Ghostbusters - Ghosts of Quasi Accessibility
Ghostbusters the game is the incredibly highly anticipated FPS/RPG hybrid modeled after the smash hit movies. In what some people are calling "Ghostbusters three," you assume the role of the newest Ghostbuster in a story written by the original Ghostbusters writers. Additionally, your favorite actors such as, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and more, return to reprise their roles with voiceovers for the famous characters.
The opening scenes are reminiscent of the old Ghostbusters movies; the creepy museum in the middle of New York City suddenly releases a shock wave of ghostly energy, followed by Ray and Egon discussing the new equipment levels, while Peter does his usual one-liners. They are surrounding the new Ghostbuster, you!
The conversation is then interrupted by the news that Slimer has escaped during the blast and you have to help the Ghostbusters recapture him. This is where the game begins. As explained above, this is a first person shooter hybrid, which means that you will be running and jumping while aiming your proton stream.
You will earn equipment along the way to aid you with capturing ghosts but what is more impressive is how Atari stayed true to the nature of Ghostbusters. All of your favorite characters are back and you can interact with most of them. You still have to throw traps and keep the stream on the ghost while the trap does its work.
In an era where gamers want things to be easier instead of challenging, it was nice to see a game that still keeps the original idea of the intellectual property intact. After all, what would be the point of being a Ghostbuster if all you had to do was throw a trap and click on a ghost?
Having said that, there are some troubling areas for Ghostbusters because the game was originally designed for console play; playing the game on the PC was an afterthought.
Dan Irish, CEO of Threewave Software, Ghostbusters' multiplayer component says "our focus was on making the console version the best that they could be." And this seems to be true, the focus was primarily on the console versions as you can tell by the controls.
When moving your character with the mouse, the game has a built in acceleration, which is most likely a feature meant to be used by analog joysticks. However, although the sensitivity of the mouse can be adjusted, the acceleration cannot.
Game accessibility - PC
The PC version of Ghostbusters is relatively accessible by the AbleGamers standards. First, the options menu includes closed-captioning, which is a great sign that the developers thought about accessibility. Next, mouse sensitivity is adjustable as well as the speed of vertical and horizontal movement.
There are no colorblind options. However, for the most part, the addition of symbols beside colors should not be necessary. The ghosts are usually extremely obvious and in the situations where one must recognize the color of the ghost, it has either shape shifted or given other clues that could be picked up by those who cannot see certain colors.
With the closed captioning option on, all of the important voice work is written as text in an easily readable font. For deaf gamers, not being able to hear the sounds of the proton packs turning on or the trademark siren of Ecto-1 takes away something from the immersion of the game. Terminal reality put a lot of effort into the sounds of Ghostbusters.
However, no sounds are imperative to being able to play.
For the mobility impaired, Ghostbusters accessibility will depend upon what you can do and how much you can do. One-handed gamers will find it difficult to capture ghosts due to the need to keep the beam on the ghosts while throwing a trap and dodging incoming fire. More so than the usual first-person shooter, Ghostbusters relies on keeping the firing button held down and on target whereas in most first-person shooters, targets can be shot at in bursts.
Using only the mouse is possible for both one-handed gamers and those who can only use the mouse, is possible but only with the use of voice recognition gaming software or outside assistance.
Jumping is not necessary, as with most FPS titles, jumping is useful but not necessary to the ability to complete the game successfully. Another troubling mouse issue is that acceleration cannot be adjusted. That means for those that have trouble with accuracy, the acceleration will make aiming difficult.
In addition, there are no mouse settings that can be changed in the ini files to increase the speed for those with limited movement. There are no settings to control anything to do with the mouse in the hidden settings file that most games use for personal settings. This is disturbing for those that often need to change the settings in those files.
Many sources are reporting that aiming is overly difficult in this game, more so than it needed to be. The mouse sensitivity sett
ing in game does not affect the speed of the mouse as most would like. The horizontal and vertical sensitivity can be adjusted but most users are setting the horizontal to half the speed of vertical just to be playable.
Many suspect that this is because the game was designed to be played with a joystick not what the keyboard and mouse.
Accessible game - Xbox
The Xbox version of Ghostbusters is quite a bit different than the PC version. As far as the recommendations for deaf gamers and the visually impaired, everything remains the same. The closed captioning option is built right in and works beautifully. There are no colorblind options but that should not impeed your ability to play.
For one-handed gamers and the mobility impaired, the settings for this game are going to be more difficult. As you can see by the pictures, if you were to play a Ghostbusters with only one hand, this is the contortion that you would have to do while capturing a ghost.
Some of the actions are remappable but not all of them and not the key ones. As for getting around this problem, we recommend using the access controller or an Ergodex to get around the uncomfortableness of the default setup.
Bustin' makes you feel good
Ghostbusters is an incredibly exciting game from Atari. They absolutely did a fabulous job with keeping the ideals of one of the most infamous movies ever. Although, not the most accessible title ever, with features like built-in mouse sensitivity and closed captioning, Atari obviously put some thought into accessibility and that is exactly what we are shooting for by contacting these companies.
We want them to think about accessibility and as long as they are beginning to realize that adding options to include more gamers is important, we are doing our jobs.
You can buy Ghostbusters for the PC, Xbox, Wii, and PlayStation 3 at a retailer or online store near you. The prices range from $59.99 for the PlayStation 3 down to $53.99 for the PC, notably because the PC lacks multiplayer support.
If you are interested in reenacting Ghostbusters for your own amusement, pick up the PC version today. Just make sure, if you want to play with other Ghostbusters to pick up the Xbox or PlayStation 3 version.
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