With the new Ghostbusters film coming out in a couple of weeks, now seemed an appropriate time to re-examine 2009's Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Essentially functioning as the third installment of the trilogy once it became apparent that a third movie would never be made with the original cast, it sees the return of Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, and even Bill Murray reprising their iconic roles. As a huge fan of the franchise, I remembered enjoying it back when it came out. How does it hold up today?
Well, it's kind of all over the place, but at the end of the day, it's still a ton of fun. It's really just a Gears of War clone, with some of the exact same mechanics. It's basically a third person shooter, with the camera placed at about the same point as it is in Gears. Sprinting is identical, with dropping the camera to a lower angle while your character dashes forward. There are even "emergence holes" that pop up later in the game that you must close up - only instead of using grenades, you use a slime blower. The only thing really missing is the option for co-op story play, which would have been a great addition to a Ghostbusters game.
Even the shooting mechanics are the same. Sure, it appears a bit different given that your streams are never straight, but it's functionally identical. You place your aiming reticle on your target and fire. It's literally no different than aiming in Gears. However, the trapping mechanics do provide enough of a change that it does add a little something. While some ghosts will simply vanish if you shoot them enough, many others have to be trapped. This means shooting an enemy and weakening them, then wrangling them and drawing them into the trap. Wrangling isn't exactly the most fun thing on the planet, but it does provide that variance to the core gameplay that would otherwise be virtually identical to other third-person shooters.
In terms of design, there's a lot of hit and miss stuff. For example, early on they make it clear that all of your health and stamina data is integrated into the proton pack. That's actually pretty neat! Normally, games will display that information as a separate image overlaid on top of the game itself. Think The Legend of Zelda and its hearts indicating your health at the top of the screen, or Dark Souls with its health and stamina bars at the top as well, or Splinter Cell with its icons and gauges in the lower right hand corner that displayed that information. Here, that's all worked seamlessly into the game itself, creating a more cohesive visual look.
It's a cool idea that works pretty well, but they kind of kill it when they interrupt the game to show a cutscene wherein Ray explains all of that. It's unnecessary and kind of lazy tutorial. They could have just had him explain it while you were walking to take on the tutorial boss. So in a matter of seconds, it went from really neat design to really lazy design.
It also might have been nice to integrate the firehouse into the gameplay more. As it stands, there is functionally no gameplay reason why you would ever be there. Sure, there are some amusing objects you can interact with - namely the Vigo painting. But otherwise, there is literally nothing to actually do there. Granted, that was likely always going to be the case, but they could have worked in some more functional reasons for it. How about instead of interrupting the game mid-battles or mid-level to tell you that you've earned enough money to purchase an equipment upgrade, you could only purchase upgrades once you returned to the firehouse? They could have even worked in upgrading the firehouse in order to unlock other equipment upgrades as well! No, none of this is terribly exciting gameplay, but it would have created a more cohesive connection between the game and the firehouse location. It could have used the firehouse base as the central hub from which players needed to actually upgrade their characters. As it stands, it feels especially "gamey" when the icon pops up mid-level or even mid-battle to tell you that you have earned enough to buy an upgrade, then allowing you to interrupt the game itself to do so.
As for the story, well, it too is all over the place. It is actually really creepy, involving cross dimensional rifts and a collision of our world with the ghost world. If you've followed Ghostbusters 3 news throughout the years, this would sound familiar. It seemed pretty similar to the idea Aykroyd had been pitching for a while. It actually works quite well for a video game, but to be honest, it would have made for an awful film. I'm glad they didn't make that! One big problem, though, is that they don't have you busting ghosts yourself for very long. Obviously, the draw is to be a part of the team, so having you constantly accompanied by one of the founding fore-Ghostbusters is charming and fun. At the same time, the effectiveness of the uncomfortable and freaky environments and atmosphere is fundamentally diminished whenever you have a team mate. On those few moments you were alone, the game was sufficiently disquieting. I noticed a spike in my anxiety playing whenever I wasn't accompanied by a Ghostbuster.
It's nice to see the characters altogether, but it feels a little off. A good number of jokes land quite well, but the characters seem a little uncharacteristic at times. Egon and Winston especially seem to speak out of character on a bunch of occasions. It might be that they're not the best voice actors. Aykroyd sounds like the only one legitimately enthusiastic to be involved in the project. However, part of it might be that the game is extraordinarily full of fan-service that hinders the story and relatively smart additions to the canon a bit weaker than it could have been.
There is an online mode that is essentially like Horde Mode from Gears of War, and that is fun for a little while, but it isn't a strong enough element to really sell the game.
Overall, it's probably the best Ghostbusters video game they've made yet (though I do have a soft spot in my heart for that Atari game and the Ghostbusters II computer game, as practically unbeatable as they were). It's not amazing, but it's solid fun that has a good amount of interesting elements. I'd say if you're a fan of the franchise, and especially if you like Gears of War, then you should definitely check out Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
REDUCTIVE RATING: It's Fine.
And for those short on time, here's the Impromp2-Minute Review video, for quick and easy digestion!
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