Finally! A Ghostbusters Game You Can Give A Shit About
If you’re like me, you love the Ghostbusters movies. If you’re like me, you love the Ghostbusters cartoon (less than the movies, but still). If you’re like me, you’ve had day dreams during your childhood, adolescence and hell even yesterday about being a Ghostbuster. The 1984 paranormal comedy opened the minds and imaginations of countless ’80’s offspring and has stayed in our hearts ever since. Well just a few weeks ago, the latest addition to the Ghostbusters franchise was released. No, I’m not talking about the long-awaited Ghostbusters III; I’m talking about Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
The Ghostbusters have been brought to home video game consoles a number of times over the years and every interactive incarnation has been a bigger failure than the last. I ask you to think back to the first Ghostbusters game for the NES; the game where it took you forty-five minutes just to figure out how to take the Ghostbusters to a call and actually try to bust some goddamn gouls. Or what about in the Ghostbusters 2 adaptation, also on the NES, where you had to make Ecto-1 jump over gigantic cliffs in the middle of the FDR for some reason. It’s a fact that most video game/movie tie-ins are absolutely terrible, but the games in the Ghostbusters franchise really take the fucking turkey. Until now.
On June 16th of this year, the Ghostbusters made their triumphant return to home consoles everywhere in the form of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. At first any Ghostbusters fan was skeptical of such a game. We had to be considering we’d all been burned by Ghostbusters games for the past quarter of a century! Since all the previous games had been so terrible, the actual idea of a new Ghostbusters game being good seemed like a pipe dream. But I have to say, after just finishing the game the other night, this is one hell of a game.
I think the main reason that the game is so great is because it’s a completely new story. It’s not a rehash of the previous two films or a shitty adaptation, however they do find clever ways to bring you back to some of the famous locations from the film. The story is just what you’d expect from a Ghostbusters adventure: whacky stuff is happening all over the city and the ghost problem seems to be exacerbating by the minute. The game portion of the story is you play as a new recruit. He’s unnamed and doesn’t speak which is helpful considering all four actors returned to lend voices to their famous characters–yes, even Bill Murray–and it’s great to hear these beloved characters saying new paranormal-related things.
You travel to different parts of the city going on different ghost-busting missions and at the end of each incredibly in-depth and well-designed level you fight some sort of Big Bad. Please excuse the Buffy reference. The game finds really clever ways to keep the act of busting ghosts fresh and fun, although if it was just a straight-up proton streams with no fun add-ons, I’d still love the game just as much. Nerd-gasm moment: having a ghost in my capture stream and tossing down a trap to lock it inside was one of the most exciting things I’ve done in months. For serious.
My problems with the game were few and far between. One thing is that during battle stages the Ghostbusters sort of forget how to talk and the characters fall into the video game trap of just repeating stock dialogue over and over again. If I heard Dan Aykroyd yell, “Need a little help here” one more time I was going to put my controller through the screen. And If I never hear Bill Murray say, “Oww, uh, ow here!” it’ll be too goddamn soon.
Another beef I had with it is the ‘recovery’ system that’s set in place. Whenever your energy level gets too low, you collapse and have to wait for another Ghostbuster to come over and pull you back up. Likewise, when one of your teammates fall, you run over and press a button to get them back up. It’s a fine system until you get into the more challenging stages where all of a sudden the Ghostbusters start getting really shitty at their job. You’ll fall over and they either take forever to come help you up, or you just lay there and watch the rest of them get slaughtered and you have to reload your check point. If I’m going to lose at a video game, I want it to be on my own terms, not the A.I.’s.
Aside from those minor qualms it’s an insanely fun game that I’d recommend to anyone. As the story finished and the credits rolled I realized that if only they had come up with this story in 1988, then maybe Ghostbusters 2 would’ve been a better movie (a painful rewatching of the second film a few days ago reminded me of how lackluster and hamfisted it truly is. Take that childhood memories!). Which reminds me that the game makes almost no mention of the second film. It’s set in 1991, two years after the events in the last movie, but for the most part the story is all tied back to the first film. However they do explain how the river of slime was created so that’s something.
All in all, this is a great game. I was playing the XBOX 360 version which is identical to the PS3 version, however the Wii version was made to be much more family-friendly with the Ghostbusters looking more animated and the story being less intense. If you consider yourself even a mild Ghostbusters fan at all then I suggest you pick this up immediately. It won’t let you down like the last seven games and shoddy sequel did.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game is now available on XBOX 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Wii from Atari.
That's a big twinkie
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