Ghostbusters: The Video Game

*Originally published on 10/3/09



I was extremely excited when this game was first announced. A Ghostbusters game that acted as the long lost sequel to the movies, was written by Aykroyd and Ramis, and featured the original voice cast. It would enable me to live out my life long dream of being a ghostbuster.

I picked this game up when it came out and loved it. Just the feeling of running around with the team and blasting at ghosts with your proton pack is worth the price of the game. The story is well crafted and it elaborates on a lot of elements that were touched on in the first movie.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, I was disappointed with how Gozer was kind of thrown under the bus, but it's a minor flaw.

The game is a love letter to Ghostbusters fans, you visit a lot of the major locations from the movie and battle both Slimer and Stay Puft. Vigo's in the game, but he's not a boss like I figured he would be. I know Ghostbusters II is not viewed well, but it would've been cool to fight him. Given the prevalence of slime and the fact that a level takes place at a museum, it seemed like a Vigo fight was a given, even as a mini-boss.

The controls are easy to get the hang of. I don't know why there's a jump button. You can't jump very high (this makes sense as the packs are quite heavy), but more importantly, there's no spot in the game where you're required to jump, so it's a useless function.

The dialogue is spot on, even after decades, Ramis and Aykroyd know how to write their characters. The voice acting is also pretty good, although Murray kind of mumbled his way through the script.

You have a pretty wide arsenal, your pack is equipped with 4 modes that are added at various levels throughout the game. Each mode has a primary and secondary fire. The first time I played through this game, I stuck mostly with the main proton pack, occasionally going to the slime blower. It was Ghostbusters so those were the weapons I wanted to use. When I played through it again later, I branched out and found the other weapons are pretty useful.

The game will take you about 8 hours to beat. It seems short, but as the game is story driven, it's a good thing that they didn't drag. If they make a sequel, hopefully they add more of a "sandbox" type style of gameplay as it would be pretty cool to drive around and catch random ghosts.

While the game does have multiplayer, you don't have a co-op option on story mode. This is really disappointing, it seems like this game was made for multiplayer action. Given the story, I guess you couldn't have 4 rookies, and thus 8 ghostbusters, but you could've taken the rookie out and just enabled the players to play as the Ghostbusters themselves. It would've been fun. You would also need the help as some of the bosses, even on casual, are pretty challenging. Those stone gargoyle babies are a huge pain and I don't want to think about how bad those things are on experienced or professional.

While you wouldn't think that this game has a lot of replay value, it does. There's no leveling up, but going through the game a second, third, and even fourth time was just as fun as the first.. Of course, I'm rather biased as I love Ghostbusters.

The game is also surprisingly creepy, it has it's humor, but there are parts that rival Silent Hill as far as sending chills up your spine. It adds another level of enjoyment to the game.

I've only played the Xbox version. I hear the version for the Wii is also great, it has 2 player co-op and using the Wii-mote is supposed to help get you into the game, I don't know but I want to try that at some point. Definitely check this game out. It's the game we've been waiting for since the movie first came out. While it has it's flaws, it definitely showed a lot of respect to the franchise and gave the fans what they've wanted for years.