Greetings, Key Masters and Gate Keepers!

With the northern hemisphere less than a week away from entering into that official seasonal agreement with Mr. Sun called summer I realized that while a lot of folks will be going on vacations from work or enjoying non-school, my schedule will most likely be a little busier than it usually is throughout the rest of the year.  So, you may see more “Meetings” over the next several weeks over my slightly longer “Office” installments.  Of course, this makes the introduction of the new series “The Don Says…” even more convenient and special.

For today’s “Meeting” topic, I have only one thing I wanna talk about:

“Ghostbusters: The Video Game”

Now, this isn’t a full review.  I plan on doing a full review at some point, but I want to get at least halfway through the game before I do so.  No, this is just my initial impression of the game since it dropped yesterday.

My first impression: Marvin the Martian, when I was ten.

My initial impression of this game: Holy crap, I was giggling like a boy who saw the first movie for the first time.

Seriously, this game is instant fun right out of the case.  I mean, you get to bust ghosts!  With the original Ghostbusters!  Voiced by their original actors!  Or, you can do what I did and skip the single player mode and go right into the online multiplayer.  I ended up busting ghosts for almost two hours with our fellow Spwugnerian Krellion and another friend of ours.  Two hours!  And I’ve never been a fan of online multiplayer anything.

After our two hour ectoplasmic bug hunt, I did end up switching back over to the single player mode in order to see how it stands up.  I have to say, I’m really impressed.  It starts out just like you’re watching the movie – it opens with the Columbia Pictures logo, followed by the “cold opening”, which in turn go right into the opening theme song and the Ghostbusters logo we all know and love.  I have to admit, I got giddy when I saw this, and I hadn’t even started playing yet.

After a brief tutorial by Dr. Raymond Stantz himself and a little exploration of the fire house (There are easter eggs scattered all over the place in this game!  Look for the Sorrow of Moldavia and hear what he has to say.), I eventually joined back up with the rest of the GBs as we packed up, regrouped, got a grip, came equipped, grabbed our proton packs out the back and we split in the Ecto 1-B.  Our first job?  Back to the Sedgwick Hotel!

At that point it was incredible.  I felt like I was literally inserted into the film and interacting with these characters that I have loved since I first saw Ghostbusters (even the original Elmer Bernstein score plays throughout the game).  We were wandering around the halls of the hotel looking for ghosts.  You even get to select a mode where you get to wear the infrared goggles and used the PKE meter to search for full-torso apparitions!

I don’t wanna give too much more away, partly because I haven’t gotten that far into the game yet.  I will say that I haven’t gotten this excited about a movie tie-in game in a long time.  I have already found myself at work wishing I was at home busting ghosts.

I want to address one issue that I have seen pop up repeatedly in the regards to this game before I tidy up.  There has been some mudslinging towards the PS3 version of this game in comparison to the Xbox 360 version.  One site in particular (I don’t want to name names) gave the PS3 version a hard thrashing, including screen caps that did make it appear like the PS3 version of “Ghostbusters” was indeed greatly inferior to the 360 port.

I can tell you after playing my copy for the PS3 that those reports are crap.  This game looks great on the PS3.  I’m not sure where those screen caps came from (word is that they are from an early, unfinished demo), but the real deal looks miles better than we’re lead to believe.  Yes, I will admit that the 360 graphics do look slightly better in some regards.  But, the differences are so minimal that anyone who has this for the PS3 will not feel like they just got kicked in the wolfman nards.  So relax, folks – you’ll be just fine with whatever platform you chose to get this game for.

Unless you get it for the PS2.  I mean, really.  Who still gets games for that system?

The Don never studied.  He had the Cliff Notes.

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 6:15 am and is filed under Donnie Sturges, Fandom, Music, games, geek love, movies. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.