PSP - Ghost Rider the Game

Format
PSP
Publisher
2K Games
Developer
Climax
Country of origin
UK
Genre
Scrolling Fighter

Ghost Rider the Game

By David Rasmussen
20th Mar 07

What? Do we HAVE to review another game based on a movie when 9 out of 10 games based on movies suck? Well… yes, we do, but hold on, hold on, there’s a good reason for this so sit tight and don’t fuss none.. Actually there’s no good reason for this but I watched the movie so I figured why the heck not.

I don’t need to go over the movie with you, but since we’re here let’s go over it shall we?
Based on the MARVEL Comics’ character of the same name, Ghost Rider tells the tale of one Johnny Blaze, who bargains away his soul to the entity known as Mephisto (Peter Fonda) in order to save his dad from terminal cancer… only he’s NOT called Mephisto in the movie for some reason… oh, and for his so-called “deal” with Mephisto it seems Johnny gets the short end of the bike as he may have saved daddy from slow death only to watch him die in an accident the very day he’s “saved”… nice one. After that young Blaze is bonded with the spirit of one Zarathos, only (again) the name Zarathos isn’t dropped and (after you see the Spirit of Vengeance for the first time) you may wonder if this really is Zarathos. Anyway he runs away from the circus and his childhood sweetheart Roxanne (who you’ll see again in a short bit).

Years pass and Johnny Blaze grows up to become Nicholas Cage, who has become maniac obsessive with doing stunts that should kill him (and yet don’t). This has made his famous, but it also made him abit odd. He regularly OD’s on jelly bellies, listens to The Carpenters almost religiously, and seems to have that aforementioned death wish (mostly to prove that it’s him doing the stunts and not the thing Mephisto put inside of him). Anyway during a stunt where he jumps over these Blackhawk Helicopters he runs into Roxanne’s breasts… I mean Roxanne again… ok, let’s just face it, sorry to the actress who plays Roxanne and all but how come you have zero personality and mostly just seem to be there to show off your breasts? Did you not want to complain about the lack of depth your character seemed to have short of just being there, shirt open just enough to see down your top? Any protest would have done, you know.

Anyway this is more about the escape of Mephisto’s “son” Blackheart than Roxanne’s breasts because Mephisto seems to be screwed (because Blackheart is hunting for this ancient contract tied to a Wild West version of Ghost Rider) unless he can get Blaze to take Blackheart and his posse’ of I don’t think I ever saw them in the MARVEL Universe throwaway characters as Ghost Rider… who seems to be designed after Ghost Rider II (the Ketch… thought it was Kvetch… era Ghost Rider as opposed to the Zarathos era version with a new bike that (in it’s non hellcycle form) seems to honor the original Zarathos Ghost Rider).
Anyway the rest is history. Oh, and this movie also dips into another Ghost Rider II era bit of prop by providing Blaze with his hellfire shotgun which (again) didn’t happen in the original Rider history.

But that was Ghost Rider the movie, which I just so happen think deserves a 3 out of 5 despite the fact not everyone is entranced with the movie. It could have been better, Roxanne could have been more well developed (not that way, I already complained about that way before didn’t I?) and the movie could have been scripted better. Still it did the Mexican hat dance all over the corpse of “you better pack your anti-depressants and a ton of chocolate before seeing this schlock” movie Bridge to Terrabitha, and really could we ask for anything more of the movie than that?

Sadly, however, this isn’t Ghost Rider the Movie. It’s Ghost Rider the game, complete with comic of a movie coming in the summer you couldn’t care two bits about… yeah, verily, because apparently somebody saw the original enough times to warrant a sequel we have… dread it, people, dread it… our first look at Fantastic Four : Rise of the Silver Surfer project (movie and game) with Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer #0 the mini-comic… Look! Up in the sky! A large weirdly dressed man in a funny purple helmet is pouting over something! What could be bringing the large funny dressed man in the purple helmet down… no, it’s not the distant third cousin of the capsule headed King of All Cosmos and he isn‘t bummed because he just saw the sales totals for “Me and My Katamari“… and he didn‘t see Bridge to Terrabitha either, no matter how much of a bitter pill that movie is! He‘s Galactus, boss character from 2006‘s big MARVEL game MARVEL Ultimate Alliance, and he must be bummed from the fact the movie we’re talking about ISN’T called Fanatastic Four : Rise of Galactus… yeah, must be it. Anyway along with the Ghost Rider the Game you got your first brief taste of Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer with this movie tie-in mini comic… which actually doesn’t so much tie into the movie as it ties into the game that is supposed to tie into the movie of the same name… yeah, that should make you all enthusiastic about this already… not. So, you know, because you’re here and all (and you could just as well go away but your still reading this) here’s your review of this comic that will soon become this up and coming (bleep)… I mean game.

Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer
First off note the cover of this #0 comic (12 pages long)… yes, this is the Movie Fantastic Four… though I think Thing here looks like a more traditional Thing than the theatrical Thing… oh, and that hooded glowing eye thing behind them? That must be Doctor Gloom… I mean Doom. Yeah. The guy who hailed from the Corporation of Latveria (not the country) and who should have been slapped around by the Ultimate Alliance Doom… or the Roger Cormen Doom… or both.

First off despite the title don’t look for The Silver Surfer (aka Norrin Radd) here, folks! The silvery naked cousin of the Academy Award isn’t here, folks, he won’t arrive until summer. In this not so mighty MARVEL tale (by the talents of Cahill, Chung, Ross & Ruffolo) we find a strange shadowy figure (who we later see seems to be wearing an astronaut outfit and might be some mysterious shadowy past foe of the Fantastic Four… bleah…) watches from above we see that Sue has lured Johnny and Ben into a trap to help her pick… flowers for her upcoming wedding to Mr. Egghead… I mean Mr. Fantastic. Obligitory female fan Lily shows up and that’s when the creators of this story decide to dredge up the first battle between the Mole Man and the Fantastic Four by rehashing it here… now… as he and his Moloids burst onto the scene and… you know… that story has been redone so many times by now probably I should think that everytime somebody does it Stan Lee should come to the offices and spank said offendor for redoing that story.

Anyway as the story ends in a “cliffhanger” (the game will probably start with you fighting the Mole Man… wait, didn’t you fight the Mole Man already in the original Fantastic Four movie game?) you see abit more of the shadowy peeping tom, and then see Doom in what looks like hell… which is I suppose why this is packed into Ghost Rider the Movie game and wasn’t included in the MARVEL Trading Card Game coming shortly. Whatever. Did this little comic make you all hopped up to see… yes, yes you are so hopped up to see… (waves hand)… ok, ok, let’s review the game already because no amount of smarmy remarks on my part will disguise the fact we’re just waiting on Spider-Man 3. Nobody is excited over this movie. Nobody.

Are you afraid of euro-trash vampires from hell? Are you creeped out by children with strange powers? Are you afraid of fear itself? Well if that’s the case why are you reading this? Go buy an XBox360 and play F.E.A.R.! I wish I could do that, but I’m going to wait for the Box to drop in price… that and I want a Wii anyway before that, it has all the freaky mindbending games.

The first (and, come to think of it, last time) we saw a great movie game based on a MARVEL franchise it was the first two Spider-Man games (makes me all enthusiastic about Spider-Man 3 if it holds onto being as good as the last two). After that the rest of MARVEL’s movies to games is (bleep)… what? The Punisher? That was based on the movie and it didn’t suck? Well actually no, no, no, despite the fact it stars Thomas Jane (The Punisher) and came out along with the movie? The Punisher game is, in fact, NOT a movie tie-in game (it‘s a tie in to the first story arc from Garth Ennis‘ run with the last Punisher ongoing series). Aka that game had zero point zero to do with the movie despite the fact it‘s star was in the game. Oh, yeah, and unlike X-Men the Official Game which also had nothing to do with it‘s movie it came out in conjunction with at least The Punisher game didn‘t suck… you can’t claim that about most MARVEL movie based games. Hulk the Official Movie Game? Hulk (bleep). Fantastic Four? I’ll talk about that later. Now add onto it yet another movie that should have done better but was more disappointing than innovative, Ghost Rider the Game.

Set after the movie, and NOT starring Nicholas Cage from what I can hear of the voice acting (though it sounds like the Caretaker and Mephisto’s actors do appear in this game), Johnny Blaze is driven into hell by Mephisto where he’s challenged (and you are given the lay of the land as to how to play this game) by Mephisto and the minions of hell. After going through hell itself you come up to Mephisto who, surprise surprise, is once again up the supernatural river without a televangelist. It seems bad things are trying to resurrect Blackheart and kickstart the apocalypse on Earth, and it takes Mephisto threatening your gal Roxanne (she with the halfway exposed bouncy chest) to get you going against such enemies from the Ghost Rider II era as Deathwatch, Blackout, Lilith (who looks like a hot goth chick in this game) and Scarecrow. From there if what you experienced in hell wasn’t enough to chill you, then the rest of the game should do just that.

Despite the fact that the game is set in five “worlds” with 40 levels total all these levels seems to suffer from a terrible shortness as the game motivates you to finish each level in 3 to 5 minutes apiece. Apparently Mr. Blaze could use some video gaming viagra (hellfire strength) since, well, despite the fact you’ll need to rehash these levels over and over to get the most out of them you’ll probably finish the game in under 10 or so due to the lack of overall content. Another lacking thing about this game is the explorable areas. The game’s walking scenes are more like fighting “arenas” than explorable levels (which suit’s the game since it‘s basically a button masher which only at times inspires some “thought“ into how you beat enemies, but more often than not allows you just to button mash your way through levels), with only a set amount of space to go through and x amount of enemies to button mash. Add to the fact that the level plays out the same time and time again as you replay and that severely limit’s the game’s replay value. There is the skull credits to earn in this game, in which you have to fulfill 3 requirements per level (besides the obligitory passing of said level to earn one skull) in order to earn skulls you can ply towards character upgrades or unlockable bonus content, but this is limited as you only have three things to do here.

1-First off there’s soul energy gathering. This is usually set at a high number and takes lots of work (usually stringing together lots of combos and using your Retribution/Penance Stare powers a lot).
2-Second is time. 3 to 5 minutes per level… like I said, a lack of “staying power” is encouraged in this game.
3-Finally there’s the wildcard skull, usually unlocked by accomplishing the same dozen tasks over and over again which further removes any variety or depth of content from the game.

The second part of the game is the “racing” element, which is the inspiration for the game’s “online” content. You can’t do the walkthrough fighting levels (pointless since they’re so shallow and devoid of any real content) but you can race with up to three other people online… good luck finding anyone to race against. This, even in story mode, is not that great, which is made worst by the fact that you will not have the easiest time controlling Ghost Rider in bike mode… somehow this mode lacks the fine touch of a well thought out racer, and you’ll end up all over the course and taking headers off of the side or missing jumps way to easily.

There is the comic content here, and I don’t just mean comic covers.
First off there’s the story, told in comic book format. Yes, yes, last time that happened it was the game scribed by Chris Claremont (X-Men the Official Game) and that game sucked. This one? According to the box it was scribed by Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti… so, does this mean Ennis wrote and Palmiotti did the artwork for the comic cutscenes? Eh… how should I know? Check the credits, unless the game’s credits is longer than the one in the instruction booklet then there is NO mention about what specificl either Mr. Ennis or Mr. Palmiotti did in this game… come to think of it, I can’t tell if this was written by Mr. Ennis since, well, his best work seems to me to be in the M for Mature range and this is a T for Teen game so… well… you figure that one out. These two, by the way, weren’t the only ones shy about having their names in the credits because none of the game’s voice actors are listed either… wonder why.

The second comic connection to this game is the extras.
Besides the few game/movie stills and artwork, as well as “movies” of the game’s developers talking about the game, which is about as boring as you think it sounds, there is the comics. Oh, and the game couldn’t afford to show a single clip of movie footage… not nice. Back to the comics, instead of just showing you Ghost Rider comics they’ve actually gone and takes a dozen or so issues and put down 6-8 pages from each into this game, giving you a mini “library” of Ghost Rider comic book content to chew on.
Sadly, however, there is only ONE piece from the classic Johnny Blaze era. Most of the comics seem to focus on the Ghost Rider II Dan Kvetch (Ketch) era of the series than on the original classic era Ghost Rider comics. That’s sad since those would have made for the most interesting unlockables.
There is unlockable characters, yes, like Classic Ghost Rider, Blade (sorry, not Wesley Snipes) and Ghost Rider 2099 (you remember him) but otherwise that’s about it in terms of halfway decent unlockables… it’s alright, but without Ghost Rider the Movie cutscenes, behind the scenes clips, actor interviews and so forth this movie tie-in game falls short since it seems to have forgotten to actually tie into the movie it’s supposed to be connected to. A common complaint I have with MARVEL movie tie-in games of late it seems.

Overall Ghost Rider is a simple button masher that shouldn’t be bought until it’s sitting in a bargain bin for about $10 or so, then the game would actually be worth the price you’re paying. Otherwise I’d see only die hard Ghost Rider fans buying this game… because it’s not all that fun otherwise. Still if you can buy this on sale then it would be a nice game to add onto your collection. Yes, it’s not the worst button masher I’ve seen, but it’s just not worth $30.

And yes, that is also why they stuck the Fantastic Four comic into this game and not on, say, a rerelease of the original Fantastic Four video game… that game sucks. Please, nobody I know of is waxing poetic about Fantastic For the movie Video Game, and there’s a good reason why… it’s a tired button masher that doesn’t even have the appeal of, say, Champions of Norrath (from who some of it’s game mechanics can be pointed at in popular MARVEL game X-Men Legends and recent Ultimate Alliance).

Long story short (and yes, I know, too late) this is possibly a pick-up… from a heavily discounted bargain bin. Otherwise just wait, Spider-Man 3 is coming and I have higher expectations for it’s console release.
Ghost Rider the game slash Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer #0 gets two therapy sessions for a maniac depressive Galactus out of 5.

-- David Rasmussen 20th Mar 07

PSP Ghost Rider the Game Images