All week I’ve been confronted by frightening, freakish visions on every street corner. That’s right, I’ve been in Edinburgh for the Fringe. Boom! (And, more relevantly, also playing a bit of augmented reality iPhone thing Ghostbusters Paranormal Blast.)
It’s a neat set up: a Google Map of your immediate neighbourhood displays calls for you to answer, and above that a news ticker tracks supernatural activity at nearby locations – churches, B&Bs, whatever it can scrape from the map. The Ectomobile takes you straight to each call, so there’s no need to move from your favourite corner sofa.
Actually, that’s not quite true. Once you answer a call, a high-res ghost appears on a low-res camera image of your surroundings, and proceeds to dart around absolutely over the bloody place. Given that you can only fire your ghost-busting proton beam into the centre of the screen, this leads to much spinning around and wild flailing of arms and body, trying to follow the not-really-there spook hither, and indeed thither. Try to stay seated in that corner sofa and you’ll be whacking your shins on the coffee table in no time.
Once the paranormal pest is sufficiently weakened, you fling the trap and guide it in. And that’s all there is to it, other than trying to avoid the unblockable attacks of your spirit foe, as it tries to do away with you before you do away with it. The real Ghostbusters weren’t afraid of no ghost, but I have a healthy fear of a ghost with an actual machine gun. A machine gun! Honestly.
There are upgrades to be had to make this less unfair, but I rather fancy that few people will feel the need to see much more once Slimer has flapped around their hall, stairs and landing.
A briefly distracting novelty, then. That, and an excellent way to make friends and passers by alike feel embarrassed on your behalf at an airport departure gate.
Version: iPhone
iTunes App Store: £0.69