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Ghost Rider - PS2 |
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Written by Ben Mcfadden
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Thursday, 24 May 2007 |
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Ghost Rider is obviously based around the comic books of the early 70?s and has been created on the back of the blockbuster film released earlier this year.
The game is based around Johnny Blaze who sells his soul in order to save his fathers life, and whenever the blood of someone innocent is spilled he transforms into the Ghost rider. Johnny then ends up having to stop various demons and monsters from starting an apocalypse on the earth.
My first impressions of the game were not great. The graphics are not nearly as good as some of the new games being released on the PS2 of late ( God Of War 2 ) to name but one. The controls and fighting system is no the best either. You can perform a number of manual attacks to start with, these can be strung into any number of combo?s but they are not very impressive and become tedious after a short while. After you perform a number of attacks you can build up a special gauge which allows you to use a certain number of special moves which can be more deadly and devastating than the usually manual and normal attack combo?s. You also have a sprit gauge which when filled up allows you to perform the ultimate move - Penance Stare. However you kill enemies you are ultimately after one thing, there souls. The more souls you collect the more items and upgrades you can buy for yourself. These help to power you up and can be useful in the trickier levels towards the end of the game. The various ways of killing people are all well and good but even if you just run around using basic hits and combos you can gather enough souls to unlock just about everything in the game. The enemies are not the best either, random baddies taking the form of clowns ninjas and strange demons. Will the history and back catalog at marvel comics they could have at least drafted in some better enemies to kill.
The motor cycle sections of the game are probably the worst part. The riding of the bike takes a vest amount of effort but the fending off of the attacking enemies does not. When the pop up from nowhere you can swing a chain left or right to knock them off. Think Road Rash but not as good. So driving the bike, when your controlling or rather trying to control the bike all laws of physics seem to disappear. The bike wont turn properly, it will randomly go veering off for no reason and its response to controls is almost non existent. it?s a shame that riding the bike takes up more than a third of the game. As I said before the graphics are not great on this game and the camera angles are some of the worst I have seen. It rarely in a good position and you have very limited control over it making some sections extremely difficult to navigate well. As with the graphics the sound isn?t great, the soundtrack becomes annoying after about 5 minutes and the sound effects are over the top and tedious at the best of times.
The lifespan of this game is poor. Once you complete it you can unlock other characters which play exactly the same as Johnny. There is no real incentive to play the game again once complete.
I know Ghost rider is a firm favorite with comic book fans and the film was a success but I cant see people liking this game. It just doesn?t do the character justice and I think it could have been a lot better. I get the feeling it was rushed to co-inside with the release of the film.
 
Ben Mcfadden - Console-central |
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