Who ya gonna call?
Let's get this out of the way:Anyway, still here? Awesome; Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a good game on the PC, but it falls short of being anything super-special due to omitting stuff the PS3 and 360 got.
Set in 1991, two years after the events of Ghostbusters 2, this title finds the boys in gray moving onto the next chapter in the world of paranormal investigations and eliminations -- namely, expanding the team. You'll join the squad as an experimental weapons technician with the sole purpose of testing Egon's latest Proton Pack modifications. Within moments of showing up on the job, a strange wave of ghostly energy emanates from a museum packing a Gozer exhibit and spreads across New York City. The spiritual spike gets every ghoul in the five boroughs riled up, the boys get to work and a devious master plan is set in motion.
This game is meant to be the third movie in the franchise, and with that in mind, we have to talk about presentation right off the bat. The game opens detailing the ghostly explosion in a beautiful cutscene -- all the computer-generated movies look great with lots of detail and animations -- and we're launched into the Ghostbusters theme just like when the Gray Lady scared the librarian in the first movie and when Dana caught up to Oscar's carriage in the second film. These nifty scenes will continue along with the soundtrack from the original movie throughout the game and setup the tale. There are dips in this presentation value -- which I'll get to in a bit -- but these touches are pulled right from the movie and drop you into this third-person shooter with a specific story to tell (i.e. don't expect to choose your next job GTA-style).
To immerse you in the experience, your noob Ghostbuster character doesn't speak and isn't given a name other than "rookie." In the game, it's explained that this nameless move is to keep the core four from getting attached in case a device goes haywire and puts the whippersnapper out of commission, but in reality, it's so you can just sit back and play your part as the real Ghostbusters banter with each other in the tech-heavy dialogue and comedic one-liners you'd expect.
For me, this works quite well. If you haven't been paying attention, the four original Ghostbusters (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson) are back to lend their voices along with the team's receptionist (Annie Potts) and the dickless wonder known as Walter Peck (William Atherton) so you really don't need some new guy getting in the way of the dialogue, which was penned in part by the films' original writers Aykroyd and Ramis. I'm sure many would want to create their own character, but when you see some of the facial animations in the CG cutscenes and how the experience plays as a whole, I think you'll forgive the omission.
OK. So, the game feels a lot like a movie -- we've even got a new love interest for Venkman in Dr. Ilyssa Selwyn, who is voiced by Alyssa Milano -- but you're probably more concerned with how it plays. A third-person shooter, your Ghostbusters experience is told from the behind-the-back perspective. Rather than have the screen littered with health bars and HUDs (the screen will get red as you take damage and display a running damage total as you blast objects in an environment), your Proton Pack will serve as your hub of in-game information. By monitoring the meter on the right side of the device, you can see how close to overheating you are; yes, to give you some restraints, liberties were taken with the device so that you now have to vent the pack to keep it from overheating and taking you out of the game for an extended period of time.
The pack is also your visual representation for which weapon mode you are in. Rather than limit you to just a proton stream, Egon will have outfitted you pack with a total of four firing modes by the time all is said and done. The first mode is the classic Proton Pack from the movies but packs a Boson Dart (a ball of condensed energy that explodes on impact) as a secondary fire. By tapping No. 2, you'll switch to your dark matter functions, which causes some blue lights and gizmos to pop out of the pack. These dark blue attacks include the shotgun-like Shock Blast and Stasis Stream that slows enemies to a crawl. The Meson Collider is assigned to No. 4 -- which causes an antenna crackling with electricity to come out of the pack -- and tags a ghoul with a tracker and then rapidly fires particles at the enemy. Finally, the Slime Blower is No. 3 and can be used to coat enemies and objects in positively charged goo or as a Slime Tether that draws two objects together. This beaut turns the four red lights green and causes a slime reservoir to rise out of the pack
Now, let's be honest: we all expected Ghostbusters to suck. That's not a comment about Terminal Reality, Atari, or anyone else involved in the project, it's just one of those things videogame fans have come to terms with: most games connected to the movie industry end up sucking. Ghostbusters bucks the trend in a few different ways, but the weapon options are high on that list. Being able to hit a specter with one end of a Slime Tether, attach the other end to a trap, and watch as the sprit is quickly pulled into the trap is great. Watching Ray's proton stream sail past your head and help wrestle a ghoul is fun. On top of the fact that you're getting these devices every now and again to keep you on your toes, there are also 20 upgrades you can buy along the way to supe-up the experience (you're earning cash for every beast you bust). Sure, the Meson Collider and Dark Matter weapons are forgettable and don't really need to be used, but the other half of the Twinkie is great.
Should those complaints turn you of to Ghostbusters? Well, over on the PS3/360 review, I said "no," but that was in part because the game actually had a deep multuiplayer mode filled with challenges for you and your friends to tackle together while individually trying to grab as much cash as you could by trapping ghosts and destroying portals. Sadly, the six multiplayer matches, twenty levels of Ghostbuster ranks, and twelve maps are nowhere to be found in the PC version of this game. That knocks some of the steam out of this $30 title. The actual story of Ghostbusters: The Video Game should take you about eight hours and the game doesn't support Achievements for your PC. So, the price is nice, but you lose a lot of what keeps me playing Ghostbusters on my PS3.
In terms of control, the mouse and keyboard setup was solid with the mouse aiming and controlling your Proton Pack's primary and secondary fire. In fact, this plays like jut about every third-person shooter out there on the PC, so I won't waste my time talking about it. The game does support a USB controller, so yay!
Of course, like any game, Ghostbusters isn't perfect -- especially in that presentation aspect I wrote about in the beginning. Although the CG scenes look great, the in-game cutscenes can't hold a candle to the polish of the former. Lip sync will seem off at places (laughably so in the cutscene after the library chapter), the characters are standing a bit too rigidly and so on. It's that double-edged sword of using a property people know so well -- we know how the actors are supposed to speak and act, so when there's a miscue, it's obvious. In that same vein -- as happy as I am to have all the actors back on board -- Bill Murray sounds like he's doing an impression of Peter Venkman at times; he's always got this smarmy tone to his voice and he doesn't seem to genuinely care about the team. Perhaps this is just the progression of his character because the Ghostbusters are a big hit nowadays, but it definitely isn't the human, well-rounded Peter from the films. Plus, the whole Peter/Ilyssa love story never really had any spark so it... it seems forced in the end.
If you're looking for more audio commentary, I wish the fine folks at Terminal Reality and Atari could've created some new music or borrowed from Ghostbusters 2. Sure, I love having the original soundtrack on board, but that was designed for a two-hour movie. By the end of the game, you're going to have heard the same handful of songs repeated several times at different places in the title.
In terms of being a nitpicky fan, the game's pretty good at not making a ton of continuity errors. Being able to explore the firehouse in between is pretty darn cool. However, you can go listen to the Vigo painting spout phrases, but that doesn't make any sense because that painting was destroyed at the end of Ghostbusters 2. Similarly, when the hell did Winston get a PhD? Didn't he just walk in off the street in the original film? Here, he just nonchalantly drops in that he spent a lot of time in a particular part of the museum while working on his doctorate. I guess the movies didn't document exactly what happened in the five years between GB and GB2 and an additional two years that have passed since the last film in this game, but it's still weird.
Now, as great as the game can look graphically, it also has a few stumbles along with the shoddy in-game scenes and stiff characters. For starters, a lot of the cutscenes look like they were compressed in low quality; you'll see some pixilization here and there. Also, everyone's hair could use some more work -- it's like you can see it being layered in places and it's all shimmery. These issues aren't deal breakers, but they're there and keep the title from being as impressive as it could've been.
Closing Comments
If you dug the movies, you should dig Ghostbusters: The Video Game. There are some moments that cause the game to stumble, but you're getting a new tale in the Ghostbusters canon, fun gameplay, a whole bunch of stuff to destroy, and some cool ghosts to scan. I felt that the game's ending was a bit flat and the romantic interest was forced, but Ghostbusters was fun -- too bad you don't get the multiplayer action the home consoles do.
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