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!

Making a Sci Fi RPG is a daunting task with so many benchmark titles that you have to follow in the footsteps of but cast a huge shadow such as Mass Effect. It is something that the developer studio Spiders just keeps trying to punch above its weight to make a good RPG game with attempts to go into fantasy RPG with Bound by Flame and their previous Sci Fi attempt with Mars: War Logs. Now they are back with a second go at Sci Fi RPG with The Technomancer but after reviewing Mars: War Logs, I was curious to see if any lessons had been learned or if once again the quality was lost in the ambition.

The Technomancer returns to Mars about 200 years after it was colonized and the planet is a battleground where huge corporations fight for control and crime is abundant. As the player you take the role of a rookie Technomancer Zachariah, a cybernetically augmented soldier with the power to harness electrical powers who is on the run from the secret police who finds himself embroiled in a tale on mystery and conspiracy to unravel the secrets of the Technomancer order whilst trying to bring justice to the Red Planet. Just as with Mars: War Logs, this game tries to use aspects from many successful RPG games such as Mass Effect and Witcher series to bring its story to life in its gameplay, but sadly Spiders Studio yet again makes the cardinal sin of getting carried away with what it wants to deliver over what they are capable of delivering and the result is sadly a rather average mess.

The size and scope of this game is rather impressive, that does deserve to be recognized from the start and in some way I do want to give the developers credit for being courageous enough to go as big as they did with this game. The reality is that although they do try to emulate what has worked well in other RPG games, it never really achieves what they hoped it would. It all feels a little underfunded and therefore just like Mars: War Logs and Bound by Flame, never stops feeling like a cheap substandard version of the big hitters in RPG games. The visuals for example are rather dark and dull for a good portion of the first few hours of gameplay, from the cosmetic items you equip to the environments the missions take place on. It all has the standard sci fi feel and look to it but can be really drab after a while which then bleeds into the movement animation which feels really stiff in the movement both in and out of combat.

City’s all have different areas and population sections all connected by a series of side and back streets to explore and traverse down showing an impressive design layout but then it is filled with annoying NPC’s which brings me to my next criticism, the voice acting. It is just so wooden and devoid of any passion in the delivery of dialogue either as Zachariah or those he will interact with. Hearing “I do not have the required skill level” constantly becomes really tedious and having NPC’s repeat the same chat lines just irritating. One of the main gameplay mechanics is having player choice in dialogue scenes which have the ability to gain information for the mission, discover secret areas or items or even mid combat to end the situation peacefully. So having such a bland and under performing voice acting element takes away from this feature to the point I rarely wanted to engage in any conversations outside of shops and key character moments.

The combat for me is perhaps the biggest letdown yet purest example of how much the developers have overreached with The Technomancer. In combat you have three fighting stances which you can hot switch too depending on the level of opponents you face. From using a bow staff, to shield sword or pistol and dagger. Choosing which one to use very much depends on which fighting style you feel comfortable with. Each can be upgraded by improving your weapons and then augmented with your Technomancer abilities. It is a combat style that tries to mirror the system used in the Witcher games but it all ends up feeling far too cumbersome, which only becomes more exacerbated when the combat kicks it up a notch. When you face a one on one or one on two situations the combat can feel very precise and rewarding. Sadly though the game will more often throw groups of enemies at you, groups who will be better armed and provide a real threat from the moment the tutorial section ends and the combat then becomes very sluggish and cheap and I died a good few times just walking around the back streets in areas being ambushed, even if the fight is not provoked by you, if they see you they will chase you and attack.

The game will provide you with the chance to take companions with you, and in combat the AI of your companions can be so terrible that your allies will often not really be that at all, and may quickly fall or forget to revive you if needed. You can upgrade their armour and weapons but the combat can often just feel very flat and very annoying when they let you down. This is ultimately how The Technomancer ends up making you feel as a player, just let down by how it tries to do so much and on the surface has the potential to offer so much greatness but gets buried under all that it tries to do.

The Technomancer falls into the same problem previous Spider Studio games suffer from; the scope of the ambition for the game is greater than the delivery and execution of it. The main quest is a good 25 to 30 hours of gameplay, which is extended should you take on all the available side missions but while that all sounds good, the tedium of the side missions and frustrations of the combat and upgrading mechanics just turn it all into a dull grind. In its attempts to imitate the big names in this genre by borrowing what made them work so well, The Technomancer is really a “looks good on paper” experience but the final result simply fails to live up to the potential. I do wish that the developers would focus on delivering what is in their limits to do because when they go too far outside their comfort zone, it becomes a messy blur that is off putting to continue playing for the length of time the story requires. I played it on both Xbox One and tried it on Playstation 4 with little difference to the issues it has which are in the core of the game itself.

As a game experience it fails more than it succeeds, but in daring to go big by offering so much to do, it would have benefited far more from being scaled back with more polish given to key sections and the finer details to give a solid experience instead of juggling so many factors that it becomes a poor imitation and glaringly so.