Ghost Rider review

As if the back-catalog of shoddy comic book adaptations on PS2 wasn’t shameful enough, here’s another uninspired and under-developed calamity for the pile. You play Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle stunt rider who sells his immortal soul to Mephisto (a sort of Marvel Universe version of the Devil) in order to save his terminally ill father from cancer. Bit of a short-sighted deal, really, especially when Mephisto turns round and offs his dad after he’s cured him. As you’d expect, Johnny’s a tad peeved by this, but by now he’s been transformed into the soulless Ghost Rider, and he’s trapped in Hell.

Naturally, he wants to leave, and the only way out is to fight. In Hell, as everyone knows, all fighting is done using samey combos that look like they’ve been stolen from God of War. This is because one of Ghost Rider’s main weapons is the Hellfire Chain, which in action looks very much Kratos’ Blades of Chaos, both being fiery chains swung about at high speed. Cynics would bandy about words like “identical" and possibly “copyright infringement.” The Hellfire Chain’s activated with the tap of a trigger, while the face buttons throw punches; several thumps of each will deliver basic linked attacks.