GAMES REVIEW: Regular Show: Ghost Toasters

Duuuuudes… this is like my first review as an exclusive contributor to Bubble Blabber so I hope it’s totally cool. Sorry. I always get that bodacious dude vibe whenever I talk about Regular Show. The show that is anything but regular and today I’m looking at a brand new IOS game, from the people at Grumpyface Studios, simply called Ghost Toasters. Excluding that first thought that comes to mind, Ghostbusters, Ghost Toasters turned out to be one of the most quickly addicting games I played thus far on the Iphone. The contextual story goes, that one-day Rigby and Mordecai are messing around on their go-kart until they go out of control crashing right into the creepy hotdog vendor who just so happens was placing Ghost Pepper on one of his hotdogs. The ghost pepper hotdog lands in the nearby cemetery and all the little ghosts, on loan from Luigi’s mansion, are released when the hotdog falls in the grave of J. Townhouse. Now after getting some cool guns from the hotdog vendor the two set out to toast some ghosts.

Now the default control scheme of this game was something I had to warm up to. Basic movements are oriented to the bottom of the screen, and are separated into 3 zones. From left to right, the farthest to the left is the basic left and right movement; just drag your finger along that zone to make your character move left and right. The middle zone is the shoot button, click it to fire your characters weapon, click it multiple times to rapid fire (but the speed of the rapid fire is different for each character used as all of them have different weapons). Lastly the far right is the jump button… it helps yah jump. If this control scheme doesn’t suit you go to the settings and you can find three other different control schemes that could be more to your liking.

With these controls in mind, the whole game is basically horde mode with the main objective of each level being to collect as many green portals as well as kill as many ghosts as possible. In each level, you can be rewarded with three stars, 1 star you just get if you complete the level, 2 stars if you kill the set number of ghosts, and finally three stars if you collect the set number of green portals. The green portals are directly linked to the game’s character switching function, each time you collect a green portal you switch to one of the various characters you can play as and obtain throughout the game, like Pops, Baby-Ducks, Thomas and many others. Keep in mind you can only obtain the first nine out of the thirteen characters by collecting green portals, the rest of the characters must be bought with the in game currency.

There is also one other type of portal you collect. These are the purple portals and I would say the simplest way to describe them is that purple portals basically give you extra lives. The more complicated way to describe it is, every time you get a purple portal one of the other characters appears behind you and is able to shoot alongside you adding to your firepower, with a maximum of four characters. This max of four means that you have four hit points until you die and have to start the level over again, because each character can only be hit once. If you start a level and you get hit immediately, game over, start over. This is where I have to give this game props, restarting the game is lightning quick when reloading, leaving almost zero cool down time between each try. It keeps the flow and rhythm of the game high and makes playing very invigorating and addicting.

That would be my keyword for this review, flow. There is just an ease to everything you do in this game it just becomes instinct after a few minutes of play. Even the upgrade system, which can be accessed after you beat or lose a level, is organized so well it’s just as simple as three taps and you’re off to your next level. Each character has can be upgraded to level five, and each upgrade is different for each specific character. But that doesn’t include the unlock able costumes which give the characters special stat boosts and also come will their own level upgrades. There just so much to this upgrade system it’s hard to summarize in just this review. But simply said it’s very detailed, and intuitive and helps enforce the game’s overall sense of gameplay flow.

Except for the little bonuses you get throughout the game; the electric guitar, the go kart and the spring shoes. These three upgrades I soon forgot I had because during gameplay it’s so troublesome to move your thumb away from the fire and jump button just to click the electric guitar or go-kart. Never the spring shoes though because for me personally they came in handy exactly never during my play through. But hey that’s just my play through and I’m sure for other players who need the edge taken off the game these bonuses are useful. The only bonus I do love is when I buy one of Pops’ presents. I just never get tired of Pops saying “Good Show” whenever you open it even if what’s inside the present is a useless lollipop. Even when you lose that bonus game you still feel like you won.

Going back to my keyword from my previous paragraph, flow is the name of the game, like IOS games like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja there is just a gameplay flow that can’t be beat. A flow that even if you frustratingly lose a level multiple times, you say “Screw you!” to the button that says to pay 300 in game coins to skip the level and you just start bobbing your head frustratingly with the sweet music in the background. If you’re into IPhone shooters and Regular Show this is definitely a game to get, however there is a slight difficulty curve at the beginning, which leads to you really sucking at the first levels of the game, but soon enough you’ll be toasting ghosts no problem.