Ghostbusters The Video Game

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a third-person action shooter developed by Terminal Reality and published by Atari. You take on the role of a newly recruited Ghostbuster in a storyline taking place two years after the events of the second film. Gozer, the Sumerian shapeshifting God of destruction, seems to have somehow made a comeback in New York. Paranormal incidents are significantly increasing, and it's your job to investigate the source. By visiting sites like the Sedgewick Hotel, the New York Public Library, and Central Park you uncover a plot that is an even greater threat than the Great Destructor Gozer ever was.

Full disclosure, my opinion and over-forgiveness of this game's fault are almost entirely due to the undying love of all things Ghostbusters. This review is therefore admittedly tainted. If you were to ask me what I thought about a game where you as a new recruit get to join Venkman, Spengler, Stantz and Zeddemore on a journey through Ghostbuster lore past and present? I would tell you that was the greatest game I've ever heard of. Not only for the story line itself, but for the actual partaking in all activities 'Ghostbuster'. It says a lot about this game in which, bare minimum, you not only get to hang out with the Ghostbusters, you get to be one.

What keeps this interesting is the variety of ghost-types you'll encounter along the way. As you progress, the ghosts encountered will require a certain procedure to kill or capture. In the beginning, you encounter enemies that you must wear down with your proton stream. Once low on energy, you 'wrangle' them with your 'capture stream' slamming and dragging them around the environment until dazed. After being temporarily incapacitated, throw your ghost trap out, and wrangle them again into the trap's intake, holding them there until captured. By the end, you will be trapping, freezing and sliming ghosts all in the same room. Some of these enemies are immune to one weapon-type or the other, making it a really intensely complex process to gauge and identify your enemies, and take care of the job.

Ghostbusters uses the Infernal Engine which allows it to be cross-platform on all consoles. Essentially, this is a 'Gears of War' Third-person View-Behind-The-Shoulder Engine with some minor differences in gameplay. Perhaps the most interesting part of the graphical engine are the physics. Mostly everything is destructable in the environment, and in most cases, you're required (or at least encouraged) to trash everything you can to get your ghost. This 'shit-everywhere' approach really ramps up the intensity and fun-factor. Walk in to an unassuming hotel lobby, walk out of a black charred dumpster. Stop by the library's rare books collection, and leave what looks like a paper-recycling plant.

This emphasis on destructible environments leads to the play between your own earnings for extermination ghosts, and the overall tally of property damage caused. Although there is no formal penalty for being overly... thorough with your handling of such delicate materials as a unlicensed back-mounted nuclear accelerator, there are achievements for the MOST or the LEAST property damage inflicted on New York as a whole. Money earned is used to buy upgrades for your equipment and subsequent renditions of each new weapon or utility. Purchase a ghost trap with more trapping power, or a more sensitive PKE to pick up readings of enemies or the collectible ghostly artifacts.

I'm fairly sure that anyone and everyone will enjoy this game, unless you're just some kind of horrible person that thinks Ghostbusters is childish and silly. I like to call those kinds of people "Dream Ruiners", because they obviously don't like fun. The only other drawbacks here are in the visual presentation. For a game that is supposed to be a continuation in a movie series, I would have expected the graphics to be a little higher in quality.

The character models while playing are adequate, albeit nothing spectacular, but the in-game dialogue sequences are extremely awkward in their acting. The voice-acting is magnificent, but if it doesn't line-up with the model's inflection and lip-sync, it falls a bit short. There is little to no cinematography, and occasionally the camera will just plant itself statically, pointed at the torso's of the lined up actors as they deliver their lines. Nonetheless, the story and the characters come across and are able to shine, but I was really expecting more of a "movie" experience here. This just feels cartoon-y and cheap and would suit this game well if it was focused on being a bit less of a third Ghosbusters movie.

Additionally, it was surprising how scared by this game I was. Yes, you might laugh at me being scared of coming across some ridiculously crusty sea-captain-ghost with starfish in his beard, but when you're slowly creeping though a long creaky hallway with the "tick-tick-tick" of the PKE meter slowly increasing in tempo... AND THEN THE CRUSTY SEA-CAPTAIN JUMPS OUT AT YOU FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL! It's really difficult not to at least jump!

Everything is here. The exploration and riffing on light-hearted paranormal activity, and the logical extension of the Ghostbuster lore. References to "Psycho-kinetic Energy" and "Dimensional Rifts" are found throughout and dealt with seamlessly in a dry and dead-pan tradition. The treatment of these aspects as legitimate problems, and the tension created between the public utility of disposal of psychical phenomena and property-damage really gives a sense of how it's so hard to be a Ghostbuster. This is such a wonderful dramatic space to work in, and if nothing else accentuates the overall excellently consistent storyline

That it's almost the third Ghostbusters movie coupled with the ability to play as a Ghostbuster, and do Ghostbuster things. This sets it a part from so many other games, let alone movie-games. In addition... Ghostbusters Ghostbusters Ghostbusters. Oh, you don't like Ghostbusters? This game is probably not for you. You're probably looking for a game that isn't any fun instead.