They say videogames pull families apart, but in the case of the ironically named Law family, a Wii certainly helped bring a mother and her children closer together. It’s been alleged that three kids aged between 13 and 18 stole a Wii from a neighbor, and then pawned the item with help from the mom of one of the thieves.

16-year-old Patrick Early told police that his mother, 41-year-old Maxine Law, knowingly pawned the stolen item for the boys at a local shop. At the time of writing, it’s not sure whether or not a formal charge has been made for the mom, but she was arrested and cops are now trying to ascertain whether she did it.

Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or your family ever seen a spook, specter or ghost?

If the answer is “yes,” the professionals, the Ghostbusters, would recommend that you call them right away. Thankfully, they’re very accessible these days, with their multiplatform game, Ghostbusters: The Video Game. We’ve read some thoughts on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, but what if you want or need to exorcise evil spirits through your Nintendo Wii?

Have no fear, because rookie Ghostbusters Ashley Davis and Anthony Burch are ready to believe you. They’ve played through the entire game to help you in your time of need. The first reviewer gives her take on the game without influence from the other versions (though she is working on getting through them), while the second examines how the different versions stack up, having played both home console games in full (he has way too much time on his hands).

Hit the jump to see their thoughts, and whether or not they continue to constantly quote the movie throughout the review (they can’t help it, they’re nerds).

Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Wii)
Developer: Red Fly Studio
Publisher: Atari
Released: June 16, 2009
MSRP: $39.99

Ashley Davis

All the various versions of Ghostbusters: The Video Game is about the closest thing we’ll ever get to a Ghostbusters 3, and fans of the property ought to rejoice its presence, as it is one of the more solid movie games to have ever been made. Although the Wii version feels more like a five hour long playable Ghostbusters cartoon than anything else, that does not make it any less deserving of the franchise name.

It gives off a lot of the same nostalgic vibes that its source material has for the past 20 years, with some great dialogue and a new storyline that could have been ripped directly from another movie sequel. There are several visits to familiar locations, and many of the faces to be seen are ones that we’ve all seen before, but because we’ve never had the chance to fight alongside the Ghostbusters before, it all feels somewhat new again. The AI behind the Ghostbuster crew isn’t the ideal ever, but they’re pretty good about helping out with huge crowds of enemies and not getting in the way. The game is separated into several small chunks of story, with a boss fight and a trip back to headquarters each three levels or so. This makes it all very easy to pick up and put down at one’s leisure.

The controls are as simple as simple gets. You move with the Nunchuk, aim with the Wiimote and press B to shoot. The D-pad scrolls through the three different weapons (Blast Stream, Slime Blower, Shock Blast) and the PKE Meter. Each of these has a secondary function that can be performed by pressing A. The learning curve needed to become a great Ghostbuster is not at all steep, which makes it simple for anyone to jump right in and play like they’ve been busting ghosts all their lives.

Perhaps the best part of the game is that the whole thing can be played cooperatively. A friend can join you for some split screen action whenever you start a new game, continue a saved game, or go back to play a previous level. Running around, trapping ghosts and solving puzzles with your various guns is pretty fun, especially if you have a friend to do it with. In addition to helping each other out, you can slime one another and cross your streams (this, of course, results in instadeath) just for kicks. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t let the second player stray too far from the first, making it hard to split up and do more damage. on bigger maps. Otherwise, the game is very well-tailored to fit in two players, with enough enemies and things to do for everyone. It even gives turns to each player when they’re slamming around the same spook.

While Ghostbusters is generally good times, the game does have its flaws. There were a few slight problems with the game’s otherwise great control scheme. As is common with Wii games, these problems concern the few actions that are mapped to motion controls. I had some problems getting the game to register my flicking up and down. Left and right were quite a bit superior, but the down motion is needed to get through some puzzles near the end of the game. My problems with getting the flicks to pick up made these portions a lot harder and frustrating than they needed to be, but thankfully, there were only one or two situations where this issue tested my patience.

One very small issue with the gameplay itself is that there is never much of an incentive to use anything other than the Blast Stream in most combat situations, and the puzzles that do use the others aren’t terribly varied. For the better part of the game, I used the Blast Stream and its secondary, the Boson Dart. The latter weapon is a bit too powerful, knocking off a good chunk of health off of any enemy you may encounter. I would have liked a tiny more variation in weapon usage both in and out of combat, if only to help keep the combat from growing stale.

From the lowly (in regards to power) Slimer to the biggest specters, all of the ghosts in the game must be weakened, slammed around, and then roped into a standard ghost trap, thrown by a press of the Z button. Some enemies do need a little dousing in slime or dark matter to begin off with, but the other weapons are never used for more than a few seconds before switching back to the old standby. There are a scant few cool puzzles using the other two guns, but they really could have done so many more neat things to integrate them superior with the gameplay. The PKE Meter, on the other hand, is very intuitive and useful. When equipped, it simply leads you to the nearest supernatural activity. A press of the A button will equip you with PKE Goggles, enabling you to clearly see the paranormal goings-on around you. This can be a hidden ghost, items that can be interacted with, the weak points of a boss, and even invisible platforms that are poking into the real world through the Ghostworld.

The boss fights lend a huge hand in keeping things interesting too. Sure they’re all dragged into a trap at the end, but the weakening process differs wonderfully from one to the other. In one boss fight, the player must shoot the boss’s projectiles back at it, and then rip out one of its many tongues with the capture stream while it is recuperating. In another, one can only injured the boss by destroying the safety net under it and knocking it off the wall, causing it to hit the ground hard. Every one utilizes a different weapon as well. Most of the boss fights are a great reward for getting through an area, even more so if you find yourself getting tired of the same old song and dance on the way there.

The biggest annoyance by far is the game’s collectibles, which are pages from Tobin’s Spirit Guide that are strewn all over each level. Each time you pick one of these pages up, regardless of whether or not you’re in the middle of a fight, the screen switches over to the Guide to show you what’s on the page you just found. There’s no reason for this screen to pop up each time you get a new page when you can access the guide at any time from the pause menu. It jolts you out of the action for nothing. I eventually started to avoid collecting the pages altogether, as they aren’t much use other than for 100 percent completion.

On the graphical side of things, there’s nothing too special here besides the nice, cartoony style of the characters (although the designs have questionable origins). At best, the game looks enjoy it belongs on the Playstation 2, and that’s really a shame, as much better can and has been done on the Wii. There’s also some noticeable slowdown while fighting lots of respawning, flying enemies, which happens a few times near the end of the game. The score is taken straight from the movies, but isn’t too varied. On the other hand, the dialogue is humorous and the voice acting top notch (with the exception of Alyssa Milano’s work, which is rather uninspired). Some of the lines differ from what’s spoken to the subtitles, assumedly to keep the game safely nestled in its E rating. There are enough references and familiar lines grouped with some great new quotes to make any fan delighted.

The Wii version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game is by no means the perfect game, but it is a great movie-to-game adaptation, and a very fun and pleasing way to spend some time with some old friends if you’re a Wii-owning Ghostbusters lover. As this is a very character and story driven videogame, if you’re not a fan of the movies or the humor within them, you may not be as tolerant of the easy and somewhat repetitive gameplay as those who dig the characters and story might. The intuitive gameplay, interesting boss fights, and ability to co-op are plusses for all gamers, while the simple difficulty level and short game length are some of the negatives. It could be a buy for the biggest Ghostbusters fans, but I would definitely advocate this game as a rental first for most.

Score: 6

Sega is looking forward to a world without proper controllers, believing that so-called “gestural” gaming presents a significant chance to the company. Personally I can’t wait for Sony and Microsoft’s pathetic “me too” motion fad to f*ck off and die in a ditch somewhere, but that’s why I’m not a game publisher.

“Being the largest third-party publisher on Wii we obviously have good gestural experience so for us I have the ability to see an chance to get a land grab on some of our competitors by taking our head begin in gestural gaming and evolving it,” states Sega’s Gary Dunn. “I was blown away by it, both systems offer us so many opportunities to do great things with videogames,” stated Dunn of the competing technology unveiled at E3 for the first time this year.

“I immediately now want to make another Virtua Tennis. There’s so many games and possibilities. I want to go away and lock myself in a dark room with some of our cleverest chaps and see what we have the ability to do with it. We’ve got to look in different directions to nearly throw history away and it requires a whole new way of thinking. We’ve got to ask what can we do with this, because completely different genres of games could open up.”

In addition to the satisfaction of dragging that last bite of delicious popsicle off of its stick and the pride that fills your body after spelling your name with the trail of a sparkler, the summer months also bring about one other inevitable feeling: the emptiness of not having many videogames to play.

For some odd reason, publishers like to release all their major games at the beginning and end of the year, leaving the middle, extra sunny months a veritable gaming release ghost town: one filled with movie-licensed tumbleweed and dusty, shovelware saloon doors.

But there is still hope!

Today marks the midway point of the year, so what superior way to prepare you for the upcoming months of gaming desolation than with a list of the best videogames of 2009?! Using this list, you can start playing some outstanding games that either fell off your radar earlier in the year, or are ones you just haven’t had time to get around to yet. Whatever the reason, these first half of 2009 games should not be missed!

Grab a nice, cool glass of lemonade and hit the jump for a list of fifteen games we here at Destructoid think are worth checking out during this slow, lazy summer: our list of the best videogames of 2009 … so far.

Here they’re (in alphabetical order):

Bit.Trip Beat (WiiWare)

Bit.Trip Beat has no “characters.” It has no story. It might even have the most “basic” graphics of any game on a current-generation console.

But, man, the game is ridiculously fun.

Playing like a weird hybrid of Pong, Rez, and, I don’t know, Dance Dance Revolution, Bit.Trip Beat is a funky, one-of-a-kind, and mind-numbingly addictive experiment for WiiWare. Using the tilt controls of the Wiimote (no buttons needed!), players are asked to catch “beats” as they cross from one side of the screen to the other. The premise is basic, but seeing the way the game perfectly combines its lovely visuals with the outstanding music is exhilarating. You really need to play it to truly comprehend the game’s genius!

Choice review excerpt: “Bit.Trip Beat feels like an intentional deconstruction of videogames as a whole, with all forms of complexity stripped away in favor of delivering a simple, concentrated experience.”

(You can read the full review of Bit.Trip Beat right here)

Picked as a favorite by these editors:

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Wedbush Morgan’s report on the videogame industry seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Yesterday, we spoke about how Pachter predicted that Sony would surpass the Xbox 360 in six years’ time, and today we have another nugget of gold from the analyst’s massive document — talking about how a hi-def Wii could seriously hurt the PS3’s comeback chances.

“In our view, if Nintendo can offer such a device by year-end 2010, it will be in a position to seriously damage Sony’s chances of a comeback this cycle,” claims the report. “We would expect publishers to support such a move, given that the cost of porting an Xbox 360 game to the new Wii Plus HD format would likely be lower than the cost of building a ground up Wii game (we estimate under $5 million).

“Should Nintendo be able to convince publishers like EA and Take-Two that the Wii Plus should be supported by the entire EA Sports catalog and by the next installment of Grand Theft Auto, it should be in a position to successfully convince consumers that the Wii Plus is the last console they’ll ever need to purchase.”

I’m sure many more stories will come out of this report, which is currently being scoured by bloggers all over the Internet for more crazy quotes from the industry’s greatest guessworker. What do you make of this one, though? Would Wii HD take the wind out of Sony’s sails, and would it mean we’d never need another console?

source Destructoid

It’s already been confirmed twice over that Metroid Prime Trilogy comes in a sexy box and is a hell of a deal — $49.99 for three Metroid Prime games on one disc for the Wii. That’s real talk.

The PlayStation 3 might will be chugging away in third place, but that hasn’t stopped industry analyst Michael Pachter from declaring that Sony’s black box o’ Blu-ray will overtake Microsoft’s beige box o’ breaking-all-the-time.

“We think that the PS3 will capture significant

The Munchables is a children game, but you know what? Almost all games are children games. I recently had the chance to play Dead Rising, GTA 4, and Halo 3 with the less-than-ten-year-old kids of some “progressive” friends of mine, and it became abundantly clear to me how appealing “mature” content is to kids. They loved those games, far more than My Sims, or Mario.

So yeah, like nearly each videogame ever made, The Munchables will likely appeal to kids, but unlike GTA 4, it will probably also appeal to non-progressive parents who are looking to purchase a game for their kids that’s “safe”. “Games of this “safe” nature tend to suck, as they’re usually made for as tiny money as possible and the understanding that few people of discerning taste will ever play them.

All signs point to the upcoming film, G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra, being a miserable disaster. Rumor is that the film received the lowest scores ever in the history of Paramount during a recently private test screening. Ouch.

The Electronic Arts game on the other hand, I suppose we could give a pass to… provided it’s at least a relatively amusing action game, right? I mean, I like Snake-Eyes and I like Storm Shadow, and I wouldn’t mind kicking ass with either of the two. If the game is even slightly fun, of course.

Well, it looks like EA is bribing gamers with nostalgia. The publisher has announced that the game will feature a number of unlockables, including four of the classic PSA’s from the original 80’s cartoon series. Additionally, 75 file cards – modeled after the ones you used to cut out from the action figure boxes — will be scattered throughout the game. Oh, and there’s some behind-the-scenes stuff included, too.

Does that save G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra? That remains to be seen; I’m still not over what they’re doing to Cobra Commander. I mean, that’s not Cobra Commander, okay? This is Cobra Commander. Seriously.

G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra is slated to hit each console ever this August, including Xbox 360, PlayStation, Wii, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, and mobile phones.

Resident Evil fans with itchy trigger fingers might have something to add to their holiday gift list this year. According to retailer GameStop, Capcom’s Wii-exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is set to hit shelves on November 17 of this year.