Visionary Nexus Network

A day late thanks to both laziness on my part and other circumstances, but hopefully that doesn’t stop this edition from being a good one. Keep in mind the sardonic remarks will still be in high supply, especially since I’ll be listening to the Ghostbusters theme song on a loop while writing this entire thing. Hopefully I finish before I go crazy. Anyway, onwards towards this week’s biggest game releases.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game

WHO YOU GONNA CALL? GHOSTBUSTERS. LOUDER! WHO YOU GONNA CALL? GHOSTBUSTERS! Yes, a game that sent fans of the series into delirium once it was announced has now been released during the dry part of the gaming season, and though it’ll probably fall under most people’s radars, it should be a worthwhile summer gaming distraction, especially for fans of the series. Despite how often I am typing out the famous song lyrics, I am actually not a fan of the series, as I know little about it. If someone were to be kind enough to enlighten me, I’d appreciate it.

Now, before you go: “Goddammit. Another of my favorite franchises brought to the gaming screen to be raped like Indiana Jones was raped by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Say it ain’t so!” Be aware: This game is not a bad game by any means.

For starters, the script was penned by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, two of the original film writers, and it remains almost as funny as the movie itself. Most of the actors reprise their roles too, ensuring that at least decent performances go in towards making the game(which you just lost) seem as close to a quality Ghostbusters work as it can.

Throughout the game you and your perennial ghost-busting coworkers will traverse the locales of New York City(is every game based here now? My goodness), battling against all the paranormal activity haunting the area. Armed with your proton pack, you’ll forage around fighting, wrangling, and trapping ghosts using each of the pack’s four modes containing capture streams, shock blasts, homing beacons, and streams of beautiful green goo.

The single player experience isn’t very long, but a decent size for an action game. The multiplayer is surprisingly well done; but really, how could going around capturing ghosts with pals NOT be amazing? The best released game of the week, Ghostbusters is a faithful adaptation of the series into a pretty good video game, which is great considering how many poor adaptations of series-based games are out in the marketplace for the same price.

Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

Not much to tell about this one; it’s a collection of the best pre-Guitar Hero: World Tour songs fitted with the additions of bass, drum, and vocal tracks on top of newly made guitar sections. Why they couldn’t release these songs as downloadable content is beyond me, especially since they could probably wrench more money from us that way like certain other developers(BUNGIE).

Again, very little to say. If you enjoyed the older songs like Killer Queen, More than a Feeling, or Monkey Wrench and would like to play vocals, drums, or bass on them, pick this up. Otherwise, it brings nothing new to the Guitar Hero series, and should be left waiting until the next edition.

Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers: Quest for more colons on the title: Quest complete!

Hopefully you noticed the ARCADE thing on the top of this game’s box art. If you didn’t, allow me to point it out now:  The word ARCADE is written on the box art. What does this mean? Simple: there were very few games worth mentioning released this week and I could barely manage to scrape together the ones needed to write this article, and to round out the four I needed to mention a game released on the XBOX LIVE Arcade, but that’s okay considering this is the second-best game released this week. Which, in a way, isn’t okay, and is in fact very, very, VERY sad.

But yes, onto this game’s preview. Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers is a game adaptation of the famous card game(which I recently learned how to play). Now, I didn’t have enough Microsoft Points to buy the game(I believe it costs 800, which equates to about $10), but I did try out the trial version and was impressed by the presentation. The graphics are top notch, especially for an arcade game. The cards look as if you actually had them in the palms of your hands, and attacks are accompanied by simple animations of varied colorful beams striking your life points as they count down from 20 to 0.

The gameplay is faithful to the actual card game, and the pre-made decks are simple enough for anyone to pick up and play. Text guides help you understand the mechanics of playing the game as you go along, but never serve to hold your hand all the way through, ultimately leaving you with the choice of what to do each turn. Of course, if you’re an experienced player, you can just turn these off and destroy the computer yourself. The game is apparently up to date with the latest Magic cards released; though you won’t know for sure until you get through the campaign and unlock all the cards. That’s really the only drawback, considering that most people would rather just buy it to play with their friends online so as to not have to spend so much money on the actual cards instead.

Still, for $10, it’s a great game with a great value, and should be a good pick up for anyone with some extra Microsoft Points laying around. Of course, if you don’t have XBOX Live, I guess you’ll just have to spend your money on the actual cards instead. But at least you won’t have to defeat 15 CPUs to get them all.

America’s Army 3

The game made by the US Army to attract gamers to their ranks has failed in its mission twice before, never meeting the high standards that other army games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor set. The verdict this time: more failure. You’d think the Army would be the best at making Army games considering they’ve actually gone through the REAL THING but it’s actually the complete opposite! Yes, it is free to play, so assuming you’re bored enough to actually download this and play, all you’d be wasting is your time instead of both time and money. Then again, time is money.

Awful graphics, poor level design, bad lag, server issues, and glitches that make Superman 64 green with envy all serve to underline that free games aren’t always the best thing, especially if they’re developed by a branch of the US Government. If there’s a good argument for no free government health care, this game is it. Ultimately, a boring and unfinished game that doesn’t compare to most of the army games out on the market. Leave the military games to Infinity Ward, US Army.

PS: Just because you are a downloadable game does not excuse you for not having any box art available on Google Images or any gaming sites(I had to make the box art at the title myself). Think of the reviewers, US Army!

That’s it for this week! Stay tuned for next week(which should be on time, Sunday as usual) as we cover next week’s new releases.

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