Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, but it’s also a powerful tool of commerce, so it came as no surprise that the Ghostbusters game and Blu-Ray movie re-release coincided with the franchise’s 25th anniversary. From the iconic theme music to the likenesses and voice talent of the original cast, all the stops have been pulled out to ensure that the new game is an authentic Ghostbusters experience.
You play through the story as the nameless voiceless genero-faced rookie of the ghost busting team. While this may seem like a cop-out as far as character design goes, it allows the focus of the dialogue and story on the characters you know (and quite possibly used to have action figures of). It also provides a blank slate to project your own personality onto, making you feel like you’re really one of the team; and isn’t that what everybody really wanted?
The single player Career Mode follows the story of the Ghostbusters as they tear their way through New York in search of a new evil that has been plaguing the city. The script was penned by original film writers Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, and contains the prerequisite Ghostbusters elements of dry sarcastic wit, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, and big exploding apparitions. While the writing is good, the plot shadows much of the original movies with visits to the Sedgewick Hotel and New York Public Library, as well as the return of everyone’s favourite 100ft marshmallow. Loud-mouthed receptionist Janine and the rebarbative Walter Peck also return supporting the main cast.
The game plays as a third-person over-the-shoulder shooter, broken up with ghost hunting and puzzle sections. The actual ghost busting (the “zap ‘em and trap ‘em”), which makes up the majority of the gameplay, is very fun. While weakening of the ghosts usually amounts to little more than following the enemy around the screen with your crosshair, the actual trapping of the beasties can be very satisfying. A quick button press to throw down a trap and then you and up to 4 AI controlled Ghostbusters have to wrestle the blighter into containment. Enemies can be slammed into the walls, off the floors and through physics-enabled objects, providing a suitable visual spectacle. The ally AI is surprisingly unobtrusive, fighting off ghosts on their own accord, and is always quick to revive your character when you’ve been knocked to the ground.
The ghost hunting sections use a simple hotter/colder mechanic with the memorable PKE meter from the films. As you don the famous goggles, the camera switches to a first person perspective which lets you use the response of the PKE meter to locate ghosts and artefacts. While it doesn’t reach the same level of creepiness as Fatal Frame/Project Zero, it’s a nice change of pace from the frenetic proton blasting.
It’s clear to see that Terminal Reality have really went to some effort to keep the whole experience varied. There are cursed artefacts to be collected by scanning them with the PKE meter. Scanning the different types of enemies allows you to collect details of their strengths and weaknesses. The enemy spooks you encounter are diverse, ranging from tiny scuttling ghouls to giant room-sized monsters. You can improve your equipment as you progress using the money earned from your exploits across the city. Also throughout the game, Egon will upgrade your proton pack with new firing modes to “test”. Each new upgrade has two different modes to try out, and the new toys do well to keep things fresh along the way.
An honourable mention must go to the Slime Tether upgrade which really adds a new dimension to the gameplay. With the Slime Tether equipped, you are able to fire a strand of elastic slime between two points, pulling them together. This mechanic is used to move large items around in some of the later puzzles, but it also affects the core gameplay. You can use it to whip ghosts into walls, objects, each other, or straight into the traps themselves. When you first get your hands on it, it’s difficult not to spend a chunk of time just playing about and manipulating the impressive in-game physics.
Although the game is a shockingly adept movie tie-in, it’s not without its faults. Loading times would be insufferable if it wasn’t for Ray Parker Jr’s infectious theme tune raising your spirits after each frustrating death. The difficulty “curve” is also an erratic mess – think of a seismogram taken by the feet of a passing Marshmallow Man. While I don’t believe that games should always get progressively difficult towards the end of the game, in this case it can ruin the flow and become frustrating. There are moments in the middle of the game that are unnecessarily tricky, especially considering that defeating the big bad final boss is such a breeze. Reviving your fallen buddies can also become a bit of chore when there are more of them in your party. While they are always quick to help you out, they don’t seem to extend this altruism to each other. This can leave you running point to point, picking up your injured comrades in a job more suited to a medic than a buster of ghosts.
Sadly the single player experience is short lived, with the story mode only clocking in at six to eight hours. You may well be tempted to replay to collect more artefacts and to scan any ghosts you might have missed, but the thrill of the story, dialogue and those “moments” just won’t have the same impact the second time around. The saving grace is that the online multiplayer mode (developed separately by Threewave Software) is excellent, and adds another layer of depth to the package. Up to four players can showcase their ‘busting skills across a variety of cooperative game modes including “Survival”, “Containment” and “Destruction”. Unfortunately there’s no support for local multiplayer, so if you want to cross streams with a friend it will have to be done over the net.
If you’re a fan of Ghostbusters then you’ve probably already ran out to the shops, completed the game twice, and wrote an enraptured blog entry about how much fun you had. If you are a fan but you haven’t done this, then what are you waiting for? You owe it to yourself to fulfil your childhood dreams of joining up with Ray and the gang for some wholesome spectre-annihilating action! Not interested in the Ghostbusters past exploits? Well, underneath the swathes of nostalgic self-reference lies a competent and varied third-person shooter; one that should be a fun ride even for those without any vested interest. At its heart though Ghostbusters: The Video Game really is one for the fans, so if you aren’t one it would be sensible to remove a star from this review score. Either way it’s true what they say; ‘busting does make you feel good!
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