As a movie, Ghostbusters works incredibly well even though on paper, it's a little weird. You'd have to thank the acting of the Ghostbusters themselves (Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson) for taking a strange idea of a team that captures ghost and creating a million dollar phenomenon that is still talked about today. Out of nowhere, year's with not as much of a peep about anything new regarding the Ghostbusters, last year rumors of a new movie and a game came out. The movie is still talked about but not has materialized yet the game is right here to play.
Like mentioned earlier, the story is about a group of scientists that are experts in the paranormal, starting up a business to catch ghosts once they've been kicked out of the university where they did their experiments. From there, two movies cover a period where they saved New York City from powerful demons that were seeking to take over this plane of existence. The game picks up a few years after the second movie when a new recruit, you, has joined the Ghostbusters, and apparently, it's just in time. A Gozer exhibit, main demon from the first movie, is on display at a museum and there are funky, paranormal things are starting to occur. Expect to not only fight new ghosts but also meet up with some of the familiar ghosts of the past.
At its core, Ghostbusters plays a squad based game. Almost all the time, you will have one of the other Ghostbusters, if not all of them, to help you fight ghosts. Busting ghosts revolves around your proton pack, and also acts as a status indicator in the same way that the armor indicated your status on Dead Space. Looking over the shoulder of your character, you can see an indicator on the pack showing your health and energy. Your energy on the pack regulates what attacks you can use and works like reloading a gun in other games. Any time you feel like it, you can hit a button and it'll reset your energy bar, just like reloading, and then you use it again. Like a standard shooting game as well, if you keep using your weapons without reloading, you'll be forced to reload that usually comes at a real bad time so try to avoid it by always resetting your energy. On the pack is a health meter that's visible but kind of hard to see, and forget about trying to pay attention to it when you're in the middle of a boss fight.
To bust a ghost, it's a simple process. Each ghost has their own energy bar that will be displayed on the outside of target reticule. Once the energy reaches a certain point, two things can happen depending on the ghost. Small ghosts and bosses will simply be destroyed if you reduce their energy to zero. Other ghost will need to be captured by ghost trap. When the ghost's energy is low enough, you can use a capture stream and throw out a trap. In your capture stream, the ghost will try to get away and you'll have to reel it in to the trap. Once over the trap, the trap will open automatically, and the ghost will fight it but eventually it will be captured as long as you keep it with in the light of the trap.
The proton pack has four different weapons that you'll have access to throughout the game. First off, your most common weapon will be the proton stream. There are three variations of the stream with the first one being an energy stream that will damage the ghosts itself and you'll have to do your "reload" after using it for a certain period of time. Then you have the capture stream which does the job of holding onto the ghost so they can be put into the trap. As a second feature for the capture stream, it can move around large objects that may block your path such as bookcases and tables. Remember though, this is a game and only whatever is designed to move will move, so don't get all pissy that stuff that's parts of the background and not interactive, cannot be moved. The final variation is the proton blast. To best describe it, think of it as a shotgun blast of particle energy. It'll take a lot of particle energy from your pack causing big ball proton energy to shoot out doing heavy damage to enemies. Sounds good and all but with it take so much energy, you'll have only one shot before you need to reload, and a few more later when you upgrade it, leaving you open often while reloading. Also, it has "splash" damage causing enemies in an area some damage, but causing some damage to you as well.
During the game, the three other streams will be given to you. They can be selected by pressing a certain direction of the dpad. One weapon is the Dark Matter Generator that has a primary fire of slowing down the enemy with a single blue stream. Using the secondary fire unleashes a shotgun blast of blue balls that work the same way. Keep using the stream and the ghosts will slow down after awhile, but really, it's an inefficient weapon. A returning weapon is the slime shooter made famous in Ghostbusters 2. In Ghostbusters 2, the slime was used to reverse the negative energy in a person into a positive energy with comedic results. This time around, the slime shooter does some damage to enemies, less so than other weapons, and also interacts with different planes of existences opening up doors that seem to not be there and close out off portals that let ghosts come in. Using the secondary fire acts will create a slime grappling hook type shot that is used solely for moving around in certain levels by making platforms to proceed further in the level come together or even close up a gap in the floor. For pure power, there is the Meson Collider that does the powerful shotgun-like blast similar to that of the proton stream. Also, a lot like one of the famous weapons in Resistance, the Collider has tracer shots where a single blast will paint the target and then after that other shots will follow the target for a set amount of shots. For just raw firepower, you'll want to make sure the Collider is equipped.
To upgrade all equipment, you'll need to get some money. Money can be earned when capturing/destroying ghosts, finding ghostly artifacts using the PKE meter (little scanner they use that has the big moving antennas) or using the PKE meter to get info on the ghosts. The PKE meter, itself, is a tool to guide you through the levels and help you find ghosts tend to disappear.
Though the developers did a great job of rendering the Ghostbusters themselves making them look much like they did in the original movie, there is a real lack of stunning graphics within the game. When traveling through buildings, there's simply nothing impressive that makes you stare in amazement. Bosses are done well with their big masses, but the ghosts themselves can be bland at times. While they did a great job at making the main characters look good, the developer did not have anything that really showed off the game.
One part of the game that literally helps from game from being average, or even below average, is the audio. It's absolutely fantastic in regards to the voice acting and soundtrack. First, not only do they have the original actors do the voices, but you can hear that there was a proper direction given to everyone. Actors reprising their roles in a video game are not always an automatic win for the game (look at the damn Lost game and how horrible the real actors were on that). It's a combination of the voice acting talent and someone to give them proper direction on how they need to play their roles in a video game that gives the game an extra boost over just no name voice talent. The list of actors that return is astounding for a game based on a 20 year old franchise. On the list is Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, William Atheron (as Peck, the annoying bureaucrat), Brian Doyle-Murray (the mayor of New York), and Annie Potts (the Ghostbusters' sassy secretary). It doesn't end there though. There's an actual quality script used in the game. Everything is explained in a way that almost makes sense by using technical jargon as they did in the movies, so you're never really questioning the validity of what's going on. By adding some script work from the writers of the movies themselves, Aykroyd and Ramis, essentially you have, as Aykroyd put it, the third movie.
That voice work alone would be enough to make this game a good game, but then you add the soundtrack on top of it. With no surprise, the Ghostbusters theme song, by Ray Parker Jr.(with some unknowing help from Huey Lewis), is included in the game and played at just the right moments in the game. The song is not overdone making you despise it unless you die a lot of times since it's the song played during the loading screen. Then you have the other bits of music on the soundtrack that are very memorable if you've watched the movies a few times. Everything feels so right when you have the perfect music to go along with the incredible dialogue.
Online play attempts to keep the squad gameplay intact by having several gameplay modes that make it the team against the ghosts. Survival is your standard fight off waves of enemies before dying, containment is a time limit mode, protection has poles you have to protect from ghosts, Destruction has you destroy artifacts to stop ghosts from spawning, Thief is taking artifacts back from ghosts, and Slime Dunk where you use the Slam Dunk move to trap a ghost quicker. The reward for playing multiplayer, aside from all the fun, is money that can be carried over to the single player mode for upgrades. If there's a downfall to multiplayer, it's the fact that no one plays it that much, making it tough to find games at all times of the day.
Fans of the movie should pick up the game right away while others may look at the game as simply a rental. With a single player mode of less than 10 hours, and a multiplayer that's not hot, it simply cannot be recommended to everyone. For me, I couldn't get enough of the dialogue as it made me laugh much more than games in the past.
- O.G.
article id: 632 | poster: OG
