New Ghostbusters game

[Andrew NDB]

Downloading it now. It must be a fairly small game, at least for now -- it's only 10 gigs.

[Andrew NDB]

Played it for about an hour. I dunno... I'm not sure about it. The proton pack overheats way faster than it should, now you have to worry about battery life on the traps and it's not really super fun running all around the large maps hunting for 1 ghost. The match I just played, the player-controlled ghost was just hiding inside the bars of a jail cell and there's no way to pull him out of there so the clock just runs out and you lose.

It picks up pretty much right after Afterlife with the firehouse reopening and Winston presiding over it. So it is just Ray (whose bookstore is now RIGHT next to the firehouse, separated by an alley) and Winston, and random Asian dude upstairs and Zendaya downstairs who is like the new Janine. You'd think they could've at least bothered to get Janine involved.

One thing, talking to Winston it does confirm the Ecto-1A is a separate vehicle. He talks glowingly about the Ecto-1 which he's semi-restored since Afterlife, how it was "the first we had."

[Leo656]

Thanks for the update, I was curious about this.

[Andrew NDB]

Also, it's pretty buggy. It's annoying to chase 1 PC ghost around the large map for long periods of time only for it to continuously glitch out and kick you out of the game.

Beyond the little bits with talking to Winston and Ray the game feels like a pretty hollow affair. Very simplistic gameplay. Maybe they can adjust it as time goes on. If they'd just reduce the overheating on proton streams (you can only do like 8 seconds maybe before it completely overheats) and maybe let you slam the ghosts around like in the 2009 game, that'd be a lot better. 3rd person mode too.

[Leo656]

That's a bummer.

Much as I liked the one that came out in 2000-whatever it was, I was kinda hoping that it might be the beginning of something, maybe not more games with The Real Cast, I knew that wasn't gonna happen, but maybe more Ghostbusters games that were THAT good, even if they were like, all rando made-up characters working out of the McGhostbusters franchise locations, y'know? Like the gameplay was good enough to build off of even if you didn't have the movie cast, I felt.

Instead it's like "Yeah, we did ONE really good game to resurrect the brand name in the public consciousness... NOW let's go and do a bunch of crap forever, since the audience is so niche we don't have to put in any effort."

I hate it when that f*cking happens.

I mean "Sanctum Of Slime" was a good (if probably too difficult) twin stick shooter, but 1. It was a budget DLC game and it shows, and 2. Who the f*ck wanted THAT? Who actually plays twin stick shooters in the first place? Like it was "fine" but it was also a pretty transparent attempt to pump something out to keep the license out there.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

That's a bummer.

Much as I liked the one that came out in 2000-whatever it was, I was kinda hoping that it might be the beginning of something, maybe not more games with The Real Cast, I knew that wasn't gonna happen, but maybe more Ghostbusters games that were THAT good, even if they were like, all rando made-up characters working out of the McGhostbusters franchise locations, y'know? Like the gameplay was good enough to build off of even if you didn't have the movie cast, I felt.

Instead it's like "Yeah, we did ONE really good game to resurrect the brand name in the public consciousness... NOW let's go and do a bunch of crap forever, since the audience is so niche we don't have to put in any effort."

I hate it when that f*cking happens.

Now, the 2009 wasn't perfect and there was plenty of opportunity to improve and grow and learn from what worked/didn't, but yeah, I thought exactly the same. I thought for sure 2 years later we'd get a semi-sequel to that game, with rando Ghostbusters somewhere, with some combination of Ray, Winston, and Egon at least involved peripherally. Maybe it did OK, but not great, money-wise?

Between this game and the Scarface game (which picked up right after the end of the movie), there was like a renaissance of movies getting almost proper sequels in game form. A Dirty Harry game with Eastwood at the time, too, was being developed but fell apart, sadly. The Mad Max game, too, though sans Gibson (I can't remember if this was pre or post drunken pullover but I think post).

I mean "Sanctum Of Slime" was a good (if probably too difficult) twin stick shooter, but 1. It was a budget DLC game and it shows, and 2. Who the f*ck wanted THAT? Who actually plays twin stick shooters in the first place? Like it was "fine" but it was also a pretty transparent attempt to pump something out to keep the license out there.

Funnily enough, I just tried it while I was waiting for Spirits Unleashed to finish downloading because it's available on the PS Streaming. Eh. I couldn't quite figure out the controls in the time I was playing and apparently there's no traps, you just explode all the ghosts?

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Maybe it did OK, but not great, money-wise?


Funnily enough, I just tried it while I was waiting for Spirits Unleashed to finish downloading because it's available on the PS Streaming. Eh. I couldn't quite figure out the controls in the time I was playing and apparently there's no traps, you just explode all the ghosts?

1. I'm guessing that must have been the case.

I notice that unlike movies, it has become VERY hard to find the actual numbers on video game sales, post PS2 era. For example, Wikipedia is very transparent about movie budgets vs. box office, so if you wanna know at least a ballpark of whether a movie made money or lost money, it's very easy if not exact. But with games, no transparency at all. "How much did the game cost to develop? What was the marketing budget? How much revenue, total, did the project bring in? Sh*t, can you at least tell me how many COPIES it sold, even?"

No, no, all of that information is apparently more Top Secret than what the government knows about aliens, because you can't even find out how many copies a game sold anymore, let alone cost of dev vs. actual revenue or anything like that. You can find SOME info on This Game or That Game but actual hard data is pretty much impossible to find.

I'm guessing it's because after the PS2 era, development costs skyrocketed SO much that most games probably lose money after dev and advertising, even popular ones, and the profits are razor-thin to the point where even "success" isn't worth bragging about. Look at TellTale, they went under after ONE game underperformed despite having one of the most popular non-Call of Duty series in years with Walking Dead. Everyone assumed they must have been doing great, when in truth it was all smoke and mirrors.

So yeah, the only reason I can think of for no Ghostbusters follow-up was, "It did okay, but it cost a fortune and they couldn't justify the cost in a sequel." They most likely figured that even without the budget costs of having the movie actors, nobody would buy the game without them in it and so the whole exercise would break even at best and therefore be pointless to even attempt.

- Uh, yes, it's a twin stick shooter. You shoot things and they explode, that's it. It's fun but it's nothing substantial, just arcade stuff, not much more in-depth than stuff that came out in arcades 40 years ago, just shinier.

You'd honestly be grateful that's all it was and that there's no trapping of ghosts because in the later levels the entire screen fills up with swarms to the point where if trapping ghosts were even a mechanic it'd be impossible to do, you can barely move and shoot fast enough to even stay alive let alone anything else. I like the game but it is HARD near the end. That's why after I started it, I got stuck and never played it again for like 5 years or more, just figured I couldn't beat it. Then I did, and I was happy.

I think that hurt it, honestly. Very few people even care about twin stick shooters - which is why almost all of them are just budget DLC games, which makes sense anyway, they're not very deep as a rule - but it's just too hard for most of the people who'd wanna play it. First few levels are a breeze but towards the end it's like "F*cking CHRIST, man!"

- Also, please don't be a "Funnily Enough" person. Please please don't do that, man. You don't wanna know what I fantasize about doing to those people but it is all VERY "Hannibal".

[Andrew NDB]

So I gave Spirits Unleashed another shot last night. Nope! This game sucks. Not fun. You can only blast a ghost with a proton pack for like 5 seconds before you're overheating, leaving you to just keep chasing the same ghost around hoping you can somehow trap it before you overheat. The two games I played last night were both only me and bots, so it doesn't even seem like people are playing the game.