"Ghost Rider” for the PlayStation 2 marked a first for me.
After putting in about 45 minutes of play in my first sitting, I decided to catch some Zs and pick it up after work the next day. Upon returning to the game, I found myself dumbfounded – I couldn’t remember a single detail about the previous night’s gaming session.
Now, this could only mean one of two things. Either I’ve hit senility at the tender age of 23 or "Ghost Rider’ is a completely forgettable game.
After further play, and the ability to remember my old elementary school locker combination (17, 43, 7), I’ve determined that it’s definitely the latter of the two.
The gameplay in "Ghost Rider" is split up into fighting and driving levels. The fisticuffs are a complete rip-off of "God of War,” even going so far as to include the exact same control scheme and level-up system. The developers must not have been content in just copying one game, so they added elements from "Devil May Cry” – grading you after each level and doors being sealed by translucent red stuff until you defeat all the enemies in the area.
Now I bet you’re thinking, "Neil, how can that be a bad thing? Those games featured action so totally intense that it made me want to punch myself in the face repeatedly,” and you are certainly correct in saying so. After all, I punched myself in the face several times while playing them.
The problem is, the A.I. is so crummy that "Ghost Rider” is just plain repetitive, not to mention frustrating. The fighting levels basically consist of you going from room to room, filled with the same boring enemies that repeat the same boring patterns.
In a vain attempt to employ strategy, certain bad guys are surrounded by force fields. The only way to break them is by hitting a variety of combos to max your combo meter. If you get hit, however, it resets and you have to repeat the whole process over again. Since the enemies love to blindside you from off-screen, the whole exercise can get pretty frustrating.
Then we get the driving levels, which are essentially a poor man’s "Road Rash” with projectiles and jumps. At first I didn’t mind the Hellcycle sequences, but after a while they lost their luster. These levels consist of you driving on a linear racetrack, killing enemies and avoiding obstacles, which are usually marked with road signs.
Now, consider this for a second: the first time Ghost Rider jumps on his bike is in the cozy confines of Hell. So are we to believe that in order to avoid any unwanted auto wrecks, the Devil put up road signs? I guess that makes sense; I can see how that might tie up the court system down there.
Combine the terrible gameplay with overly dark and grainy visuals, a horrible story and voice acting and bad audio editing – cut scenes are far quieter than the in-game sound – and you get one awful package. At the end of the day, "Ghost Rider” is just a poorly-made game designed to cash in on the popularity of the film. Who’da thunk it?
WHAM! Rating: |
2 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen) |
Official Web Site: |
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