Review: Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Joining the Ghostbusters team as an experimental weapons technician (the game is set in 1991, a couple of years on from the events of Ghostbusters 2) you're soon called into action when a strange energy explodes from the museum hosting a Gozer exhibit, which quickly covers New York. The result of this energy burst is that all of the ghosts in the area have been given a shot of Red Bull and are now up to all sorts of shenanigans. And who do the residents call...well here's a clue; it isn't He-Man.

As soon as the menu screen loads it’s impossible not to get caught up in it all. Here I am, the wrong side of thirty, getting excited about being a Ghostbuster. Whistling the theme tune throughout the tutorial level and humming it during the opening stages of the first mission soon led to my wife looking at me with complete contempt. She went upstairs to watch Emmerdale though so the feeling was mutual. But I defy anybody that’s not a fan of Ghostbusters to not get involved with it during the earlier stages. When the first two levels are packed with one-liners from Ray, Egon, Winston and Peter, and with Slimer and Stay Puft already caught and under wraps, how can you not get excited?

Familiar faces

But then the excitement starts to slowly fade. Peaking with Stay Puft so early, in hindsight, was a bit stupid, as arguably you’ve had the money shot within the first couple of levels. Thereafter you get a plethora of different ghosts to catch (including some more familiar faces, such as…ssssshhhh, the Librarian) but none can hold a torch to the scene with Stay Puft.

The action is also a little stale. I was expecting the ghosts to require different techniques in order to capture them, for example activating something in the environment to capture their attention, turning the lights on and blinding them, or other such activities. Something akin to Luigi’s Mansion. Instead though all that you’re required to do is scan each different version of ghost with your PK device (which brings up the strengths and weaknesses of the ghost, including a bit of back-story), select the stream on your Proton pack that the ghost is most susceptible to (from a choice of four) and fire away. And keep firing.

Some ghosts can take far too long to capture, with you just holding down the right trigger whilst running around the room and keeping them in the reticule. That’s it. Once you’ve then injured them enough you can capture them with your stream, throw a trap, and pull them above the trap using your stream. Voila. There is the solution to about 90 percent of the ghosts in the game (with the others just disintegrating and not actually being caught).

There are 20 upgrades to purchase for the Proton pack, but the majority of them don’t really add too much to the experience and instead just make it a little easier to capture some of the tougher ghosts. Although there are some sections of the game that no matter how powered up your Proton pack is, you’ll die. A lot.

The worst thing about dieing, apart from the damage to your gaming manhood, is that restarting that section means you have to endure a 30-45 second loading screen (even after a 4gb install), complete with the Ghostbusters theme tune. Suffice to say that during one of the particularly bad difficulty spikes it was no longer just my wife that had a look of complete contempt on their face when the Ghostbusters theme tune played.

Deadly AI

You might think that sharing the adventure with at least one of the Ghosbusters during each level would be thrilling but invariably a useless bunch. I never once witnessed one of my colleagues capture a ghost unaided (I always had to lend a hand), but I did witness them on many occasions stand around looking gormless at a wall until I triggered an event. Worst still, when you die, it’s not necessarily game over as one of your teammates can revive you (as you can them), but the AI for this is laughable. As soon as you die, your nearest team mate will just give up on whatever he was doing and walk straight towards you, completely ignoring that huge end of level boss that is in-between you and him and he then gets killed. Marvellous. Who you gonna call? Not Ray, Egon, Peter or Winston - feckless muppets all.

Other gameplay issues include the cheap AI enemies which time their strikes so that they hit you as soon as you stand up from a blow and are completely defenceless while you wait for the game to give you back control of your character. And the linearity - open levels are nothing like as open as they first appear - and the game is full of repetition. With no Ecto-1 driving sections to break up the monotony, and with a lack of depth to the actual gameplay, it doesn’t take long for Ghostbusters to start to out-stay its welcome.

Although the story is quite well written (part-penned by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis), and that the game can be clocked in about 10-12 hours on medium, it’s not one to play in extended sessions. I completed the game in four days, two-three hour sessions each day, and by the third day I had begun to tire of it and was purely completing it for the sake of the review. If I were playing it for my own enjoyment, I would have most likely put it back on the shelf halfway through and come back to it at a later stage. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, some games are better played in short-bursts, but it’s something to consider when deciding whether it’s for you or not.

Online presents a similar problem. At first it was fun playing with other Ghostbusters, at least ones that weren’t so feckless, but the repetitive nature of the game still shines through online. Of the modes available, only Slime Dunk remains one that I may return to in the future. The online modes are solid, without any hint of lag, but the gameplay just isn’t deep enough to provide much opportunity for tactics and so each online sessions ends up feeling very similar to the one before it.

Ernie HUDson. Get it? HUDson. I’ll get my coat

But it’s not all gloom and there are some really fun times to be had. As already touched on, the script is well written and provides for a very tight experience. Similarly the voice-over work, provided by the original cast, is impeccably done. The Proton pack acting as the on-screen HUD also helps immerse you further into the action and feels so much more natural. Similarly the artefacts (found with your PK device) hidden throughout the game are some of the most interesting collectibles you’ll find in a game, with each coming with their own back-story.

But they’re not enough to elevate Ghostbusters above just good enough. Whether good is good enough for you to shell out full price is up to you to decide. It’s easily recommendable as an impulse buy at £20 and one that if you play in short bursts will provide more than enough fun to warrant the purchase. It’s just a shame that more wasn’t done to combat the repetitiveness as, with more variety, this could have lived up to its massive potential.