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06/09/2009 11:58 AM

E3 2009: Hollywood Thrills Hit The Small Screen

By: Adam Balkin

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Many new video game titles shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo will bring the thrills and chills of Hollywood movies to players' screens. NY1's Adam Balkin filed the following report.

"Saw: The Video Game" is designed to be just as scary, just as nerve-racking and just as gruesome as the series of horror movies of the same title. Now players can savor moments like when they can't figure out how to get a reverse bear trap off their head.

"As you go through, you encounter many of the traps that the audience and fans of the film are familiar with and you're charged with escaping and helping other people to escape as well as solving puzzles throughout the asylum," says Michael Eisenberg of Konami. "You are very much as they are in the film. There is a clock counting down in many instances and the hints are limited to what is around you."

"GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra," based on the upcoming movie with the same name, is a two-person coop.

"Things you aren't going to see in the movie you're only going to get in our game," says Jason Enos of Electronic Arts. "We built that game to be very accessible to anyone young or old. If you grew up with "GI Joe" in the '60s, you can play it with your son."

The whole family can play at once the movie-inspired game, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," since there's an online multiplayer mode.

"It's eight players in the game, so four-on-four. There are leaderboards to track everything from multiplayer and personal stats," says Adrian Murphy of Luxoflux. "Pretty much anyone can be whoever they want. We have 15 playable characters, we have a faction lock, so you can turn it on and have classic 'Autobot versus Decepticon' battles or turn it off and just have a free-for-all."

Finally, fans of 1980s comedies or ghost hunting will find "Ghostbusters: The Video Game" hard to pass up.

"You basically play the rookie in the game, you get hired by the Ghostbusters, this is your first day on the job," says Glen Gamble of Terminal Reality. "The game itself takes place two years after the second film, pretty much. What it is is a direct continuation of the storyline."

To help accentuate the ectoplasmic time warp, developers rounded up all four of the original Ghostbusters - Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson - to voice the game.