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Ghostbusters
According to developers Terminal Reality, the reports of Ghostbusters’ unfortunate demise were greatly exaggerated. After Activision Blizzard passed on the game after gobbling up previous publisher Vivendi Games, executive producer Brendan Goss was a bit anxious about the project’s future—albeit temporarily. “While there was a certain amount of nervousness, that went away the morning that it became public knowledge and it was announced,” says Goss. “I probably had 25 calls that day from publishers saying, ‘Who do we need to talk to?’”
With input from the original cast and a script co-written by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, why did Activision decide against publishing such a seemingly sure thing in the first place? According to Goss, it was a matter of the game not gelling with the company’s overall philosophy. “’How are you guys doing a movie IP without a movie,’” Goss recalls Activision asking. “It doesn’t make sense—it doesn’t fit our model, so you’re not going to make the move over to Activision.’”
Fortunately for fans of the beloved franchise, Atari won out in the courtship between several other publishers, and the game is set for a 2009 release—just in time for the 25th anniversary of the first film. “We know that Sony has huge plans for that, and also Atari,” says Goss.
While there wasn’t much new content shown since I last saw it, it’s looking as good as ever. Players can expect to spend an hour or more in each of the game’s eight levels, with the library level on hand taking almost two to complete. Wrecking things with the Ghostbusters’ Proton Packs is so much fun that we expect to squeeze even more time out of each destruction-prone environment.
With the game originally set to come out this fall, I asked Terminal Reality if they’ve been taking it easy with that extra time. “We’re definitely not sitting idle,” says producer Michael Fetterman with a laugh. Goss says having those extra months of development time has been a godsend for the team. “It’s given us the opportunity to go back through—as every developer wants—and have more time to put in more polish and to also take a look at some of the feedback that we’ve had and identify if there’s low-hanging stuff that we can do that the fans will really respond well to. I think we’ve got some tricks up our sleeve that people are going to be really pleasantly surprised by when the game does come out.”
Ghostbusters (Wii)
The Wii is also getting a version of Ghostbusters, but it’s definitely not a port. The game features the same story as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version, but it includes new equipment, ghosts, boss creatures and areas. It’s packaged together in a Pixar-inspired art style. As you’d expect the game highlights the Wii’s motion controls, and it’s pretty effective. It took a little while to get used to the controls, but once I got the hang of them I was busting ghosts like nobody’s business. Trapping spirits is a pretty complicated process. First, you have to snare them with your proton beam (by pointing and zapping them with the Wii’s remote). Unsurprisingly, ghosts aren’t exactly the most cooperative subjects—they try to escape your grasp by rushing all over the place. Arrows light up on the screen showing you which direction you need to pull to maintain control. After a while, your beam will turn blue, which means it’s time to slam them into the ground. Once they’re dazed, you toss the trap under them with a bowling motion (using the nunchuk) and they’re all yours.
Red Fly Studios managed to include some fairly destructive environments into the mix, which means that your stray shots are bound to at least hit something. As one of the developers told me, if you put the game down for a few weeks and can’t recall where you were when you return to it, you can at least break a bunch of stuff until you do remember. There you go.
Source: http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/200812/N08.1205.1642.33139.htm?Page=2