NYCC 2009 - Ghostbusters Wii

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.

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