Supposedly, the story will take place long before the clan invasion, and so it’ll probably only use the tried and true 3010 Inner Sphere technology from the old sourcebooks.  If they do it right this means no OmniMechs, no Extended Range energy weapons, and no aw who the hell cares?  It’s 100 ton walking death machines with modern graphics!  YAY!!!!!

Really?  That’s really the best name you could think of?

I’ve installed Ghostbusters on my computer and have been playing it since it was released.  I wanted to play through it to give everyone a review, but it seems I might not be able to!  See, I’ve played it nearly every night . . . and I have yet to pass the first level!  So, I’ll give you what I can in review form.

Gameplay

It must have taken the game designers some time to figure out how to turn busting ghosts into compelling game play, but they did it!  Assuming the ghost is just sitting there in front of you (which rarely happens), you hit it with your particle stream to wear it down.  A green circle around your reticule will start to wear down as you tire the ghost out.  When the ghost is sufficiently weakened the pack will automatically switch to your secondary attack, the capture stream (you can also manually do this to other objects, more on that later).  With a capture stream engaged, you can wrangle the ghost pretty much where ever you want.  Throw out your trap and drag the ghost over; the trap automatically opens when the ghost is above it.

"See? Now that wasn't such a chore, was it?"

Now that you know the basics of trapping the ghosts, let me just say this:  The ghosts are NEVER staying still!  If there are multiple ghosts, you could be just about to have one in the trap when the other attacks you and you break lock.  If you are still at step 1 and trying to wear down the ghost, they might throw a table at you, or duck through a wall.  Anything to get you to STOP wearing them down.  Only once you have the capture stream locked onto them does your proton pack actually lock onto the ghost; the rest of the time it’s like using a machine gun.

Using the PKE Meter and Goggles adds another part of game play.  By equipping the goggles, you can track down where ghosts are hiding and any other environmental anomalies nearby.  You can also find randomly placed “Cursed Artifacts” lying about different levels.  By using your scanners in this manner you can not only track down ghosts easier, but you are paid for every “snapshot” of a ghost you get, and Egon can upgrade your equipment with what those snapshots contain.  This forces you to really balance your need to explore with the knowledge that what you’re looking for is trying to kill you.  Of course, if you just go shooting for ghosts willy-nilly, you’ll never get any upgrades for your pack that you’d need later on!

Red means "bad". Bars are down, so it's not close.

Story

Having only made it through the introduction and partway through the Sedgewick Hotel level, I can’t tell you everything that happens.  I can tell you that the story is as solid as you should expect from Ghostbusters; that is, if anything from either movie seemed remotely realistic, then everything should feel totally fine here.  That being said, the story is really well done and fleshed out.  There is an actual over-arcing story that your rookie character (who is given no name, no lines, and not even a proper nametag) gets caught up in on his first night.  This is a very good thing, however, as I believe a simple “Go Here, Shoot That, Come Back” would have done this game a great disservice.

Graphics

I’ll split this into two parts, with the other part being under “Design” down below.  These ARE next-gen graphics.  I’m not entirely sure which engine they used, but it’s hard at work in this game.  Characters look awesome, the proton streams look incredible, ghosts are beautifully done, and the proton pack didn’t look that good in the movies!  While it’s hard to say if this is a good thing or not, there is a LOT of stuff going on in many scenes; five bright proton streams going everywhere, ghosts weaving in and out of walls, fire popping up from the places on the walls you WILL inevitably hit, and debris from everything you are actively destroying can make the scene very hectic.  It can get easy to lose where you threw your trap and there are times when the game suddenly sags under so much processing.  It can be argued, though, that this just adds to the frantic experience that is being a Ghostbuster.

Sound/Environment

All the voices are done by the original cast, including Walter Peck and Janean.  The proton pack sounds are authentic and deliver all the right notes to make you happy every time you blast something.  The music is from the movie as well, and is tastefully done throughout the menus and cut scenes (can you imagine the theme looping non-stop in menus?).  While that’s all kinda expected, what was a surprise was all the little sounds that come from everywhere else.  When tracking a ghost through the Sedgewick by yourself, you really do get creeped out by the mist, creaking sounds, and dripping water.  With the light bulb in my office burnt out and my headphones in (to keep from waking the kids next door), I was jumping out of my chair more than a couple times!  Going into PKE Meter mode makes things even worse, since your field of view is suddenly very limited (think night-vision meets tunnel-vision) and all you have is a little bar to tell you a ghost is nearby, but not in which direction.  Oh, and the black slime on the wall will make your skin crawl (just don’t touch it).

Design/Development

This is a bit of a mixed bag.  Activision originally developed this game, and you can tell it was a labor of love by the designers.  Everything looks exactly how you think it should look, levels have real weight to them, and the game is really immersing.  When Activision “merged” with Blizzard, the new management shelved Ghostbusters as well as other games that had been in development.  Activision then sold the rights to Atari, who then published the game.  Without knowing for sure, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Atari saw a game that was 85% done and said, “Meh, good enough.”

Cut scenes are an odd mix of prerendered full motion videos and prescripted in-game action.  The FMV’s were likely rendered in 720 to fit most consoles and that’s fine.  Except they used the SAME FMV’s for all versions of the game!  That means that if you’re playing the game in 1080, it will automatically downscale for the cutscenes.  If you’re like me and playing on the PC at 1920X1200, the cutscenes will just look like crap.  On the other hand, the prescripted scenes that use the graphics engine look awesome . . . except they take so much computing horsepower from my PC that the sound and graphics rarely match up.

This leads me to another issue with graphics.  My PC has a Windows Experience Rating of 4.7 with the lowest subscore being the hard drive.  Ghostbusters says the required lowest score is 3.7, and the recommended score is ALSO 3.7.  So why does the game play like crap on my system?  Even with all the shiny extras turned off (high detail, shadow mapping, etc) and my resolution scaled way down, my framerates are wretched.  I installed the game again, this time on my beast of a machine (the one with a 5.9 in Vista and 6.7 in Windows 7) and had some very impressive game play . . . right up until the game crashed.

There is a LOT of humor in this game, and the script is very well written (what else would you expect from the original cast AND writers?), however many of the conversations are triggered by you moving into a certain position, or a certain action happening nearby.  This leads to many occasions where something happens, Ray says a line, then after 50 seconds of your poor GPU trying to catch up, Peter says the punchline.  A 50 second lag makes the whole conversation unfunny and really messes with the flow of things.  Add to that the odd jumping back and forth between in-game scenes and FMV’s for what could be considered unnecessary cut scenes, and things get REALLY choppy.

This could all be simply chalked up to poor PC coding, and maybe the console versions of the game don’t suffer from these problems.  However, to me, it’s pretty bad.  Perhaps Activision hadn’t had much time to perfect their PC coding, and Atari didn’t want to deal with it, but it feels like it could have used some more time in development cooking.  Other games that have been released across the Xbox 360 and PC have had much better consistency, with players on both platforms getting the same experience.  As it is, I feel like I’m being cheated by Atari for their lack of effort.

I might not be too far off the mark on this either; the PC version sells for much cheaper than it’s console counterparts, reportedly because it lacks multiplayer.  It’s very possible that the PC side of development was father behind than the Xbox or PS3 sides, and Atari just pushed it out regardless.

All I know is that I WANT to love this game, but can’t get past the first level because I keep getting swarmed by these things and my framerate drops to zero!  Maybe I’ll have more luck on the Xbox.

Easy to kill, slow, and stupid. Too bad there are too many for my CPU to handle.

COLONEL ED HAS DIED

He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started classes at Boston College. When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines. His primary flight training was in Dallas and then he went to Pensacola, Florida. He was carrier qualified, which means he knew how to perform a controlled crash of his single engine fighter, onto the rolling deck of a Navy floating runway. It took Ed almost two years to get through all the Navy flight training. His problem was he was a very good pilot and the Marines needed flight instructors. He had a great command presence and public speaking ability, which landed him in the classroom, training new baby Marine pilots. His orders to the Pacific fleet and the chance to fly combat missions off a carrier came in the spring of 1945, on the same day the Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Of course his orders where changed. He never went to sea and he was out of the Marines in 1946.

Ed stayed in the USMC as a reserve officer. He became a successful personality in the new TV medium, after the war. His Marine command presence helped. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of raw combat. He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine slow-moving unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine fighter / bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area and were gone in seconds. Captain Ed was still circling the enemy looking for more targets, all the time taking North Korean and Chinese ground fire. He stayed with the Marines as a reserve officer and retired in 1966 as a Colonel.

The world knows Ed as Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson, Tonight Show. One night I was watching the show when the subject of Colonel McMahon earning a number of Navy Air Medals came up. Carson, a former Navy officer, understood the significance of these medals, but McMahon shrugged it off, saying that if you flew enough combat missions they just sort of gave them to you. McMahon flew 85 combat missions over North Korea; he earned every one of those Air Medals. The casualty rate, for flying forward air controllers in Korea sometimes exceeded 50% of a squadron’s manpower. McMahon was lucky to have gotten home from that war. Once a Marine, always a Marine. When the public was spitting (taking their personal safety into their own hands) at Marines on the streets of Southern California during Vietnam, Colonel McMahon was taking Marines off the streets and into his posh Beverley Hills home. I spoke to a retired Marine aircrew member the day Colonel McMahon died and he personally remembered seeing McMahon at numerous Marine Air Bases in California in the 1960s. He was known for going to the Navy hospitals and visiting the wounded Marines and Sailors from this country’s conflicts, even in the last years of his life. Colonel McMahon presented awards and decorations to fellow Marines and attended many a Marine ceremony and the annual Marine Corps Birthday Ball. He stayed true to his Corps as a board member of the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund and as the honorary chairman of the National Marine Corps Aviation Museum.

After retiring from the Marine Reserve, one night on the Johnny Carson show, members of the California Air National Guard came on stage. Colonel McMahon was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Air Guard in front of millions of Americans who watched it happen live. You will not see anything like that on TV anymore. The three core values of a United States Marine are; honor, courage and commitment. This is what a Marine is taught from the first day of training and this is what that Marine believes. That was Colonel Edward P. McMahon Jr. USMCR Retired. Before he was a national figure he was a true combat hero and a patriot the nation needed then and this country needs now. Your war is over. Thank you Colonel McMahon. Simper Fi sir.

23 June 2009
Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
vanharl@aol.com

I’d like to now share two videos with readers. The first one is how I will always remember him. I know it’s not his biggest hit but it’s one that I “jammed” out to the most as a kid. And no, those kids aren’t in there as “special friends”. They’re Kris Kross, and if you don’t know who they are . . . well, what can I say? (Heavy D even makes an appearance! And some basketball guy) The second one is, to me, the finest example of all the things he has left us. Sure, it’s almost in parody, but who cares?

After reading The Death of Superman, I couldn’t seem to get enough.  Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding had me hooked on Superman.  I kept reading the storyline knowing that nobody in comics stays dead (except for Bucky but he’s back now too) and I wanted to see what was going to happen next.  I started a weekly hold at the local comic book store and was soon deeply immersed in the world of Superman.

About the same time as Superman was being killed off, Gotham City was facing a new villain named Bane who would eventually break Batman’s back in the Knightfall storyline.  The guy at the comic book store gave me a synopsis of what had been happening  and I immediately fell in love with the idea of yet another hero facing a force greater than he.  I was also fascinated by the idea of a normal person with no superpowers whatsoever fighting crime.  Batman was a character that I could relate with – he was smart and had cool toys.  While nobody could be Superman, anybody could be Batman given the proper training and resources.  I decided that I needed to follow the adventures of Superman and Batman so I added the various Batman titles to my weekly hold.

I believe that there were four Superman titles and four Batman titles being published at the time.  The comic shop would get their shipment on Friday afternoons so every Friday night after work I’d stop by and pick up my comics for the week and then spend the evening in my room reading them.  Since I was only reading eight titles regularly, my haul would usually be limited to two issues but, on occasion, there would be a special one-shot or variant cover that I would also pick up.  It wasn’t long before I realized that there was a enormous universe of superheroes that I was missing out on.  Apparently Superman was my gateway comic.  I was soon picking up more than 10 titles per week.  The artwork was so amazing and the storylines were so compelling that I couldn’t get enough.  Add the fact that the comic book guy would tell me about titles that I might like and I was never short on reading material.

In February of 1995 I left on a two year mission to South Africa for the LDS Church.  Before I left, Comic Book Guy offered to keep my hold going so that I would be able to catch up on things when I got home but I knew that two years worth of comic books was a lot so I declined his offer.  While I was in Africa, I would occasionally see a rack of comics in a bookstore but, knowing that I was out of the loop, I would resist the urge to pick up a few issues.  I figured that when I got home, I’d be able to start collecting again and that I could pick up the back issues over time.  I was wrong.

Shortly after arriving back in the States, I met my wife and realized that there was no way that I could support my comic book habit and keep her happy so something had to go.  It obviously wasn’t her.  Over the past few years, I’ve started getting back into collecting comics but nothing like before.  She has decided that it’s OK for me to start a hold again but only if I limit myself to one title per month.  I’ve chosen Star Wars Legacy as my monthly fix but I’ve also started getting digital copies of older issues that I read on my computer.

I decided a few weeks ago that I needed to get caught up on all of my comic reading for the last 14 years so I’ve been acquiring various back issues from the DC Universe so that I know what’s been happening to my favorite heroes.  The fact that my sister is also a comic geek has helped me too because she also gets the trade paperbacks and lets me borrow them as needed.

Right now I’m reading Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1985 and will soon start reading old issues of The Flash dating back to 1987 and Green Lantern from who knows when.  I’ll eventually pick up where I intended to, which is just after Zero Hour, but I just can’t seem to focus on just one hero or storyline.  It’s funny because I figured that I would just read the collections but it’s turning out to be entire comic runs.  I dare say that I’ll be spending hours and hours trying to get caught up.   Maybe I should have never canceled my hold…

• There is a new model of the PSP coming with a slide up screen. Yeah I know, I don’t care either but it’s as good a place as any to start
• In sequel news we get a huge amount of artists confirmed for the latest Guitar Hero (number 5, depending on how you learned to count). In addition they’ve got DJ Hero coming so we can all pretend we’re Eminem. I suppose.
• Despite this the music game I’m most excited about is Rock Band: Beatles. Yes I know there music didn’t have the most complex solo’s, and that Ringo could have been replaced by a not so well trained monkey, but I’ve been looking forward to this one since I heard about it more than a year ago.
• The latest Lego game will head to Hogwarts to let us play the first four year of Harry Potter in plastic. Somehow I am excited for this one.
• Microsoft, in the continued efforts to rule the Internet, have partnered with Facebook to allow you to update your status, and other Facebooky things, while playing. I’m sure my Mom would love to know that I still haven’t found that cake I’ve been promised no matter how many portals I go through.
• In news that will certainly make Schmidty a happy little boy, two new Halo games were confirmed. Halo:ODST will launch Sept 22, and will include a code for the multi-player beta of Halo:Reach which will arrive sometime next year. (see the above website for links to the videos)
• Metal Gear Solid is coming to the 360, though not MGS4, we get Raiden in an all new adventure. To paraphrase a statement I once heard about the mythical Starcraft: Ghost, “It’s Kojima, it’s gonna be awesome. However it’s Kojima, it’s gonna take for ever to get here.” I should be thrilled, but somehow…
• Microsoft is working on a motion based system, think Eye Toy 2.0. It’s codenamed “Project Natal”, which I suppose is no more silly than Wii.
• There is a cinematic for the new Star Wars MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which MUST BE SEEN!!! I’m seriouse it’s freakin awesome.
• Nintendo announced a solid lineup of new games that still don’t quite make me want to buy back the Wii. We’ve got two “new” Mario games, though one is a port of New Super Mario Bros., and the other is a sequel to Mario Galaxies, so new is apparently a rather loose term in Japan.
• A sequel to Wii Fit.
• As well as a new Metroid game being developed by Team Ninja. How Samus will be able to get in the torso section of her suit once the Ninja boys are done with her remains to be seen.
• And last but not least the game that made my mouth hang open almost as much as Star Wars: Old Republic did, Forza Motorsport 3. There is video out, and a release date of October. This looks great. For my money Forza is the best racing game out there, and yes I put it above the Gran Turismo series. This is one that I might actually pay full price for just to get it as soon as I can.

More to come as the great geek week continues.

I get that the universe of Star Wars seems to endure the same cycle of power all the time, and that the same battles just get waged over and over again, but don’t you think this looks a little . . . old? In KOTOR things looked different; ships looked like a different design, clothing looked like a different style, droids seemed slightly less advanced. It was a long time before the movie series, so they had to make it look like it!

Supposedly this happens in the same era . . . so why do the capital ships all look like Star Destroyers? Why are the fighters all TIEs? Why does the shuttle look EXACTLY as it did in the prequels? As awesome and utterly kick-ass as that trailer is, it just feels like “Star Wars: We Don’t Have to Pay People For Their Likeness” and not “Star Wars: The Old Republic”.