There was a time that whenever a large blockbuster film was due to come out, a video game tie in would also be released to capitalize on the marketing frenzy the film generates. Those tie in games tended to be pretty poor in quality, normally taking a generic genre style and giving it the look of the film and its characters, yes OCEAN I remember your crimes against video games. So with the release of the Ghostbusters remake on the big screen, a video game has been released but will it be worthy of your time or will you need to call someone in to remove its ghostly presence?
The moment you fire the game up you are greeted by the familiar Ghostbusters logo and original theme music which immediately puts you in the right frame of mind to go busting some ghosts. After having a bit of a dance and sing along to it, you will quickly learn that this game has nothing to do with the new film or a connection to the original film other than the logo and theme music. Instead we have a completely unique team of Ghostbusters with four new characters who are armed with proton pack powered weapons not seen in any of the films, with only a throw away line of dialogue mentioning the new team of Ghostbusters inspiring them to follow in their footsteps, the game takes no time to either introduce any of the new characters or to provide any back-story as to why they are doing what they are doing. Not a great start there then.
Visually the game has a nice animated cartoon TV show look to it, and the humour is very much aimed at a younger audience with simply joke attempts that will fall flat on anyone above the age of five. Each character uses a different weapon in order to fight the ghosts but all have the famous proton beams when it comes time to capture ghosts. But it is the very notion that these characters use a shotgun, assault rifle, auto pistols and a big mini-gun that will instantly feel out of place for fans of the films. The reason for these weapons is simple, this is a generic twin stick shooter style game which has the player moving around large themed locations, and taking on waves of the blandest ghostly enemies before finding the main target ghost and taking down enough of its health to trigger the mini game of capturing it. Capturing a ghost boils down to being prompted to switch to the proton beam, hitting the ghost which will result in a tug of war as you move the right stick in the opposite direction to where the ghost is trying to run to, slamming the ghost when prompted before the game tells you to throw a trap to capture it.
This is repeated through the level for minor ghosts as well and after you have captured the same ghost about ten times throughout each level you really begin to feel that its all a bit of a boring grind. The fights are unimaginative, the exploration of the levels just an overall slog and with them featuring two stages of battling the same ghosts over and over with gameplay that is almost mind numbing terrible, you will begin to ask yourself why you didn’t just stick the original films on instead.
You can level up each character as the ectoplasm they collect serve as experience points and when playing solo, all the XP gathered from all the Ghostbusters team will feed into whichever character you chose to control. You can upgrade movement speed, weapon damage, weapon overheating and more. Which is really needed because starting off the weapons all feels weak as hell, movement is so sluggish and weapons will overheat very quickly. There is no sense of damage impact during the fights so you never really feel involved as the player with the AI controlling the other three when playing solo. The AI is also pretty average which can be seen when trying to capture a ghost and only one or two will join in to help in the tug of war but even if they do, it never actually makes any difference and you can bring the ghost down yourself.
It is really disappointing to see just how little thought was giving to putting any excitement or fun into this game, it is devoid of anything even remotely entertaining and instead the longer you play the more you question as to why this was not released as a cheap arcade game instead of the full £30 asking price as a retail release. The entire experience just stinks of cash in, and a very obvious one at that which only cements how insulting the whole experience is if you are a fan of the films.
There is no real story to the game other than taking boring phone calls from Scooby Doo designed characters asking you to come take care of a ghost problem. During the game the dialogue, though just above being a phoned in delivery of lines, is so basic and generic with attempts at witty banter during fighting that is far more cringe worthy than anything enjoyable to hear as you play.
Overall this is a terrible game that would only appeal to a young audience who is too young to watch or know what the films are. It is mediocre in every detail from the dialogue to the game play and the obvious attempts to just throw in the iconic elements from the films to make it feel like its connected to the films but it just never does. To release this as a full price retail game is disgraceful; it is that simple and should have been released as a cheap arcade game and priced sensibly. Instead you have blatant cash in of the Ghostbusters brand with little effort put into making it fun. Trudging through the levels becomes annoying as a solo game and despite is having four player local co-op, the action is never challenging enough to make it rewarding to share the game with others.
This is a game that should be avoided at all costs, it will not give you a fun Ghostbusters game to enjoy and instead remind you of the time when people in suits looked at a business ledger and smiled instead of trying to give fans a great experience. The famous line asks “who you gonna call?” well in this case, call up everyone you know who is a Ghostbusters fan and tell them to avoid this at all costs!
