Developed/Published by: Tose / Capcom
Released: 29th August, 2006
Completed: 23rd August, 2014
Completion: Rescued Princess Prin-Prin.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a
I’ve been watching Game Centre CX again! I’d fallen out of the habit, but recently I got off my arse and organised my collection of Iron Chef episodes and started watching them in order (can you believe they made fifty-six episodes of Iron Chef in 1994? That’s more than one a week!) and it put me in mood for some Game Centre CX too. And after watching the Kacho valiantly battle his way through Ghouls ’n Ghosts on Megadrive, I thought I might as well give this a shot, because it’s been in my collection for donkeys.
You probably know the drill with the Ghosts ’n Goblins series: it’s absurdly difficult, and it changes from “Ghosts ’n Goblins” to “Ghouls ’n Ghosts” and back again confusingly. Most of the games are incredibly similar, differing only vaguely in terms of hero Arthur’s abilities and enemies. But then, plenty of series are even more restricted than that (you know, look at any side-scrolling shooter series) and it’s not like we complain about them (unless we do? We might!)
Probably the most interesting thing about the series is that the very first hit right around the time of Super Mario Bros., so you have to remember that this didn’t come from a context where that was what platformers were. In fact, it kind of feels like a series from an alternate dimension where Super Mario never really happened.
It’s a dimension where a locked-in jump is the done thing. It’s also one where randomly spawning and aggressively player-seeking enemies are the done thing. So while your jump is completely predictable, the enemies aren’t.
Can you tell where this is going?
I mean, you obviously can if you’ve ever played the series. The games just aren’t fair. You can do your best to deal with these enemies—and I’ve seen players far above my abilities perform absurd feats—but you’re going to commit to a jump, or throw a weapon at the wrong time, and you’ll die (usually by being knocked off a platform.)
It’s not good! Or fun! In fact in level 3-2 of this—a level where you have to survive on a small moving platform for quite some time, while attacked from all sides—I was pretty close to breaking my Vita in half. I had to beat it twice, too (and in fact, to “fully” complete the game I’d have to beat it at least once more). The game doesn’t even really offer much in the way of the kind of streamlining we’ve come to expect from our masocore; no quick restarts, limited lives meaning you have to continue from the start of the level at some point and often struggle on with a lost cause number of lives, etc.
The worst thing that Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins does however is that rather than previous games, where you just have to survive the levels, in this one you’re supposed to find all the hidden nooks and crannies (and I do mean hidden: a large amount of the game is about triggering chests by jumping in certain, totally unmarked, parts of the levels) in order to gain enough gold rings, or witch ingredients, or magic spells, to complete the game fully.
The game chooses just about the most uncomfortable twist on the unlock abilities design possible, by making sure you can’t collect plenty of stuff until you have magic spells that do things you don’t expect (the turn-things-to-stone spell that causes gravestones to explode is… alternate dimension logical I guess?) or very specifically have this one shield that allows you to fly.
The shield’s a weird one, to be honest, considering the Ghosts ’n Goblins franchise has basically never involved this level of control in-air. It changes the game almost entirely from the minute you get it into one that’s not about the inflexible jumping but the much more flexible (if temporary) flying. It doesn’t make you die any less (well, maybe a bit less) but you’re much more in control. It’s an odd twist that the level design works around, and that doesn’t make you feel better about the levels you’ve struggled through to that point (and it doesn’t come until very late in the game…) In a game that’s otherwise A to B linear being asked to jump back and forth in insanely difficult levels that you feel, by rights, that you’ve completed, just to collect some things because you can now fly… it just doesn’t work.
It explains why they re-released this in Japan with all of that stuff removed, though!
Will I ever play it again? Uhh… I really did sort of want to collect all the rings and “fully” finish it. But the hidden bits are so annoying that life is just too short. If you could download the Japanese version to Vita, I would maybe consider it. But… no.
Final Thought: I’m not really sure what excuse I have for, ultimately, not having a bad time playing this, though. Not that I liked it, but that I didn’t feel that it was a total waste of time. The nice PSP-era graphics, which are maybe in that sweet spot of dated for me right now? That as stiff as the game is and unfair the enemies are, there’s this responsiveness that means that it feels good, and you want to succeed even in the face of frustration?
Probably that stuff?
