Ghost Rider - Playstation 2 (PS2) - Review

The other day my wife brought us home a surprise gift: The Ghost Rider Playstation 2 game.

And quite a surprise it was. As much as i like the Ghost Rider comics, I didn´t really paid attention to the recent movie, and the game sure wasn´t a priority to acquire. The working word in here is "surprisingly good".

So, the main character is Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcycle rider daredevil, which made a deal with the demon Mephisto to save his father´s life, and became a demonic flaming-headed motorcyclist with supernatural powers, but instead of serving hell, he decides to fight evil, which makes for a good excuse for a beat-'em-up game. :)

At first glance, the game it looks like a "Devil May Cry" clone, and at a second glance, it still looks, but guess what, I found the Ghost Rider even more controllable than Dante himself.

So, In "Castlevania" style you can whip the incoming bad guys with your flamin chain from hell, and you can collect their "soul orbs" from the ground as you would collect Gil (money) in the "Kingdom Hearts" game series, and you can use these souls to buy new attack upgrades in RPG style.

The graphics are really good, the backgrounds are nicely designed and detailed, which reminded us of "DIABLO" in the hell sequences, and "Desperados: Wanted dead of Alive" for the desolate "Western" like scenarios.

But what really took us by surprise was the sequences in which he was riding his bike, the Hell-Cycle. You control that amazing bike in roads in hell (ROADS, with good traffic signalization hehehe) in vast scenarios in hell, and later on, on Earth, facing obstacles to jump and dodge and shooting flame balls in your adversaries or whipping them with your chain.

Those road sequences were jaw dropping to us and granted us both a good laugh for long hours, and those obstacles really had us to really focus and pay attention when to dodge and when to jump.

In short, a great game, surprisingly good for movie-licensed game worthy for any gamers collection.