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Ghostbusters Day#8: Welcome Back, Mission Failed!

This session sees a return of some of the crazy imbalance of the early game. There are a bunch of good fights but the culmination is a ridiculously hard scene. I may be at the end of my rope with the game if I can’t get past this scene. It’s a shame the bad parts of this game have to constantly drag down the good. Spoilers within.

The answer to yesterday’s question is four; I saw the cut scenes four times. I made it through the fight by ignoring Ray’s tactic and just sticking close to him. Revivals were easy and thus the battle was won.

Ray and I go on to explore the graveyard, and during this time I get to use every way I’ve learned to destroy property to get around. I guess the ten minutes I spent burning hedges for my hedge-destroying achievement pays off here. There’s a puzzle in the middle of this section connected to what seemed like a sub-boss fight. The puzzle involved dragging a huge “key” (actually a bit of statuary) with my capture beam. I appreciate the idea of using the capture beam in a puzzle, but dear god that thing is awkward to handle. I get frustrated pretty quickly when I’ve solved a puzzle in my mind, but implementing the solution is a pain, and this puzzle is tripping the nerve. And the sub-boss fight is weirdly overhyped. There’s a sort movie lead-in for this new monster, and I kill it literally less than thirty seconds after it appears.

Lots of dialogue through this section maintains the pretty good quality the game generally has. There’s a cutscene where Ray realizes that Gozer can only have one form per dimension — I can’t help wondering if this is a setup for a final repeat of the StayPuft fight. And be warned, this next point is petty. Winston makes a line about how this isn’t the Central Park he remembers, and Egon quips, “You still have your wallet?” Okay, native New Yorker writing this blog. Mr. Ramis, that joke ceased to be relevant like 18 years ago. In case you haven’t noticed, NYC is one of the safest big cities in the world. And unfortunately most people have noticed, so the line is either meaningless or groan-worthy, depending on how long you’ve known New York. Let’s stay away from the cheap ain’t-NY-scary jokes please.

We catch up to the Ecto-1 stalled by another gate, with another gate opening puzzle with another unintuitive solution. There’s a strange pile of skulls under the counterweight. My random experimentation teaches me I have to blow it up with with my main missile to release the weight. What else would I think to do with a random environmental feature that I’ve never seen before? I guess that’s my why-is-this-feedbank-so-bad rant for this entry.

Another long run through some tunnels to finally catch up with the rest of the teams. It’s easy to get lost in there, because you have to destroy roots to clear paths, and of course the roots aren’t so obvious that you can always tell what you can and can’t destroy. But it’s short and the environment is interesting enough.

I should point out that there are fights all throughout these graveyard sequences that are pretty good. I die once in this whole section until the end. Busting ghosts remains the most fun part of the fight scenes. It just doesn’t get old for me. There is a weird bit when you come to a big tree for a ghost fight, and Ray yells out that we should destroy the flying coffins because they are spawning the enemies. That’s also an achievement, and figuring that I may as well get the stupid achievement as long as I’m here, I turn to start blasting me some coffins. But I literally do not see the coffins. I mean, if they were there, they were invisible to me. Oh, how I wish this game were clearer. But overall, the fights are well-balanced and fun.

Until the end, that is. There’s a gate blocking the Ecto-1 (you can almost hear the record skip here) which is impenetrable, but the hinges seem weak. Some stone angels fly t off of the tower, and we’re supposed to tether them to the gate to kill them and open it. Sounds good, except that the enemies are RIDICULOUSLY overpowered. They fly very high so it’s almost impossible to shoot them, and then they zip down at like light speed to strike you. I am knocked down basically every ten seconds. I don’t know what happened to the difficulty, but I die like six times in a half an hour here. At least they put the checkpoint near the beginning of fight so I only have to wade through a minute of cut scene before I can try again. I really can’t believe how hard this fight is. I’m giving up for the night. If I can’t get past it tomorrow, I may quit the game. This is exactly the kind of masocism that I don’t have time for anymore.

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