Ghostbusters - Hands On [Wii]

26 Mar 2009 at 16:32:56 by Tim McDonald

When there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who're you gonna call? Derek Acorah! Or the Ghostbusters. When you're making the third part of a much-loved trilogy as a computer game, and need someone to handle the technical limitations of the Wii version and make a different game, who're you gonna call? Red Fly Studio!

Red Fly have the slightly unenviable task of turning what will probably be one of the most interesting releases this year – because, let's face it, everyone's going to pay attention, whether Ghostbusters turns out well or not - into a decent Wii game, without the technical wizardry possible on the 360 and PS3 versions.

The first and most noticeable change is to the graphics. The next-gen version is bright and shiny, with flashing lights and realistic depictions of the characters. The Wii version, obviously, can't match this, and thankfully doesn't attempt to. Instead, it goes for a cartoon feel, with the characters looking like caricatures of the Ghostbusters. Despite a few resemblances to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, I'm happy to announce that Egon is not strangely blonde.

While the games are developed in tandem, there are differences between them. They follow the same plot and, we'd imagine, mostly the same script, but levels don't play out the same. Level designs are unique to the Wii version, as are a number of enemies – again, playing into the cartoon feel the game possesses. No pun intended. One example seen involves a room of arcade machines, with 2D sprites moving jerkily out of them and requiring swift blasting. In the 360 hands-on we wandered through a dark and dimly lit tower, with the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man wandering around outside. Assuming we were playing the same part in the Wii hands-on (it was a tower, certainly, and Stay-Puft was around) it was markedly different, with bright colours and a very different layout, and Wiimote controls were used to get piles of marshmallow goo out of the way to open up further progress.

The Wii controls, obviously, are also different. The emphasis is on the Wiimote and nunchuk, with the analogue stick moving you around, and the Wiimote aiming and turning, as you'd pretty much expect. The bounding box seemed fairly close to spot on in the build that we played, which bodes well for the full version, as getting aiming and turning done right when they're both part of the same function seems to be the bane of most Wii developers' lives. There's a reticle on screen acting as your target pointer; moving it to the edge turns. The Wiimote, equally, is used to fire. The nunchuk handles throwing the traps, with the player holding down a button and making a bowling motion to lob one in front of you. It's all simple, and pretty much works as expected.

The emphasis on the Wii version seems to be to provide a fun play experience that anyone can enjoy, with various concessions made. It's certainly easier than the 360 build that was on display, but this may admittedly just be down to different difficulty settings, and that's not quite what I mean. For starters, death doesn't seem to be much of a setback – dying took a long, long time in one boss battle we tried in the hands-on, and it seemed to reset us to roughly the same place in the boss fight. Other than that, constant help is on offer.

The boss battle in particular took place in the library section of the game, when the Ghostbusters are tracking down the old lady ghost from the first film. Meeting her in the basement of the library, she began floating around the room and lobbing book-bats at me. Nothing I did seemed particularly effective, with her health rarely dropping, if at all. After my first, somewhat confused death, I gave the PKE goggles a whirl, and scanning her gave me the information I needed: the books floating around her were protecting her, and the shotgun-style weapon would be needed to take them down before dealing with her. With this information in hand, she fell quickly.

Those PKE goggles have a lot more use than just helping out in boss battles, though, as the game seems split between action and puzzling. Another section had a series of invisible platforms that could only be seen with the PKE goggles equipped, for instance.

Wrangling is, thankfully, still in. While on the 360, we pulled a trigger to slam things into scenery, the wrangling here involves a swing of the Wiimote. When a ghost is trapped in the beam, arrows will regularly appear, pointing to the nearest bit of scenery. Swinging in that direction slams the ghost into it, weakening them significantly. It's tactile and fun. And obviously, the scenery is fully destructible – to a lesser extent than on the next-gen version, certainly, but you can still smash everything around you, with no real impact on the game save for changing a rating at the end of the mission, and there are no “good” or “bad” ratings.

The other major feature touted was co-op, which we unfortunately weren't able to try out. It appears that a second player can join in the action at any point, restarting the game to the last checkpoint. How well it'll work remains to be seen.

While the next-gen version of Ghostbusters is the big Hollywood blockbuster edition, with darkness and scares to go with the comedy and a lot of action for the serious gamers, the Wii version seems squarely aimed at families and casual gamers who also remember the films. Everything's brightly lit and cartoony and there's plenty of help on offer for puzzled players. It remains to be seen how it'll appeal to the more hardcore players, and the combat seemed rather less entertaining than in our 360 hands-on, but if the Wii build we played is an accurate representation of how the full game's going to turn out, I suspect families will get a smile out of it.

Read our impressions of the PS3 and  Xbox 360 versions here.

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