Genre: Action
Publisher: Atari
Developer: Terminal Reality
Platform: Playstation 3
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If you are a child of the '80s, then it's inevitable that you know a great deal about the Ghostbusters. The movie franchise — starring Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis as the titular busters of ghosts — was a pop-culture phenomenon in the late '80s and early '90s, spawning not only the two films but also a Saturday morning cartoon, Ghostbusters cereal and tons of other merchandise. Now, 25 years after the bumbling New Yorkers made their big-screen debut, Atari and Terminal Reality have seen fit to bring us a brand-new Ghostbusters video game. While the game presents itself quite nicely, it's eventually crushed under the weight of its own sky-high expectations, and it ultimately turns out to be little more than an above-average adventure title.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game picks up six months after the events of the second Ghostbusters movie. Once again, spooks and specters are haunting the streets of New York, and the gang has reason to believe that their old nemeses Gozer and his acolyte Ivo Shandor are behind the mayhem. The boys then set out to shut off a series of conduits that seem to be funneling paranormal energy into one point and eliminate the threat of the ghost world invading our world.
Players join the crew as The Rookie, a new recruit who has been brought onboard to be Egon's "Experimental Weapons Tester." What this basically means is that players will have a proton pack strapped to their back, complete with all manner of attachments and upgrades that will either make the Ghostbusters' lives a lot easier or "blow you into somewhere in New Jersey." Obviously this is a sweet gig, one for which you should be extremely excited. Just be careful out there; the health insurance doesn't kick in for 90 days and giant holes in the abdomen aren't the type of wound that you can just take cold medicine for and wait out.
The story line is extremely competent, which makes sense since it was written by Aykroyd and Ramis. The two handled all the script work for the title, thus ensuring that the game can be relied on as part of the official Ghostbusters canon. The stars have called the game essentially the third movie, and for the most part, it does a great job of extending the franchise and delivering a well-paced, well-plotted and well-acted experience.
There are a few minor missteps, however, though none are completely game-wrecking. First off, while the main actors are still just as comfortable in their old Ghostbusters skins and hilarious as ever, Alyssa Milano utterly flops as the female lead. Her disinterest and detachment from the project is apparent from the first moment she opens her mouth, and never once in the game did I wish we could hear more from the girl I still think of as Sam from "Who's the Boss?" Secondly, the ending feels shoehorned and stilted, as though Aykroyd and Ramis ran out of pages and had to write an ending. While some might say the revelations at the end of the experience are unexpected and therefore entertaining, in actuality they are bizarre, out-of-left-field reveals that don't fit into the larger context. Most of the moments in the eight- to 10-hour tale are solid, but the last 30 minutes or so completely fall apart.
Since the game largely feels like a movie, you would hope that it would look like one too, and that's an area where the title doesn't disappoint. The character models are created with tender loving care, and the boys all look just as you remember them … a couple of decades ago. Perhaps more importantly, the equipment is amazing, and a special round of applause goes out to the proton pack. The entire piece looks strikingly similar to what one would notice in the movies, but with just enough embellishments and additions to allow for a nice transition into the game. The folks at Terminal Reality were given access to Sony's prop archive while they were crafting the digital re-creations of the equipment, and the long hours of study and attention to detail pay off in a huge way. The eye candy here is plentiful indeed.
While the story and larger mythos of the game are important, the business of busting ghosts won't handle itself, so you're probably wondering if it's any fun. The answer is mostly yes, but with some major reservations on a few key areas that make some aspects extremely frustrating.
The game really excels at the basics of fighting and trapping ghosts of various sizes, shapes and dispositions. You start out with the basic beam on your proton pack, but as the game progresses, you add some more firepower to your arsenal. There is a shotgun-like blast that can make short work of more minor baddies, as well as a nasty rapid-fire attachment that not only dishes out the pain but also has limited tracking capabilities. The most important weapon you'll unlock is the slime blower, which does double duty as a method for damaging baddies and an integral tool in solving puzzles. Some areas are covered in caustic black slime that must be neutralized by the slime blower, while others feature heavy, out-of-reach objects that must be pulled in using the slime tether. Ultimately, each weapon's primary and secondary fire modes have their uses, and the game does a great job of keeping you on your toes so you never get too comfortable with any one gun.
Of course, the most important part of any Ghostbuster's job is trapping the nefarious spirits and making sure they never cause havoc again. In the game, once you wear down a ghost's health enough, you can engage your capture beam and haul it toward a trap. After some wrangling and slamming, the baddies will end up stunned, and from there it's simply a matter of dragging them over to the cone of light above your deployed trap. There's a great feeling of satisfaction the first time you watch a ghost get sucked in and hear the ka-ching of coin you just earned (which can be used to buy upgrades for your weapons and traps), and that sense of accomplishment remains throughout the game. One thing you'll learn early on is that bustin' does indeed make you feel good.
Even though the basics of combat are solid, there are a ton of poor design decisions and head-scratching bad moves that cause the game to quickly devolve into tedium and frustration. First and most importantly, is teammate AI, which was harvested fresh from the idiot farm. Your fellow Ghostbusters are decent enough about attacking the ghosts that appear, but it's clear from the get-go that in any schoolyard fight these guys thought that the best way to defend oneself was to cover your eyes because hey, if you can't see the bully, then he obviously can't see you. They'll simply stand in place and allow themselves to be pounded by enemy attacks until they're put out of commission and you're forced to haul ass across the level to revive them. During tense enemy encounters and especially boss battles, you'll easily spend the majority of your time babysitting teammates rather than doing any actual damage. The only thing that keeps them from being completely worthless is the fact that they can actually make the ghost trapping process a bit easier, but only when they aren't being ripped to shreds by the baddies they are choosing to ignore.
There are some other problems with combat as well, including the fact that anytime an enemy manages to knock you into the air, your character goes into a ridiculous ragdoll animation and is rendered completely incapacitated for an inordinately long time, as well a camera so tight that you'll lose track of enemies entirely too frequently. Since there's no way to lock onto a bad guy or keep track of all your foes once the action gets hectic, you'll take a lot of cheap shots from behind on behalf of baddies you never saw coming. Also, given their ghostly nature, they'll likely teleport away before you manage to turn and face them, resulting in a hellish game of hide-and-seek that inevitably ends in tears.
The final gameplay failing is the title's extremely unbalanced difficulty, which spikes so severely in some spots that sections are nearly impossible for those without nerves of steel and the patience of a saint. I can recall three separate occasions in the game where I was beset by about a dozen ghosts at once, each of which seemed to have the skill to kill me and my teammates with two or three attacks. There is even one section I'm convinced I only passed because while I played it, the game glitched and didn't send in a wave of ghosts that it was supposed to. Not that I'm complaining, but if I only made it through a section due to a line of code not being read properly, then it would seem that there are some overarching problems here.
The best way to alleviate the frustration that accompanies the single-player campaign is to jump into multiplayer for a while and enjoy teaming up with real humans in quick, one-off scenarios that are quite entertaining both initially and over the long haul. Teams of up to four can run through three different scenarios that find you protecting artifacts, trapping as many ghosts as possible within a time limit and trying to stay alive through wave after wave of baddies. The multiplayer is fundamentally cooperative, but there are some competitive aspects as players square off to see who can earn the most cash in each scenario. There isn't enough depth here to satisfy hardcore online players, but it's a nice addition and gives the title plenty more replay value than if it had been a single-player-only experience.
If this hadn't been a Ghostbusters game, then we would likely be praising it for its successes and sweeping its deficiencies under the rug. The fact of the matter, though, is that Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a hugely anticipated game and unfortunately, it ultimately let us down. The script and acting are mostly great, but some blemishes keep them from ranking up there with the first film. The gameplay is mostly inspired, but insipid AI and some brutally difficult sections drain a large portion of the fun. Multiplayer is enjoyable for the most part, but the lack of substantial depth means that it'll be a distraction for a couple of weeks and then it'll be forgotten. Every aspect of the game tries to excel, only to be pulled back down by one or two major shortcomings. In the end, this is a decent, solid game, but if falls well short of being either the Keymaster or the Gatekeeper. Still Worth a look!
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