Ghostbusters: Needs more Rick Moranis

No no no I said DON'T cross the streams, jerkface!

Who doesn’t love Ghostbusters?  The cheesy 80s music, the ridiculously over-the-top special effects, and the bumbling antics of Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz and Winston…  Churchill? (IMDB says his last name was Zeddmore.  Do they ever say that in the movie?  I certainly don’t remember it.) quickly became cultural icons from 1984 and well into the nineties.  Cartoon shows were created.  Delicious flavors of Kool Aid were spawned.  The merchandising potential was endless.

So then fast forward about twenty years when Ghostbusters writers Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd got the old team together and decided to produce a game as a sequel to Ghostbusters 2.  Aykroyd, Ramis, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson all gave eachother one final high-five and teamed up to do some of the best voice acting available in current generation games.  But don’t go busting out the proton packs just yet.  Ghostbusters has its share of problems as well, and you’re not going to be able to make them go away by stashing them in a containment unit.

Starcraft 2: Playing Nice with Others

Blizzards insanely large RTS took forever to come out and had quite a history to live up too.  The plot of Starcraft was all well and good but the reason the series is still relevant today is the fact that the game is well balanced enough to basically be a professional sport, and actually IS in Korea.  To say that Starcraft 2 had some high expectations is quite the understatement.  How’s it stack up?

The Old Republic is feeling old already

Oooohhhh Bioware. I love you guys, I really do. Between Knights of the old Republic 1 and 2, the Mass Effect Series, and Dragon Age, I’ve never had a bad time playing your games. As a huge Star Wars fan, I was super excited to see you were working on another game set in that universe. When I realized it was an MMO, I grew a little concerned.

World of Warcraft: Why Some Hate it and Some Love it

World of Warcraft players are serious. Well, some of them. Trying to purchase tickets to Blizzcon, Blizzards yearly event of Warcraft/Starcraft/Diablo nerding the f out, sells out within seconds. Actually, to be more accurate, in under a second. I was sitting at my computer at the ticket sales web page, clicking refresh two times a second waiting for the magical BUY TICKETS box to pop up. I was on the phone with a friend who was doing the same.

Starcraft 2 Beta: Partying like it’s 1998

Back in March of 1998, Blizzard Entertainment released a little game called Starcraft. At the time, I remember thinking “Starcraft? Come on Blizzard, try a little harder, you just took Warcraft and put in space!” Eleventy billion Koreans disagreed. Incidentally, I now disagree with myself.  So, when I acquired a beta key for the incoming Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, I was excited. I ended up loving the first games story and epic multiplayer matches, even though I sucked at them. The beta is multiplayer only, so this preview won’t be dealing with things like unit balance or hardcore strategies because I’m not good enough to experience either of those. Some quick race breakdowns and overall feel of the game shall suffice!

MMORPG: a love-hate relationship

I was much too young to really get wrapped into the old Everquest craze that swept the nation in the late 1990s.  Middle and high school life isn’t very conducive to picking up an online alter ego and slashing your way into glory, especially when there’s only one internet connection in your house, and its dialup.  Still, I heard the horror stories.  People, grown men and women who were arrested for child neglect because they kept forgetting to feed their children, whole towns of people up and quitting their jobs to become one with the Everquest machine.  It was a scary time, especially for someone who had been hooked on video games since the first time I plugged River Raid into the old Atari when I was five.