Fridaybuster!

I spent today with a simple goal: No Big Plans. I've been busy everyday with a specific goal in mind. Now, I'm not saying that I'm planning on wasting a day, I just wanted to... drift. Let the wind take me where it wanted. I called up Mike to see what he was up to today. He said not much, and we decided to meet up for lunch at Taco Bell.

After lunch we went over to his place and played video games. I don't do this often, mostly cuz I get annoyed when I don't get an aspect of a game, or if I lose too much. Luckily Mike is a gamer of excellent skills, and can keep me from having a bitch meltdown. We played a few games, with me mostly sticking with as many 2-player games as possible, because even though he said it would be cool if I wanted to play a single-player game for a while, that hardly seemed fair.

My honorable stance lasted for about as long as it took me to realize he had the new Ghostbusters game.

I felt like a jerk, but I had to play this game. I love Ghostbusters. To an intense degree. Of course I loved Venkman (Murry), who couldn't? Egon was great. Ray is most likely me. But in fact, and I think I was in smaller group here, I was a Winston fan. I liked his everyman approach, and how he was down to take on anything. I don't know, I've always liked Ernie Hudson.

So I'm not giving away anything by saying that Ghostbusters is a giant fan-service. One huge love letter to everybody that has ever loved this movie. It really comes through. You can tell that Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis had fun making this game. There are genius nods to the two movies, with some great fresh dialogue, and the simple joy of having any version of this world at all is a victory in of itself. But its not just ANY version, this is a really good version. With everyone involved in the first two movies back and kicking ass.

The game mechanics get a little hard to work with, though. Some aspects left me a little frayed around the edges. But the little problems are easy to ignore due to the simple fact that I'm fighting the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man! I'm a fan, so it was easy to please me. But they pushed for more than just pleasing me. They wanted to give me the third movie that they never made. They know they dropped the ball in that department, and this game is their apology.

I more than forgive them... I thank them.

-Nate