbage movies and a quick buck. However, this relationship is morphing into something far more powerful: artistic collaboration. Even beyond Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s consulting work on titles like Boom Blox and King Kong, filmmakers and game designers are now working directly with one another to produce videogames with sophisticated design alongside the sophisticated so often missing in games. Terminal Reality’s upcoming Ghostbusters game, a true sequel to 1989’s Ghostbusters 2, is going to be one of the first games to truly benefit from this crossover. Not only have all the principal characters agreed to resume their roles, but Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis are penning the script themselves. In an interview with our esteemed colleagues over at Gamasutra, Terminal Reality president Mark Randel discusses the benefits of partnering directly with the creators to produce superior work.

Harold Ramis is co-writing the script. And Dan Aykroyd is really the main guy behind the script and the equipment in the Ghostbusters video game. He's been a really big facilitator, helping bring all of the parties together.

Multiple people own the Ghostbusters intellectual property, so he's been a really big facilitator in getting everybody together, getting Harold and the other guys back to discuss it, and bringing him onto the project and working on the script, and making sure the game is [on track].

Ghostbusters has a very serious tone, and that's something that Dan pointed out to us when we were making the game. The comedy is funny because the characters are very serious about what they do, and then they have deadpan comedic timing. And we just would not have that without Dan's involvement.

Plus he's been really helpful in coming up with and naming all the equipment in the game, so all of the story, the characters, the equipment you use in the game - we hate to say 'weapons', because they're more than just weapons - is directly created by the original creators of the Ghostbusters franchise.

At this point, Ghostbusters is looking beautiful, capturing the distinct aesthetic of the source material and early word from anyone who’s played it is that its feels as good as it looks. The writing, acting, and narrative are still unknown quantities but it’s pretty much a guarantee that it will be better than Ghostbusters 2.

Head over to Gamasutra for the whole shebang and, for more discussion on the future of filmmaker-game designer collaboration, check out N’Gai Croal’s discussions with Cory Barlog and George Miller about their upcoming Mad Max project.