Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) (Remastered)

 

I've wanted to watch this movie since it came out, but it wasn't available on any of the streaming platforms that I subscribe to, and oddly wasn't even available to rent. It finally started showing on TV, and my DVR picked it up. It follows Egon Spengler's (Harold Ramis) grandkids as they move into a small Oklahoma town that is (surprise!) haunted by a demon. In the process of fighting the demon, they discover who their grandfather was and his relationship to the Ghostbusters.

This movie is pretty decent on its own, meaning if you've never seen the original Ghostbusters movies it is still worth watching. However, it if full of references to the original movie, and thus is quite a bit of fun to watch for fans of the original movies. These references peak at the end of the movie, when the original Ghostbusters appear to help Egon's grandkids fight the demon, including a hologram version of Harold Ramis, who unfortunately passed away in 2014.

The other star of the show was the famous Ecto-1 car. The recent Lego version of the Ecto-1 I built was based on the car in this movie, which includes some interesting upgrades compared to the car from the original movies. I was delighted when, in a scene chasing a ghost down the streets of the small town, the kids drop a remote controlled ghost trap from the trunk of the car. This trap and the ability to drop it out of the trunk are featured in the Lego version of the car as well, which is super cool.

As if this weren't enough Ghostbusters nostalgia, I also had a chance to play Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered, albeit briefly. Originally debuting in the PS3 era (and was early enough in the PS3 life cycle that it also debuted on the PS2), it was later rereleased in a remastered version for the PS4. While the game features gameplay that is a bit clunky and cumbersome, it has a ton of Ghostbusters nostalgia, which I found amusing. Unfortunately, shortly after I started playing it was removed from the Playstation Plus library, so I didn't get too far into the game.

God of War: Ragnarok

 

Ragnarok starts right where 2018's God of War ends. Midgard is now experiencing Fimbulwinter, the weather event that occurs right before Ragnarok is to begin. As Kratos and Atreus (Loki) figure out how they can stop Ragnarok, Atreus is on a quest to figure out his past and who he is to become. Subsequently, several stages feature Atreus as the playable character. Atreus begins working with Odin, who is responsible for Ragnarok. This angers Kratos and causes harm to his relationship with Atreus. They eventually resolve their differences, and team up with all their buddies from the 2018 game, including Mimir and Brok, to defeat Odin and prevent Ragnarok. Mimir and Brok are a couple of my favorite video game characters, and of course Thor makes several appearances in the game as well, which is neat.

The gameplay is essentially the same in Ragnarok as it was in 2018's game - a lot of hack and slash, with occasional puzzles mixed in. The one big difference is that when playing as Atreus, he has the ability to shift into various animals to fight during battle, which is cool. Generally I'm fine with the hack and slash fighting, though sometimes it is nice to be forced to think about the best way to attack an opponent. The game occasionally makes you think about this by flashing a blue light when an opponent attacks instead of a red light, meaning you should shield block first before attacking. This game does not do this as well as other games, however, such as Ghost of Tsushima. 

I want to spend a bit of time talking about the puzzles, which I find mildly annoying. I distinctly remember having this awesome battle with a larger than life wolf, which was immediately followed by a puzzle involving pulling chains and freezing a door in place, and thinking that all of the awesomeness of the fight was immediately thrown out of the window by the slow paced and boring puzzle. A few of them I couldn't figure out and had to look up their solution on YouTube, which was also kind of annoying (maybe I need to just be more clever?). They're not as annoying as the puzzles on Immortals Fenyx Rising, but I think in a game that tells such a grand story they can really slow the pace and storytelling. 

The story is where this game really shines in my opinion. Everything about Norse mythology is grandiose and larger than life, and Ragnarok does a great job of telling its story and displaying the awesome characters. It is one of the better game series that I have played in terms of story telling and character development and is the part of the game I enjoy the most. 

On a side note, the game developers for JEDI Survivor could learn a lot from the God of War games in terms of stage creation. A lot of the stage layouts between the games are similar, in that you are locked into where you can go. Because of how the stages are laid out, with subtle symbols indicating the correct way to go, not once did I have to look up where to go to advance the stage.

NHL '94 Rewind

To borrow a quote from Billy Madison, NHL '94 for the Sega Genesis is the greatest video game of all time. OK, that may not be entirely true, but I do think it is one of the best sports games ever made. I distinctly remember dominating this game on the Genesis (as well as the slightly upgraded NHL '95 on the PC). Everything about this game is just great - the sounds, the visuals (I said I was a sucker for 8 & 16-bit graphics), the gameplay - all of it is just perfect. Even just hearing the menu music is enough to incite nostalgia. When you take the ice and hear the organ music, or the unique grunts of the players, it takes me back to 1994 and playing the game on the Genesis on our old CRT TV. 

I had read about NHL '94 mode for NHL '22, where you could play the modern game in the style of NHL '94. I almost bought NHL '22 because of this, but decided against it. I had no idea you could buy NHL '94 Rewind as a standalone product. Once I discovered this a few weeks ago I immediately paid the $10 for the game.

I'm happy to report that Rewind faithfully recreates NHL '94, or at least my memories of the game. Everything is there - the menu music, the organ, the grunts, and the gameplay. It is a near-perfect of an all-time sports classic. I only have two minor complaints. The first is that I wish you could play an entire season with a team, not just a playoff. However, if I remember correctly, that feature also did not exist in the original game. My other complaint is that I wish you could use the rosters from the original game. When I first played Rewind, I was disappointed that the Red Wings had their current players (from 2022) and not Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov. I was really hoping to dominate on Rewind like I did on the original with the Red Wings. Other than these two complaints, Rewind is great and well worth the $10.

My State of Mobile Gaming in 2024: Part 6 - Rollerdrome

 

I've been interested in Playstation Remote Play since the beginning when it launched on the PS4. Initially, however, I struggled to find a great use case for it. In 2023, I got the idea to use the service to play games on the weekends that I might not necessarily take the time to play otherwise (i.e. putz-style games). The release of the Portal solved a major issue that I had with Remote Play, and that is the inconvenience of playing games on the iPad. While it it neat that you can do this, you can't exactly curl up on the couch with the iPad in one hand and the DualSense controller in the other to play games. Despite this issue being solved, I still wasn't sure about how much I would use the Portal. It turns out that I have had no trouble keeping an agenda for the portable device.

I do use the Portal to play putz-style games such as Unpacking. These are games that I am interested in but do not want to necessarily spend my main gaming time playing. They are perfect for playing while sitting on the couch with a (sports) game on in the background. However, I've been able to expand my agenda quite a bit beyond this. Because of Playstation Plus, games are continually being added to the service. While some of these games I definitely want to play, there are a lot of games that I am interested in checking out but not sure if I want to dedicate my main playing time to them until I do a trial first. The Portal has been perfect for this situation, as I am able to fire up the device and try out these games while on the couch with Sarah. It turns out that there are a lot of games that meet this criteria, and in the 2 months that I've owned the Portal, I have not run out of games to play. I featured Rollerdrome in this post, as it is just one example of a game that I played on the Portal that I likely would not have played otherwise. Rollerdrome is pretty awesome, and some of these games that I started out with on the Portal I've decided to continue to play on the big screen in the basement, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake. Some of these game demos come in the form of actual Playstation Plus Trials, while others are the full game that has become available on Playstation Plus. A few of these games I've had downloaded on my PS5 for over a year without playing. The Portal has been a great way for me to experience and play games that I'm interested in but not sure if I want to dedicate a large amount of time to play. 

Unpacking

 

I'm a bit of a sucker for games with 8 & 16-bit graphics. With that being said, once this game was released and received positive press, it was on my radar to check out. It eventually came out for Playstation Plus, and so at that point it was a no brainer to download and play. I initially played the first couple of stages before placing the game on pause. The game is perfect for tinkering around with on the weekends (more on this situation in a future post), and once I got the Portal I picked up the game again and was able to finish it.

The game follows the life of a female protagonist. Starting as a young girl, her family moves into a home and your job is to unpack her room. As she grows, she moves into different environments that you have to unpack, including an apartment, her boyfriend's apartment, back to her parents house, and then into her first family home. Every stage begins with a set of boxes that you click on to reveal the contents, and you place the items into their correct locations. That's it. It's a perfect game to use a 16-bit graphics style, and as mentioned above, it's a great game to putz around with. It did get a bit repetitive and tedious by the end, however. I think the game length is perfect, and if it were any longer I probably would've bailed on finishing the game. The hardest part is that some of the items are difficult to figure out what they are, and thus it's hard to know where they go. But otherwise it is an interesting game and worth the few hours it takes to finish.