There’s something strange in the neighbourhood, the PKE aims towards this game but should it have crossed the streams or become a god?
So… who are you going to call?

Written by the original creators, Dan Aykroyd & Harold Ramis, and coming packed with the original Ghostbusters, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson & Harold Ramis, you take the role of a fifth Ghostbuster only known as the Recruit. You are brought in by the group to test their new equipment but they decide to keep it a no name bases encase something was to happen to you, i.e. full protonic reversal. However, just as you become a new member, something strange begins to happen in your neighbourhood, something strange that began with the Museum and the Gozza exhibit, which leads to the release of Slimer and a slew of other ghosts.

You chase Slimer back to the first place that the group caughtt him, the Sedgwick Hotel, where you run into a new character Ilyssa who is crucial to the story… but by the end the character feels out of place, don’t think of this game as a game, think of it as Ghostbusters 3, making this character out of place specially with the story tying a few loose ends from the series and turning a few plot points around with subtle hints towards the end of the game. And with that twist, you can tell that this character was original meant to be Sigourney Weaver’s character, Dana.

The game can take between 10 and 15 hours to complete the story, which leads to meeting a lot of old friends, such as the infamous Walter Peck, who once again wants to shut the Ghostbusters down, even if that means loosing his own job.

 

To borrow from the theme song again, busting makes you feel good, especially when capturing ghosts. Any fan will know the basics of a proton pack, throw out the stream and capture the ghost and pull it towards the trap… well now comes the game version, before you can pull the ghost into the trap, you must first stun the ghost by slamming it to the ground then pull it towards the trap but even then it wont go down without a fight.
FYI: PS3 version has controller support for this version, which makes the game quite a lot more interesting.

There’s even more of a twist here, the pack can over heat. So you can’t run round shooting everything, although there is an Achievement/Trophy for that. There’s also a little part showing your health meter, which recharges over time, but this is so small you’d hardly notice it besides you’ll be relying more on the visual ques, blurring and the screen going red, then a few blinking lights.

But gamers rejoice there are a few new weapons that the Ghostbusters can use, one we’ve seen from GB2, the Slime Blower Mark 2. There are two other weapons, one that causes the Ghosts to slow down, Dark Matter Generator and Meson Collider.
All these weapons have secondary fire, the Proton stream comes with the Boson Dart, the Slime Blower comes with the Slime Tether, the Dark Matter stream’s secondary fire acts like a shot gun and the Meson Collider acts like a machine gun.

Along with these new goodies comes the original Ghostbusters Gear, such as the Ghost Trap and PKE Meter, both of which can be upgraded for faster trapping or faster tracking of the ghosts. A lot of the gear can be upgraded, just to make the pack stop from over heating as quick or to make the streams stronger.

Now comes the nerdiest part of the review, the Ghostbusters Firehouse is pretty damn cool, after certain chapters you are given the freedom to run around the firehouse where you can;
• Slide down the pole,
• Turn the ghost vault off,
• Talk to Vigo (yes he’s mister baddy himself from GB2 is here)
• Watch Slimmer mess around,
• Over hear Jean talk on the phone,
• Listen to the answer machine,
• And run a mock around the firehouse…

Okay maybe you can’t do that much around the place other than run around but its great fan service. There’s also a few ghostly items around the city which you need to collect, some of it you might have seen from your childhood i.e. a Staypufft Marshmallow man figure and Ecto 1 car, along with some stuff that revolves around the storyline and previous movies or just general myths from around NYC.

Speaking of the Ecto 1…
Nope sorry you don’t get to drive it, as the Ghostbusters in the game painfully point out towards the end, “Shall we let the rookie drive? … NAH!”
In that second I was excited and afterwards almost broke down in tears, cruel teasing gits… oh well maybe in a sequel?

There is an online component that allows you to capture ghosts with up to 4 friends both online and off, game modes are quite interesting but mostly sort of Ghostbuster twists of the classics like death match and CTF. This feature mostly feels tacked on at the last moment but is still a nice feature, if you have time issues but feel like busting ghosts.

Overall the game is enjoyable, funny and a great success for a 1980’s movie license. At times however, there are a few areas that may anger a few gamers out there with some repetitive ghosts. Any Ghostbusters fan will undoubtedly pick up this game, if not shame on you, anyone else may struggle to pay full price for it but it’s truly a great game to play.

+ Fun and Entertaining story.

+ Uniquely themed gamesplay.

+ Interesting Multiplayer.

-  Combat can become a chore.

-  CG Character Models look slightly shabby.

8.0/10

By Darren Arquette Posted Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 9:59 pm