NYCC: Ghostbusters Impression and Hands On
Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 12:24pm by Will
This weekend I was lucky enough to attend and cover the fourth annual New York Comic Con, which was located at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. During the Con I met with a lot of wonderful developers who talked with passion and excitement about their games. There I met James of Red Fly Studio; Red Fly Studio being responsible for the upcoming Ghostbuster game on the Wii. James and I talked about a lot of things, story wise aspects, control aspects, and finally puts the nail in the coffin about the Wii version being a PS2 port. So if you want to know the what is going down in ghost busters hit the jump.
As we all already know, the Wii version of the Ghostbusters features unique cartoony deformed characters style as compared to the hi-resolution PS3 and Xbox360 models. However, the Ghostbusters on the Wii makes up for that in terms of actual gameplay. As the controls are uniquely mapped to the WiiMote and Nunchucks and makes excellent use of the controllers built in gyroscopes.
The first thing that should be noted about the game is that, when you are using the Wii controls it actually feels like you are in control of the gear made by Egon. Holding the Wii mote also makes it feel like you are controlling a proton pack, as you point at the screen and slam the ghosts around with the beams. Also, when you make a bowling motion with the nunchuck the character you are playing actually throws out one of the ghost containment traps. While the proton pack can destroy most of the early weaker enemies, when you see ghosts similar to slimer you have to stun them and capture them with a trap. Which makes it feel like you are using the equipment to the best of your ability and are an actual Ghostbuster. Along with this equipment in the game, there is also a few experimental devices that are added like the “Paragoggles” which works like an advanced EKG meter.
The Paragoggles are one newer item that the player will use to solve most puzzles and use to track ghosts around the game. As they allow the player to see things that are not normally visible in the material plane. This adds another puzzle element to the gameplay, which can also freak out someone playing with you when you are actually doing co-op mode.
The game features a very well done Co-Op split screen mode from what I heard from the developer. Although, not much information was released on how it will work or who will be playing who. The game allows for two players, which includes another new rookie character. As with story mode you are playing a rookie Ghostbuster, and each player will be playing either a (female or male) character; it was not specified if a selection of gender would be in the retail version of the game. It was not released who you would be able to play with in the 360 or PS3 version either.
The Wii version was developed to exploit the console’s potential. Instead of making a down port of the PS3 and 360. Red Fly Studio decided to make a totally different game that follows the same script of the other versions. You should look at it more like two different directors, using the same script to make a movie. The plot and story is there, it is just told different through the use of visual styles. The game still follows the same script which was wrote by both Dan Akroid and Harold Ramis. The Wii version will also feature all the same voice acting as well.
As with all systems and game development, Red Fly studio actually ran into some technical problems during development. The main problem was that the Wii didn’t have any shaders for them to use. So it posed a problem with transparent characters and various other graphical elements. However, they came up with an interesting solution and used some tricks with the fixed-function texture pipeline. So they worked really hard on that by messing around with the accessing of various in game assets. This helped with the various ghosts and some of the level design, adding a very detailed shine to some of the levels. However, the main difference between the PS2 and the Wii version is that the PS2 version is a port of the Wii.
The Playstation two version is actually a downgraded port of the Wii version, that has had some things cut out of it. Mostly the motion controls, and some story, gameplay and graphical elements have been changed. However, the superior version will be on the Wii. I made sure to double check this information with James of Red Fly, who set the record straight.
I would like to take this time to thank Atari and James of Red Fly studio for meeting with me at Comic Con, and I honestly cannot wait to play the full version when it is released. Is anyone looking forward to it now that we know that it was not just an upgraded port from the PS2? That it was the first version, and features superior graphics and controls?
February 9th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Hmmmm…. this game looks promising. I’ll have to keep a close eye on this one.
Regardless, I’m happy to see that at least one developer is breaking the PS2 -> Wii port trend. It’s nice to see that this was built from the ground up as a title designed for the Wii.
February 9th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
…but did you have fun? I’m glad to see it works fine and read on mentions of the tech and details on the port, but did you enjoy it?
I’d think “stylized vs. realistic” would be a more appropriate term as opposed to “high resolution” (Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm on the PS3 is both beautifully stylized AND high-res).
Aside from that gripe, nice to hear someone who finally gets the Wii and down-grades to the PS2 instead of having a downgraded port pass on to the Wii and looking just as ugly. Can’t wait for a more in-depth hands on soon.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
that looks AMAZING! i think i’ll need to play this on two systems. the cartoon look really comes together in these screen shots. and it’s brilliant that this is a wii and not a ps2 version.
just remember, don’t cross the streams!!
(it would be bad)
February 9th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I’d rather have something like this, a smart original take on a game, than a dumbed down port ala Dead Rising. You’ve actually got me a bit excited about Ghost Busters now. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of using a DS as the EKG meter?
Anyway, as for all this talk of the Wii not having shaders, well it’s true in the current sense as they aren’t readily programmable but as far as I know, the fixed hardware tools include out of the box support for environment maps, specular maps, bump maps (presumably 1 dimensional) and EMBM (enviorment mapped bump mapping) as well standard diffuse textures, stencil effects, alpha channels, texture manipulation etc with great freedom for recombinations. Devs often make out that employing even these basic effects required the reinvention of the wheel on the Wii, many sporting basic low res textures or, horror, flat shading, when I know full well that the Flipper in the GC was designed with many non-flexible elements specifically to make employment of these ‘common’ effects extra easy to implement and extra efficient per silicon. In fact I’ve seen most of those ‘complex’ effects pop up in N64 games. There was a quote from one of the ARTX designers, where to paraphrase the guy said “with our platform, the most basic Gamecube games should be graphically more advanced than the most advanced PS2 games with little to no effort”.
Look, I know Redfly ain’t Nintendo, and I’m fully psyched that they’ve got this stuff working and it’s looking cool, but don’t forget that other ‘ghostbusters’ game; the 8 year old Luigi’s Mansion, sporting glossy surfaces, full scene reflection, multiple local lights casting volumetric shadows, bump mapping, complex transparencies, bloom and others.
On a small side note, the Wiimote and Nunchuck don’t have gyroscopes. They each have 3 axis mems accelerometers and infer a guess at orientation by measuring the direction of acceleration due to gravity with additional corrections from the IR input. This is why the Nunchuck is OK at pitch and roll but abysmal at yaw, and why direction sensing goes out the window with constant movement (as gravity gets masked by additional accelerations). With clever maths and a knowledge of human anatomy (applying inverse kinematics on accelerometer data I guess) one can infer what motion by the gamer is intended. Wii motion plus is set to add some high grade mems gyros.
February 9th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
also, good lord i’m jealous that you got to play this
February 9th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
I wondered when companies would start to port wii games to ps2 instead f the other way around. I’m really surprised that so few have done that at this point.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
[...] Impressions here [...]
February 9th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
[...] Preview Here [...]
February 9th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
So I wonder is anybody on earth going to buy the PS2 version?
February 9th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
anyone who doesn’t have a Wii or a 360.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Doesn’t the screen shot reminds you of Luigi’s Mansion? L$#@?L!
February 11th, 2009 at 10:16 am
@ elmer:
“Look, I know Redfly ain’t Nintendo, and I’m fully psyched that they’ve got this stuff working and it’s looking cool, but don’t forget that other ‘ghostbusters’ game; the 8 year old Luigi’s Mansion, sporting glossy surfaces, full scene reflection, multiple local lights casting volumetric shadows, bump mapping, complex transparencies, bloom and others.”
THANK YOU! Now if only developers would wrap their tiny little brains around the fact that the Wii is built on the Gamecube architecture. Why should these guys have trouble implementing effects that Nintendo pulled off easily with the Gamecube?
February 18th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I’ll end up owning three versions of this game. I’m a huge ghostbusters fan. I’ll end up with the Wii version for the unique-ness. The 360 version for the more cinematic style, and the DS version so that I can play on the go.