Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Review from http://bngames.basicallynothing.com

FINALLY a franchise worth revitalizing and refurbishing!  Ghostbusters is notorious for having some of the worst movie to game products in the history of Video games.  With the 25th Anniversary of the release of Ghostbusters 1 the movie and the double BlueRay re release, Columbia pictures has teamed up with Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis for what has to be the definitive Ghostbusting experience, written and produced by the two brilliant minds that brought us the original movie classics.

Story: A few years after the battle with Vigo, the Ghostbusters are now permanently contracted by the city as paranormal investigators paid by each ghost they capture and contain.  You are the nameless voiceless 5th wheel that has been hired to assist with weapons testing.  You yourself have no story other than that you were hired and Bill Murray likes to be an Asshole toward you whenever he has a chance.  Evil forces are once again in the works, Zule is back in the picture as New York is on the brink of collapsing within multi dimensions.  Play the game if this doesn’t make sense.  I will say the story’s main focus is on Egon and Ray for the most part, with a large chunck dedicated to Winston as well.  It seems to me that Venkman gets the back seat this time round, which is fine as he is wooden and not very funny in any of his parts, whereas all of the other characters are well written and their delivery is believeable, particularlly Dan’s performance.

Presentation: It’s sad to say that Ghostbusters’ visually quality is kinda all over the place.  By no means is the game ugly, but there are some glaring issues.  My first issue is that Bill Murray looks like he’s in a walking coma, whenever the camera would close up on Bill I would cringe.  Secondly the body animations are very stiff and robotic at times specifically when running, falling, and being knocked over.  The frame rate is pretty solid with a dip here and there when the action gets hectic.  The enviroments are rather bland from start to finish, however the sequence where the hotel is being swallowed into spiderweb was well executed.  The slime effects are decent, but the Proton streams are where the game shines.  There is nothing quite like tethering a ghost with your fellow busters, tossing the trap, and watching the controlled chaos unfold.  The streams, traps, and light show before the ghost has been sucked into oblivion, does not get old at all.  All of the CGI cutscences however are flat out ugly on my opinion and should have been completely done within the game engine itself.

GamePlay: As I stated before, this is the definitive Ghostbusters experience.  Wrangling ghosts could not be any more immersive without jumping into the game/movie, strapping on your own proton pack, and doing it the old fashioned way.  Capturing a ghost is done in three Basic steps, but can be a bit more involved depending on the ghost’s strength.  First you weaken the ghost by firing on it with your Proton stream, and or with one of the other three weapons, you activate the capture stream, throw the trap, align the ghost over said trap, watch the trap open, attempt to keep the ghost within the traps capture beam.  A new mechanic that is a

welcome addition is Slamming.  Essentially after you have wrangled a ghost and have activated the capture stream a separate meter will fill which will allow you to “Slam” a ghost into walls, the floor, and even into a trap if they are weak enough, which NEVER gets old.  Your pack will eventually have an additional three weapon types installed into it that for the most part are almost useless, the freeze beam being the least welcomed edition.  You will find that for most of the game the default proton pack will do just fine.  The main proton weapon does get a energy ball upgrade shortly after the intro level which is immensely useful as well as powerful, however over heats your pack for a short amount of time.

Multiplayer seems to be a sort of afterthought, though is still a ton of fun to play.  I hope to see additional map pack and game types added as DLC as it seems obvious that there will be.  You have game types such as survival, who can capture the most ghosts in the shortest amount of time, king f the hill varieties, etc.  I find joining and creating a party to be a bit archaic, it would be nice to be able to keep your friends in a party list system that could easily allow you to move in and out and or create games on the fly.  Overall its a good time waster that will keep you entertained for a few hours, but its not the be all end all it could have been.

Special: Additional concept artwork, trailers, and in game cinematics can be unlocked to be viewed when not playing the game.  I was particularly fond of the mini documentary about the restoration of the original Ecto-1 and what was involved.  Gamestop and Besybuy both had their own versions of special download DLC costumes for the multiplayer, the BestBuy skin being the better of the two.

Conclusion: Even with some minor bugs, and a blemish or two, the core game play experience is what should drive you to play Ghostbusters: the Videogame.  Considering the story is considered cannon in the GB universe, it is a very interesting way to see how the franchise would have evolved in the cinema had it been filmed and not turned into a videogame.  All being said and done, if you consider yourself a Ghostbusters fan at all, a child of the 80’s, a fan of great immersion, check out Ghostbusters today, were ready to believe you!

GhostBusters: The Videogame is a **** out of 5