Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Ghostbusters

1. Official Site
2. Platform: 360
3. Publisher: Atari
4. Developer: Terminal Reality
5. Release Date: 06/16/09
6. Genre: Action/Adventure

by Mitch Youngblood

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Beloved childhood memories occupy a special place in our hearts for the very reason they make us feel good about a particular subject. Where things get tricky is when we revisit those glory days and realize that what we fell in love with may not exactly hold up as well as we remember.

Fortunately, the original Ghostbusters deserves its status as a film classic. This was one among many gems released in 1984 (along with Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Romancing the Stone, and Gremlins) and I grew up able to quote it start to finish. I recently rewatched it and right from the start, I smiled. And I kept smiling too because Ghostbusters is a film that not only rewards multiple viewings (for example, I’ve seen the film close to a hundred times and never noticed that a bag of Stay Puft Marshmellows is on Dana’s counter next to the cooking eggs), but remains by turns hilarious and spooky 25 years later.

The less said about the sequel the better, although it was best summarized when star Bill Murray described it as a whole lot of slime and not much of the cast.

Fast forward to the present and we have a new Ghostbusters game, one that utilizes the original cast to great effect and that goes a step beyond being just another movie tie-in. The video game is a direct sequel to the original film, and for all intents and purposes we now have an official third “film” in the franchise. The game picks up in 1991 and finds the gang restored to their ecto-fighting glory after the events involving Vigo the Destroyer. Due to a recent boom in business, they’ve hired a new recruit (You) and welcomed him to the team.

“Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes!”

The game basically had me at hello. If you’re a long time fan, then the devil is especially in the details. I laughed my head off at Slimer’s introduction and a tremendous amount of credit should go to Dan Aykroyd (Ray) and Harold Ramis (Egon) for going the extra mile with the script. Not only are all the characters exactly as you remember them, but the one-liners and spookiness are recreated in loving, exacting detail.

The amount of visual flair they injected into a ghost-filled New York City is tremendous. As you move through each level, the game will recommend when you should activate your PKE meter, which is essentially a supernatural night vision. It allows you to see spectral trails as well as ghost artifacts which can be collected via scanning. Open up your menu and there is a report on the artifact complete with historical record of what it does, where it was found, and so forth.

What I’m commenting on isn’t exactly news to anyone who plays video games, but what IS news is how the majority of movie tie-ins, frankly, suck and this one doesn’t. Quite the contrary. Ghostbusters is a great deal of fun, if you can get past the few moments when it goes from fun to "what were they thinking?" The amount of attention to detail here really envelops you in the world of the ghostbusters, and it engages your mind as well as your twitchy impulses.

“I can’t believe you’re seriously considering listening to these men.”

Taken by itself, the idea of teaming up with the original ghostbusters and blasting everything in sight with your proton pack would seem to be a no-brainer. Now use that idea as the starting point, throw in dedicated voice acting from the main cast, sprinkle in a highly destructible environment, add on a compelling story which unfolds in very unexpected ways, and you have a genuinely winning game.

For example, once the ghostbusters figure out where they need to go to investigate the source of the disturbances rattling the five boroughs, they get a call from a familiar, though unexpected, location. In a fit of gleeful revenge, they head out only to eventually uncover more and more details central to the main plot. It was at this point I realized what Aykroyd and Ramis had in mind. Instead of just taking gamers along on a Disney tour of their greatest hits, which is more or less what I was expecting, Aykroyd and Ramis wrote a tightly scripted lengthy film, and you just happen to be the star.

But if it was just you against the ghostly hordes, you wouldn’t last long. Going mano-a-mano with some of the larger ghouls will result in one thing – you flat on your back. Teamwork is central to the enjoyment of this game, and unlike a lot of other titles where your teammates are supposed to be effective yet aren’t (looking at you LEGO series), working in tandem with the ghostbusters is usually the only way to clear a room or defeat a boss. Granted, their aim isn’t the greatest and sometimes they’re just as likely to take you down as they are to hit the ghost flying around the ceiling. But you get the feeling they mean well.

Besides, when your proton stream is searing art work off the wall and setting the furniture on fire it becomes difficult to focus due to your brain collapsing in on itself from realizing a dream akin to striking down your enemies with your own lightsaber. It wasn’t until I was through the first sequence I even realized there was a story, so focused was I on causing as much mayhem as possible with my very own proton pack while Ray and Egon and Peter and Winston chided me on.

"You know it's just occured to me that we have never really had a completely successful test of this equipment."

After the shock of just how good the game is wore off, I became aware of a few nits worth picking. For starters, even on normal it seems too easy for ghosts and your own teammates to knock you on your back. Granted, a blast from an unlicensed nuclear accelerator right to the face won’t leave you in the best of moods, but how is it that a ghost can knock me flat without so much as sliming me? Is that reserved for the second date or the third?

Also, when I explore the firehouse, why is it that I can’t engage my team or even hit on Jeanine? I love that Annie Potts reprises her role and does so with the same monotone brilliance she brought to the films, but flirting with her ala Manny and Eva from “Grim Fandango” would have been great fun.

While the controls do what they need to do (with the right trigger being your primary fire and the left trigger being your alt fire), why then did the dev team feel it necessary to add a third, capture stream that you activate by hitting the LB button? Call me crazy, but I would think it a wiser move to have the proton stream default into a capture stream once a ghost’s defenses have been sufficiently weakened. Which brings me to the process of capturing a ghost, and it goes a little something like this:

1. See ghost.
2. Activate proton stream via right trigger.
3. Mayhem ensues, usually destroying most of your surrounding environment.
4. Continue to blast ghost until its health meter is gone.
5. Activate capture stream via LB button.
6. Smash ghost into walls or the floor with the left trigger to weaken it further, including slamming it into the floor.
7. Throw out your trap with the X button and wait for the paltry vertical light to appear signifying where to drag the ghost.
8. Hold ghost over trap long enough for trap to complete the capture.
9. Try like crazy to not get taken out by either other ghosts or other ghostbusters.

That may seem like a lot of work, and it is when you break it down point for point, but the action is so relentlessly paced that all of the above can occur in less than a few minutes. But it seems that you have to really work the controller while a little too much happens on screen.

Which brings up this point: Bring your A-game abilities because combat can be frenetic and confusing. Some times it is pretty straight forward, which is why this isn’t so much a complaint as an observation. With four or five particle streams lighting up a room, debris and ghosts whizzing by your head (followed closely by those particle streams) it is easy to get lost. Where is the ghost you’re supposed to capture? Where the heck is the trap I just threw down? Sure it emits a small light, but when so much is going on at once it can get lost in the confusion. This usually resulted in me snaring a ghost then smashing it around and eventually I stumbled onto the trap. The combat honestly feels like you’re fighting ghosts just like in the movies, but it is all from a third person perspective as opposed to multiple cuts showing us where to focus our attention.

"Alright, this chick is toast!"

Boss fights in particular are extremely challenging. This one aspect alone is likely to be the dividing line between those who love “Ghostbusters” and those who throw in the towel because the difficult ramps up so significantly in these fights that it’s like you’re suddenly playing a different game. It took me several tries to get past the Collector boss who has a purple spike-thingie attack move guaranteed to lay you on your back. Then for good measure he’ll float over to you and pound you personally into the ground. Somehow he’s also doing it to Ray and Egon at the same time so neither can come rescue you. Reset. Try again.

Other bosses work much the same way, but through trial and some serious errors it is possible to overcome them. There are ways around the bosses using the environment which in hindsight is a nifty way to stage the fights. It helps when there are more ghostbusters around, because if you go down then one of them will come revive you while the others hold the boss off. These are the fights where it is absolutely critical to work as a cohesive unit, because otherwise you will be toast.

That being said, I’d like to single out for praise a recent addition to third-person games. I’m not entirely sure when or where it started, but “Dead Space” was the first I heard about this technique so until otherwise corrected I’m going to assume that was the first time the entire HUD was confined to the protagonist’s back. The same principle applies here with the player able to look at the proton back and see how close it is to overheating, at which point you simply vent it with a quick tap of the RB button, which of four possible beam types you are using, and how close to dying you are. This is a terrific feature as it saves screen real estate while adding immeasurably to the sense of immersion.

If you are so inclined, there is also a multiplayer feature available that allows you to play with up to three other ghostbusters as you complete jobs and clear maps.

I’ll admit to loving this game more than a bit. It is a great deal of fun with only a few instances where you feel like you are in over your head. The action is fast and furious and you can destroy practically everything in sight with your very own proton pack. The camaraderie of the original ghostbusters coupled with your battles alongside them make for some seriously fun gaming. Now take an original storyline correctly focusing on the big bad guy from the first film (not the one you’re thinking) and that fleshes out the universe even more than we could have hoped for and you are hip deep in win.

And one level has you running from the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man in Times Square. That alone means you should play this game.

Gaming Trend Score

92

1. Graphics: 95
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 86
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 93
6. OVERALL:92