Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Whether its Tony Montana not dying in his mansion and thus given the chance for revenge over the comeuppance he never got, or Don Corleone asking a nameless grunt to engage in blockbuster-style gun shootouts with rival gangs, there’s something undisputedly unholy about video games based on old movies. The original filmmakers always seem to scold the damage done to their “art”, the original actors put no effort whatsoever in their voicework, fans seem to be hesitant to spend the money, the game developers struggle to finish the game within tight deadlines and the royalty fees must be through the roof. It makes one wonder why publishers bother, other out of a lack of good original ideas.

But Ghostbusters feels a bit different. One can’t help but feel as if the folks at Terminal Reality came into this project with nothing less than the upmost passion for the franchise. I can imagine the developers having the Ghostbusters logo plastered on their walls, shirts and tattoos, and bringing their life-size Proton packs to the San Diego Comic-con and spraying any individuals who dare dress up as that ghoul Sephiroth.  And they were bound and determined to make their dream project of a Ghostbusters video game a reality for the sake of all the fanatics around the world who bided their time, waiting for the inevitable Ghostbusters comeback. And while this game is based on a movie license, I can’t at least have a small degree of respect for the devs, and the folks at Atari, for making the dreams of a couple people come true.

Ghostbusters the Video Game feels like the most TLCed game I’ve played in a long time. A lavishing amount of detail has gone into many of the game’s facets, whether it’s the numerous little references strewn about the world to the movies and cartoons or the backstory given to every ghost and rare collectable artifact that the player can scan Metroid-style. There’s even a monetary value allotted to every in-game item that can be destroyed, for the game keeps a tally of the combined property damage the player causes during his or her adventure. Ghostbusters The Video Game really is the ultimate Ghostbusters homage…it’s just that its merits as an video game are as questionable as the real Ghostbusters’ work ethics around the mayor.

You play as The Rookie, a nameless, voiceless chap who is hired by the team to test experimental equipment. He doesn’t give out a name because the team doesn’t want to get too attached should he meet an untimely demise, he doesn’t speak presumably out of lack of self-esteem and the only reason he applied for such a dangerous job is because he must be the kind of Ghostbusters fanboy that would’ve developed this very game. Mind you, being in the verbal background of the original gang fulfills every bit of geekout-potential that one would hope, despite how the Rookie does the vast, vast, VAST majority of the dirty work in the game. Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, PECK and the Ray Parker Jr. theme all lend their voices to the game, but with varying degrees of interest. They seem to get into their characters comfortably when it comes to main story points, but lose interest when its time to voice a video game character; for example, Dr Stantz seems less than enthused to explain to the player that pressing a button will execute a slam attack.

The game repeatedly stabs a nostalgia knife in the player’s memory lobes with no remorse. The first mission throws the player back at the hotel trying to capture Slimer, followed by chasing the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man on the streets of New York…followed by a return to the library to from the beginning of the first film. Ghostbusters clinches harder to its franchise cannon worse than any given Zelda game, and that’s saying something. I never saw Ghostbusters 2 until I was a third of the way through this game, and only then did an assortment of jokes and references (like the presence of Viggo’s painting in the firehouse) click for me. So this heavy retreading on old material does put a kick in Dan Aykroyd’s idea that this is the third Ghostbusters movie as opposed to a common internet fanatic’s Ghostbusters fan fiction.

The thing about the game is that it’s not particularly…funny. Oh there’s a few good lines, particularly within the ghost/artifact bios. But most of the humour stems solely from references to the movies – “oh look, Slimer escaped…again! And he slimed Venkmann…again!” The second half of the game strays into new territory with a new plot and new villain, but the attempts at humour seem to either dry up or feel more in place in a children’s cartoon…which could very well be the goal, but I surmise that most people buying this game are much, much, much older than your typical Saturday morning crowd.

The game plays like your typical Gears-of-Wariented third-person-close-over-the-shoulder-view shooter. But unlike the musclebound Marcus Fenix, your character has limited view, is slow to dodge incoming fire, can’t take cover and can only run short distances. Maybe this was intentional, an attempt to recreate playing as an out-of-shape Canadian comedian. But all the politeness and receding hairlines in the world can’t save these Canucks from the legion of the underworld. If there’s more than one ghoul in a room, the odds are you will be hit repeatedly with attacks from off-camera, often knocking you down in a ragdoll physically-impaired state for a few seconds, highly annoying in of itself. Should your training fail you and you run out of health, an AI teammate can revive you Gears-of-Wariously, and you’re expected to return the favour to if need be. But the need will be frequent, and on the normal difficulty, both you and your fellow Busters will fall down often, turning the game into the equivalent of a retirement home worker giving breakdancing lessons to the seniors; a constant game of pick-up. This problem can be alleviated by playing on the easy difficulty.

Perhaps you’d like to hear more about your firepower, the oddball proton packs that make the Ghostbusters not your typical gun-toting commandos. You start out with the standard laser beam, and in later missions, Egon will conveniently remember that he installed a new weapon earlier in the day. Like bloody imFamous, most of the weapons are just remixes of standard shooter fare like the rocket launcher or the rapid fire gun, but really, the only reason you’ll use anything but the regular proton beam is because scanning an enemy revealed that another weapon will do more damage. Smaller enemies will crumble beneath your electrical might, but larger ghosts need to be captured and this is where Ghostbusters stops being so damned Gears-of-Warful and more like Atomic Fishing. First you must drain the phantasm’s health with your munitions, then you use your physics g…I mean “capture beam” to hook them, then you slam them on the walls and floors to tire them out, then you drag them near a trap you’ve tossed on the floor and watch as they resist being pulled into the nuclear abyss. On one hand, it’s a viscerally satisfying experience, between the trippy light show and the wild animations of a ghoul resisting protonic arrest. And while the ghosts are often quick and hard to hit, that nearly everything in the game world is readily destructible makes this the most fun you’ll have missing your target. But almost every ghost battle feels the same, and combined with the very drab boss fights, (how could they make the battle with Stay Puft so…basic?) the gun/proton play starts to get stale near the end of the game.

Not that the game is a non-stop thrill ride of battle after battle, oh no sir. Actually the opposite is true. You’ll spend most of the game walking from one empty corridor to another, not quite sure of what to do. The game is heavily scripted in nature, with the player being thrown an assortment of “events” involving the ghosts being ghosts and trying to spook the player. The problem is that while the game is linear in nature, it’s surprisingly easy to get lost in the virtual world, or find yourself in a position where you’re walking all over the area trying to find the spot that Rookie must stand in to trigger the next sequence. And even after you find that specific sweet spot the game wants you to be in, the result could be something as small as the team talking amongst themselves or someone opening a door. Speaking of, there are some doors that Rookie can open, many doors he can’t, and some doors that only Bill Murray has the charm to unlock. Knowing the difference is not always easy. The supposed solution to all my gripes is the “PKE meter”, where the player is thrown in a goggled first person view staring at a meter of bars that spikes when faced with the presence of…things. But I hated using this, partly because it rarely helped to find my way and partly because even when it did, the view quickly shifts back to third person to display the pre-scripted event that was supposed to happen in a jarring, immersion-shattering way.

Oh and there’s very basic physics puzzles, involving either using the worst physics gun in the history of gaming to put a key in a keyhole, or using the “slime tether” to pull one item to another. Being that either provide the only form of in-game puzzles, the solutions to any given puzzle always feel straightforward.

The campaign is about 8 hours long, a hearty length for an action game, one that may leave the player feeling a bit fatigued when something stops acting strange in the neighborhood. On the other hand, there’s a fairly solid online multiplayer component. In addition to playing the campaign co-operatively, (like, you know, every other freaking game! Why does Bioshock 2 have co-op?) there are a few multiplayer modes that involve pitting a group of online buster-buddies against computer ghosts. They’re fun in of themselves, and it’s different from your typical Gears-of-Warian deathmatch, but your mileage will depend on how much fun you have with the ghost-catching mechanic, and I can’t imagine this game’s online community staying being around for months to come.

Ghostbusters is the ultimate fan-service buffet, perhaps moreso than Super Smash Bros or certain Final Fantasy side-games. It’s rife with jokes and references aimed for the hardcore fans (of which I’m amazed they still exist), and it gives players a chance to rub shoulders with the anti-phantasm four. But on the other hand, the game depends too much on its insider jokes, and the gameplay feel banal and frustrating when compared to other action games. Honestly, you’re enjoyment of the game as a whole depends entirely on how many movies and cartoon episodes you’ve seen in your life. The true believers in the supernatural shouldn’t take this mixed review with anger or disappointment, because they will love this Ghostbusters game and cherish their moment of digital glory. They just shouldn’t recommend it to any friends whom don’t get what the big deal is about crossing the streams.

3 stars.

And there’s no more predictable way to start a reader review for a Ghostbusters game than “Who ya gonna call?” I mean seriously…