 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| Ghost Master by Mischief Maker 12/21/2008, 9:52pm PST | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| Ghost Master.
Someone was asking about "Overlord" a little while ago. I have not played that game, but this game is cheaper, and probably better. Ghost master (PC version) is a flawed game, for sure, but it's also a much more successful "evil god game" than Dungeon Keepers 1 and 2 ever were. The premise lies somewhere between "Beetlejuice" and "The Frighteners." You're an entity controling a hand-picked team of ghosts performing a haunting. You place your ghosts at various positions in the house, then assign energy to them via a freedom-force esque powers menu. All your ghosts share a common energy bar that is based on the total level of fear of all the mortals in the stage. Just like a movie, at first your ghosts are limited to little unnerving actions like rattling chains or blowing fuses, or making the sound of distant thunder. As your victims get more on-edge, you ramp up the power levels until all chaos breaks loose, with junk telekinetically flying everywhere, a thunderstorm raging outside, and glimpses of cenobite-esque ghosts ripping themselves in half. The catch here is that you can't just place ghosts anywhere. They have to be fettered to an object with compatible properties. Weaker ghosts have have broader fetters, like a single room, or an electical device, while the heavy hitters need rarer items like an object used in violence, or a corpse. So using the more versatile weak ghosts, you herd the mortals to the heavy hitters who finish them off. Each mortal also has a hidden conscious and unconscious fear, so a certain type of ghost or scare (like the spider ghost on someone afraid of spiders) will be exceptionally effective, and the game encourages you to return to levels again and again, experimenting with different combinations of ghosts to clear the house the quickest and get the highest score. There's also some humor to be found in the details of the fetters, like the fact that the washing machine in the basement of a sorority is an emotional fetter. The environments are also impressive, just for the sheer about of detail and moveable objects scattered around for your ghosts to fling around. ("No human would stack books like this) While the scares are for the most part PG in nature, there's still a sadistic thrill to be had from watching the pshing sceptic fall to pieces within seconds of wandering through your expertly positioned trap. But I did say the game was flawed. Every level has one or more trapped ghosts that need to be freed by solving a basic puzzle. These puzzles are blatantly unfair, giving misleading clues, and requiring a knowledge of game mechanics that is never given to the player (for example, one ghost needs to be freed by breaking a dreamcatcher. Using one wind weather power will not succeed. You need to use wind powers from two different ghosts in the same room at once to break it, and the game never bothers telling you that weather effects combine.) Seriously, there is no dishonor in using a walkthrough for this game. Worse, some puzzles require you to have a specific mortal wander into a specific room, and since mortal movement is for the most part random, this can translate into long periods of waiting until the mortal randomly performs the task so you can get back to the fun part of scaring the crap out of everyone. What's worse is that the scoring system is heavily skewed in favor of these shitty puzzles. Scaring away a mortal is worth 1000 points, going the extra mile and driving them insane is 2000, while freeing a ghost is on average 25,000 points, and score translates into XP to unlock new powers. Worse, you get a score multiplier for finishing a level early. So if you want to get those cool high-level abilities, you can't say "fuck it" and ignore the trapped ghosts, and all the while you're sweating bullets over whether the time it takes for this puzzle to get solved will drop your multiplier from 3x to 1x. The all ghosts mod is a must. Choose "UK version with bonus mission" if you buy from gog. Oh yeah, it also has ghostbusters in it. |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
