Monthly Archives: July 2009

The first thing to say about this game is that the the story mode it actually quite short. The career mode is misnamed, as one reviewer put it there is no GTA4 mode driving around to randomly generated jobs. You’re playing out a very specific, if surprisingly short storyline. Ghostbusters: The Video Game should really be called Ghostbusters III because that’s the storyline you’re playing – the plot of a third film as experienced by the Ghostbusters’ new experimental equipment technition (read as “disposable rookie with the untested, upgraded equipment”).  The problem is that the plot of a 90-minute action film is a darn sight shorter than 40-50 hour long video game. A little bit of customisation on the rookie would have been nice, but you are playing a very specific character just not one with much development or backstory. If this was a Fantastic Four game your character would be Herbie.

The first time you strap on the proton-pack and follow the escaped Slimer back to the Sedgewick Hotel is fantastic. They’ve got the sounds, the look, the voice artists, the locations – everything in this game screams authentic movie Ghostbusters. That is also a potential problem. Remember how much devastation they cause when capturing Slimer that first time in the movie, well that’s replicated in the game. It makes for a main weapon that is not only imprecise, but is actual made harder to aim because its special effect – the writhing, glowing stream of protons – takes up most of your field of view. You either except that its part of the authentic Ghostbusters experience (TM) or it’ll drive you insane. The enemy AI isn’t exactly brilliant, but they often hurl debris or small ghosts at you and that gets old really quickly. Your team-mates should be able to handle a lot, but if you watch them closely they delibrately hang back or do less damage than they should – one presumes that this is a gameplay issue to force you to do something yourself.

It is too easy to dismiss the Ghostbusters game, certainly the issues I outlined above sound pretty negative, but that shouldn’t hide the fact that this is a great game. Most of that enjoyment comes from the authentic Ghostbusters experience (minus slime), but you’re personal mileage will depend on how big a Ghostbusters fan you are.