Ghost Rider [PSP]

While it wouldn't seem possible, the Hellcycle riding is much worse than the hand to hand combat. Players "drive" their cycle across nightmarish landscapes filled with gaping pits and low overhanging obstacles. Along the way, various enemies will either pop up in the road, or ride on modified propulsion to attack you. You can fend off these creatures with your chains, which you can swing to the left or right side of your bike, or with fired projectiles. These missions literally become poorly controlled shooting galleries, because the enemies that you face aren't particularly difficult to destroy. Driving the bike, on the other hand, can be an exercise in frustration because of its poor turning radius and lack of responsiveness to commands. Even worse, once you traverse the multiple racing tracks and defeat the idiotic elemental awaiting you at the end, you have to jump back on the cycle and traverse the same course in reverse. This repetitive driving is a horrible design choice for the game, which sucks because it takes up at least 35 percent of the title.

At least the designers put some attention behind the extras behind the game. Players will have the opportunity to unlock comic pages from the various runs of the Ghost Rider comic books, as well as concept art and designer movies. These are decent items to include, and for fans of the comics it's a nice amount of content. However, you'll easily unlock everything thanks to the leftover souls you collect during the game. What's more, you'll open up cheats, new difficulty levels and new characters to use for the main adventure. Unfortunately, the cheats really make the game extremely simplistic, and most of the characters play exactly the same way without any appreciable differences to their abilities. After blazing through the game (no pun intended), you'll never return to it again.

If only the visuals were good within the game, Ghost Rider might find some kind of technical saving grace. That isn't to be found here. Environmental details are very muddy and poorly defined and character models are particularly bland and unimpressive. The camera within the game is utterly abysmal. You rarely have control over where it goes, and when you do, it's extremely limited. The camera will often get stuck on game environments or even inside monsters, making it nearly impossible to see what's going on every now and then, especially if a lot of foes are onscreen. Add to that a lot of slowdown that crops up when you're attacking a group of enemies, and you have a game that wasn't well created.

The sound is a bit better, but not by much. The screeches from hellbats, the clink of Ghost Rider's chains and the booming explosion from the shotgun are standouts, but those really are about it with a forgettable soundtrack and tame effects. The voice acting isn't particularly memorable either. In fact, you'll probably find yourself tuning all of this noise out as you go through the game, especially because it doesn't add anything to the overall experience.

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