Features// Developement Snapshot: Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider’s graphics are one of the games strongest points – they are deeply impressive for a PS2 game. Johnny himself is essentially a skeleton with flames instead of skin; when he comes across braziers, he sucks up the flames, which replenish his health.

The visual style is derived very heavily from the comic-book series – Climax did deal with the team behind the film, but worked much closer with the comic-book team, cherry-picking the best characters from the comics. Story-wise, the game starts roughly where the film ends.

Climax is also developing a PSP version of the game which, again, was pretty convincing. Lead designer Sam Barlow says: “The whole structure has been reworked for the PSP. It has the same fighting engine and locations, but each has been split into several discrete chunks, so you can play for five minutes at a time.”

Perhaps the most interesting and successful aspect of Ghost Rider on PSP is the multiplayer motorbike-racing. Cannily, this has more than a whiff of Mario Kart to it (albeit a dark, gothic take on Mario Kart) – which leaves one wondering why nobody has attempted to bring that much-loved Mario Kart gameplay to the PSP before now.

There are three multiplayer modes on the PSP – straight racing over a set number of laps, with plenty of power-ups on offer, an Eliminator mode, in which the last player is eliminated at the end of each lap and Survivor, in which all players are being eaten away by a deadly virus, whose effects are accelerated if they crash or if they are shot by competitors.

Some of the power-ups are gratifyingly insane – one, for example, initiates a period in which your competitors find their screens inverted, which makes driving somewhat tricky, although not as tricky as another one which warps the entire screen like a crazed acid trip. You can pick up short-lived invulnerability power-ups which negate everything thrown at you by your competitors.

Overall, Ghost Rider is a decent effort which is easily good enough to rise far above the general miasma in which you ordinarily find games-of-films. It does have one aspect which won’t win it plaudits, though – it’s pretty short, with five chapters split into five or six levels each; Climax quoted a disappointing game time of 10 hours. Nevertheless, the game should satisfy those who are into the film and the comics. Perhaps it’s not quite time yet to mothball your PS2.