Essentially an unofficial third movie of sorts – which cleverly uses characters and locations from the two films – you’re cast not into the slime covered boots of Ray, Peter, Egon or Winston but rather a nameless rookie. Egon doesn’t let the poor chap say his name with his reason being that as soon as you name something you’ll get attached to it. Becoming a Ghostbuster may not be safe career to take, but if this game is to anything to go by then it’s certainly a fun one.
The tutorial is nicely done, giving you a chance to learn the controls and explore the Ghostbuster HQ at your own leisure. Hint: slide down the fireman pole and you’ll earn yourself a few easy gamerpoints. You’re soon then whisked off to sort out a monstrous problem with the fellow Ghostbusters acting as AI controlled team-mates. They’re actually quite helpful, not only able to give you a hand off the floor but capable of busting ghosts on their own accord.
Trapping a ghost is somewhat more complex than gunning down a grunt in Gears of War or one of those badger things in Halo. Initially you’ll be wresting with the controls (a slightly absurd five buttons are used in the ghoulie grabbing process) but with practice things do become more intuitive. Every ghost trapped earns your rookie a fistful of dollars that can be used to upgrade the proton pack and other gizmos while damage caused to the environments is also shown on screen in dollars.
The PKE meter adds a touch of Metroid Prime to the proceedings. Equipping it brings up a first person view and the meter will give off signals if a ghost or collectable artifact is near. You can also scan ghosts and add them to a database. It’s worthwhile to do so as you’ll learn their weak points too.
The online multi-player mode is both solid and frantic, although the environments aren’t very spacious. One minute you’ll be working with up to three others protecting artifacts from dive bombing ghosts, then the next minute you’ll be working against your pals trying to bust as many ghosts within a time limit. After all the rounds are completed whoever raked in the most cash wins.
With decent pacing, sensibly placed check-points and a solid script backed with voical talent from Dan Aykroyd, Alyssa Milano and more this is a cut above most movie-based games. It’s also easily the best game that Terminal Reality have worked on. Nevertheless it still lacks the fine tuning that you’d find in a game from, say, Bungie or Epic. Cut-scenes and set-pieces occasionally fail to trigger prompting some surplus backtracking and repeatedly being knocked to the ground without warning by kamikaze ghosts gets frustrating.
It’s also all over a bit too quickly, but the chance to be a weld a proton pack and live the life of a Ghostbuster for an action-packed six hours is far better than not having the chance at all.
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