Review: Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Before this game even arrived at my front door, I had prepared a checklist in hand before I could bust even one ghost. I packed my boots, got my uniform all tailored up (Hey, it’s been a while, we all can’t look as good as we used to), re-adjusted my Proton Pack equipped with tons of energy to power up a few of my rather innocent jam-packed arsenal of oh I don’t know, Meson Colliding, Boson Darting, Statis Streaming goodness? Yeah, that’s about right. It’s time to join the ranks of our original Ghostbusters: Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, Winston Zeddemore and Peter Venkman (Original voices intact, in order: Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray) as we clean up shop again down in our slimed up and very haunted New York City.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game, as it is so cleverly titled, is set in 1991 to take place after the second movie, you could call it a direct sequel regardless of the change in entertainment medium. You join the almighty ranks as a bottom-feeding no-name recruit At least you’re not pushing papers, that’s for the interns). Your silent warrior can more or less be considered to be Egon’s guinea pig for the love of science, you could say. But when the helpless come a callin’, you will be expected to bust just as many baddies as the rest of the veterans.

Now I’m going to be a bit frank with my preconceptions before I popped that baby into my Xbox. I had this notion that Ghostbusters wasn’t going to be much more than a movie game riding on a popular movie franchise tagline. I cannot tell you enough how far from the truth that is though. Ghostbusters is amazing as a standalone follow-up to the movies, and when I say standalone, I mean that this game can “stand alone” — as in, even if you haven’t seen the movies or cartoons and are not a diehard fan, I can honestly allow myself to say that this is a genuine fun time as a game on its own. Being a fan will surely add to the merriment, because you will surely appreciate the hard work of the original cast being put into the story, but the characters are (especially Egon and Ray!) well-personified and given every little bit of personality that they deserve. So now that you’ve joined the troops and got your gear in order, you’re sent on a little training mission in the underbelly of the Firehouse that your esteemed headquarters are set up in. So slide down that fire pole (and get awarded a shiny little achievement while you’re at it) and take our your PKE meter. It’s bustin’ time.

As said guinea pig, you will be packing a lot of heat throughout your adventure. As the story progresses, Egon will outfit you with a new weapon-type to add to before you vacuum up some ghosts. Each weapon will be automatically configured to the D-pad, leaving us with four main weapons, each with two types of attacks. Some enemies will have a specific weakness which you will be able to detect if you’re roaming around with your PKE meter (and subsequently, a pair of goggles) looking around for a spike in action to know where to find where the ghosts are. For example, anything manifested from a filthy pile of black slime will be weak against a ray of green slime. You will be able to shoot a Boson Dart as one large blast, or even a barrage of shots from your Meson Collider. It’s up to you. The Boson Darts will keep your bosses and big baddies at bay, the Meson Collider firing many shots at once will break down a boss with a barrier quite fast, and your main Proton Stream is best for regular ghosts. Every ghost you or your team wrangles into the traps you all set, will net you a certain amount of cash depending on how hard or strong they are. All of your cash can be used to upgrade your weapons arsenal, as well as boost the power of your PKE meter to allow you to get stronger readings from a greater distance.

Speaking of the PKE meter, okay this is where I got a little embarrassed, but I still need to address the subject, so onward we roll… Ghostbusters as a franchise from what I can collect, is not meant to really scare you so much as it is there to provide hijinx and a colorful cast. Well, there were a (Relatively small!) number of times that I got the jumps and the jitters while I was playing. Allow me to color you all pink here, this isn’t Luigi’s Mansion and it’s hardly a Silent Hill, but shocked as I was, it had some creepy happenings going on! I am not one to scare easily, but wandering my way through the library labyrinths I found myself in the childrens’ room only by way of the spine-chilling voices of a few, well, dead kids. I have to say, that was something I did not expect from this game, and I can do nothing less than applaud the developers, Terminal Reality, for this! Sometimes you will be exploring with your PKE meter open, which leaves you rather vulnerable until you take it off, but how can you say it’s not worth it when you can use it to hunt down some rare treasures that cannot be seen with the naked eye? Oh, it is worth it, it is, and highly addictive to boot. Well as you wander aimlessly in search of said treasure, you may be in for a fright when a few ghosts pull out the funny and play some tricks on you by knocking over a pile of books in the library right in front of your face or making a clamor by ruffling some pots in the kitchen (They’re loud!). Like I said, it’s no Silent Hill (and no one expects it to be) but don’t let your guard down for these guys!

So New York City, right? Well, being your resident NYC gal I love when a game takes place in the city I love and have both relived and destroyed time and time again in games. You will visit an assortment of sites that need busting such as the Museum of Natural History (expect a Confederates vs Yanks battle!), Times Square (Stay Puft man makes a Godzilla-like appearance, and Central Park (not quite the Central Park you may be familiar with…). The characters are a bunch of loose cannons who will quip a ton of witty yet corny dialogue at times, but it’s still funny and feels very fitting to the 90′s-esque movie sitting you are running around in. One line that really had me rolling was when you enter what is now a very gloomy, impending doom-filled Central Park and one of the Ghostbusters says, “This isn’t the Central Park I remember…” only to be quipped with “What? No one stole your wallet yet!?”

There are only a few gripes that I can really bring to the frontline with Ghostbusters. There is indeed multiplayer, but it is only via Xbox Live and NOT for the Career mode. You can only play with other people for separate missions and various ranked online play modes. The game’s story mode was built so well that it is just begging for co-op play to be available, as it is a great contender for four players to play together, you would expect. The AI for your teammates is not always the highest, I would say, but they will definitely always revive you when you’re down and are very good at looking busy and chipping away at damage, just sometimes I got the feeling they wanted me to go in for the kill. Or maybe they’re just not Grade A wranglers like myself, that is surely a possibility. A few suggestions that would be nice to add to the system would be manual use of the flashlight and a quickturn ability would have come in handy. Lastly, the music is alright, but some start to get repeated like one of the themes, and I had had enough of it by the end of the game.

I know this is standard material that you all want to know, the Career mode will run you about 8 hours of Real Life Time®. A few people have been wiping their nose on this point, but honestly, that is the standard fare of single player main playthrough quota time these days. I couldn’t say I was surprised, as it was fulfilling to the last drop, beginning to end. This isn’t a JRPG guys, really. The graphics are beaIt also supports an online multiplayer mode in which you can play as the Ghostbusters of your dreams (Egon, finally!) and play with a few friends or other players online to compete in a mash up of game modes in which you can play for a higher ranking on the leaderboards or just for fun. Just to give an overview of what’s available you have Thief, where you work to keep the ghosts from stealing four artifacts from the team, Containment, in which you are to capture as many ghosts as possible in the allotted time frame, Slime Dunk, where you will have to dunk Slimer into the capture trap the most times to win, and Survival, in which you explain to yourself why you need someone to tell you what to do in a Survival mode. Survive guys, you can do it! They’re all pretty fun, it wasn’t a last-minute slop on job like most games these days that have to add multiplayer, so I give it my thumbs up and is well worth it to keep you playing once you completed the story mode for the first time to give you a good break and give you a chance to join up with your friends and bust finally.

If you read our reviews regularly, especially both Molotov’s and my work, we can be pretty stingy with high scores in the red hot 9 – 10 area. In fact, this is the first game in a while that I have dared award a high score. This game is exciting all throughout and there is never a dull moment to be had throughout the entire Career playthrough. I cannot stress enough how entertaining Ghostbusters is as an experience. This title surely earned it, as it was the most fun I’ve had in a while lately. And the multiplayer? Just adds to the experience for those who have a few more bones (or lack thereof) to pick with those wild ghouls.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - Engaging and exciting Career mode. - Online adds fair replay to the somewhat short storyline. - Original voice actors were nothing short of impressive. - Variety of weapons and tons of ghosts keeps the blastin’ fun and varied, and easy to use.	Doin’ It RONG: - Lack of local or Career mode multiplayer is a real drag. - Music is okay, but some tunes get replayed too frequently.
FINAL SCORE: 9 / 10

A big thanks goes out to Atari for providing all assets and a review copy of Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Spawn Kill!