Ghost Hunter |Retro is a review

Today we are accustomed to a high level of executive projects for the PlayStation console. However, in such an eminent company whose exclusivity icon flaunts on the boxes of one of the best games of recent years and is already an absentee guarantee of quality, there were annoying misses. One of these pancakes received lumpy was Ghost Hunter from Guerrilla Cambridge

The previous projects of this studio were two parts of a cult Medievil, The cool remake of which came out recently, as well as very warmly met by critics and players Primal, whose engine was used in Ghost Hunter.

The game was announced on April 22, 2003. Soon, the first gameplay personnel were demonstrated at the PlayStation Experience. The release took place in December of the same year and was accompanied by mixed reviews from critics and weak sales. Whether the game deserved such a fate? Let’s figure it out.

The plot starts at the gates of the abandoned building of the Montsai school, within the walls of which during mysterious events, several students were killed during the graduation. Also, a team of demolitions, which was instructed to demolish this building, heard mysterious voices. Two police officers were sent to reconnaissance Anna Stell And Lazarus Jones.

And immediately we hear high -quality official dubbing, with well -chosen voices, which was rare for console projects of those years. It is not sacred, because it was necessary to match the expensive caste of the original, which included Joe Morton, which you can remember by the episodic role in the second terminator, porn – the star of the eighties Veronica Hart, And the protagonist was voiced by the notorious voice actor Rob Polsen, Whose voice is the hydroe in the animated series Spider-Spider 1994, Snafls in the second episode of the first season of Rick and Morty, and of course Rafael from ninja mutants turtles.

Partners decide to divide and the protagonist finds an abandoned laboratory in the basement of the school, where he stumbles upon a mysterious artificial intelligence and a large red button, which he certainly presses, thereby releasing the locked ghosts.

As a result, some Wilms Hokokmur – a mannered knight who speaks poems breaks out along with conventional ghosts to freedom. Hokokmur abducts Lazari’s partner Anna and goes to the astral world.

Now the main character must correct his mistake, save his partner and return all the ghosts back to the laboratory, and in this a ghost girl named Astral, who instilles in Jones, thereby giving him the ability to see the dead. And let’s dwell on the character Astral in more detail, since the character is registered quite deeply and has an extensive “inner world”.

Jokes jokes, but I do not represent the appearance https://casushicasino.co.uk/ of a character of this format in a large -budget project in 2019. Guerrilla Cambridge gets a plusk in karma for courage.

The plot tie does not shine with originality. How many times have we seen the divided partners and secret experiments conducted in the basement of the school/Psychlechebniki/Government Institution.

However, it is interesting to follow it thanks to an unusual mix of a cheerful and optimistic protagonist and a terrible atmosphere supported by a suitable sound – design. Not Dead Space Of course, but also very good. But soon, a cocktail of humor and horror stops working, as there are less jokes, and scare the player or create at least any tense atmosphere, the authors will not be able to.

The narrative constantly throws from side to side, like a ship in a sea storm. The scriptwriters are focusing with a serious mine on plot twists about government conspiracies, then they introduce comic characters who even more immerse the player in confusion and prevent him from understanding what he sees on his monitor, comedy or horror. One of these characters is Colonel Fortescue, who serves as a reference on Sir Daniel Fortescue, The main character of the franchise Medievil.

And the localization that I praised above is not quite perfect. Sometimes translators allow themselves frank liberties, miss the details, and sometimes replay, which also negatively affects the perception of the plot.

The first thing that catches your eye at the first launch is a gorgeous technical performance. For a game released on PlayStation 2, Ghost Hunter surprises with trifles that almost no one bothers today today. Cool facial animation, magnificent tissue physics, chic water physics, when shooting at which waves and spray are formed. It would seem a trifle, however Watch Dogs, Eveled after 11 years, this cannot boast of this, although the emphasis in the advertising company was made on a breakthrough schedule.

It was also pleased as the shot cartridges were implemented. No matter how much you shoot them, they will all remain on the floor, even if you leave the room and subsequently return. A trifle, but nice. However, all these technical bells and whistles are unfortunately leveled by the meager level – design and mediocre color correction. The whole game we will run along the gray-brown swamps, auto jackets and basements of abandoned buildings.

Ghost Hunter in the game process is clean, you can even say an elementary third -person shooter, although the game tries to show that it is something big.

In the beginning, our protagonist receives a plasmogan and an astral trap, on the likeness of the one that had ghost hunters and was used to capture ghosts. In the game itself, the capture of the ghosts looks like this: with the help of firearms or plasma weapons, we bring the “health” of the ghost to a critical mark, below which it will not fall and the only way to get rid of the poltergeist is a throw of the same astral trap that triggers cool animation and leading the player in full enthusiasm.

The catch is only that you have to repeat this action about 5000 times. Yes, this action must be repeated at every ghost in the game, and if at the very beginning you rejoice at the first to capture the ghost as a child, then by the end of the game from this animation you will begin to twitch the eyes. The situation could be corrected by various enemies requiring an individual approach, and they are here, for them there is a certain bestialar for them in the Hab of Locations, with a brief description, however, all enemies are killed and caught in exactly the same way, whether it is a giant, ease of crocodile or non -adventure brownie. And this repetitive process is accompanied by the same musical accompaniment. If in the first school location, the music created a tense mystical atmosphere, then in subsequent missions, ingenuous electronics plays, drilling out the brain. Sometimes it seems that the composer was just focusing one Semple.

The situation is not corrected by a few bosses, but the battle with one of them crashed tightly in my memory. At one point, the Alligator attacks the Lazarus, while spitting out even more monstrous giants, who constantly shouts “Granny. “.

It makes no sense to shoot at it and the boss itself causes damage to himself, hitting Slash with a crocodile with his hand on the buildings standing nearby. Then the battle moves to the neighboring cemetery, where the monsters begin to attack each other, and we, under all the same strange cries, can only observe this.

Although these exclamations are justified by Loro and the plot, I still responsibly declare that this is the most strange boss – Fight for my almost twenty -year game experience.

The shooting mechanics itself is made extremely strange. The main character cannot shoot on the run, and the aiming mode is turned on on a separate button, which makes battles with quick ghosts that use teleportation and chartge, simply unbearable. Often the player simply does not have time to turn off the sight and make a corruption, which leads to the inevitable receipt of damage.

Also in the game there are stealth sections made in the style of everyone’s favorite surveillance missions from GTA. In these game segments, Lazarus needs to follow a special ghost opening certain doors. And the animation of the flight of this ghost is extremely tightened, which turns a tense stealth into a languid expectation.

In this way, the player will decide simple puzzles, controlling the astral, which at least somehow dilutes the routine gameplay, forcing him to understand his brains and delighting his eyes with the beautiful appearance of this character.

Well, to finish the player, the last level is called upon, at which robotic artificial intelligence falls under our control. This location in its structure is a web -shaped scientific complex, with a bunch of empty branches and the absence of target designates. At the same time, the robot walks extremely slowly and if you went into some kind of empty empty corridor, you will have to deeply take off and curses the developers slowly resting back.

So what will be the answer to the question made at the beginning of the review? Whether the game has earned mixed assessments and meager sales at the start? For me more likely not. Yes, it is clear that the developers tried, and the budgets were considerable, but they simply did not succeed. It was not possible to withstand the balance between the comedy and the horror genre, as it turned out for ghosts and sinister dead, it was not possible to serve well, albeit a simple but potential plot, and most importantly it did not work out to create a convenient and bringing at least some pleasure gameplay. If I raised grades on a ten -point scale, then it would be six with a stretch, which for an exclusive Sony sounds like a sentence. Recent Days Gone and Death Stranding They will not let them lie.(excellent games, sales of which seemed to have been influenced by ambiguous reviews. I could be wrong)