Ghostbusters Review

Movie tie-ins games are usually considered the black sheep in gaming, but once in awhile we get that special tie-in that’s well revered that it surprises us all, but this is so infrequent that it as soon as you hear or see these clearly rushed out of the door, cash-grabbed, mockeries that you feel a sense of disdain towards to the point where you just call them a joke. And that’s exactly what the recently released Ghostbusters movie tie-in game is, it's not actually a movie tie-in, but technical is so it ticks all the above boxes.

Before delving into this atrocious release, let’s just talk about the developers or the lack thereof. It’s made by Fireforge Games, and good luck at finding anything else about them. During our podcast we talked about games that will suck in July and ding the top contender was Ghostbusters, but what fascinated us the most was the team behind the game. Any searching would take you to a hobby war miniatures site and for a while we genuinely believed it was made by them, that’s till we discovered the official site, which you can view here. No, it’s not you, you can’t actually access the site as it’s disabled and forbidden, off to a promising start then.

Ghostbusters as said isn’t technically a movie tie-in, in fact it barely scrapes the surface of being one, but with an ambiguous title and clearly planned release to coincide with the recent rebooted movie, it can be considered as one. So with that the said, the story revolves around four b-team Ghostbusters. Names aren’t provided, and even in-game characters don’t mention them. So they’re simple called Player one, two, three or four, but that’s no fun. So I decided to give you an idea of just how generic and awful these Ghostbusters are, I’ve called them Jock, Sassy, Blondie and Heavy.

Ghostbusters is a top-down co-op shooter and allows you to play one of four above characters. You’ve got Jock, the typical shooter guy that most would usually select, Sassy the team's black chick, wielding a shotgun, smart and takes no talk back, Blondie the team's other female fires dual pistols and is you guessed it, is blonde and finally Heavy, the walking cliche carrying a gattling gun.

The story has barely any connection to source material and tries become something original. It’s presented in animated style and is still set within the universe of the new movie; with mentions of the other teams escapades off out getting all the glory. So our Ghostbusters are left to hold the fort, that is till something strange starts going on in the neighbourhood. The phones start ringing with reports coming through and the journey begins.

At the start of each mission, the team receivers a telephone call with reports of ghoulish ghostly activity and that an evil ghost is wreaking havoc. That’s pretty much what each call entails, changing between location. The conversations between team and caller is adequate at best and is only really in place to offer some form of story. The locations vary but remain your stereotypical haunting grounds. From a mansion, graveyard to a mental institution; each while having a change in environment are still linear, dull and repetitive.

Before going into a mission you can choose one of the four aforementioned characters. With each having different sets of abilities, it encourages cooperative play and while it does support both local and online, I couldn’t force my friends through the disappointment and instead played solo. Even then you still play as a full team with the remaining Ghostbusters being CPU controlled.

The gameplay itself is as generic as it can get, as progress through each level ghosts, ghouls and possessed object fling as you from all directions. They’re easily dispatched, but each encounter feels incredibly dragged out due to your weapon/proton pack overheating, you can switch between your selected character's weapon or proton pack, but you have constantly keep an eye on the heatbar and manually cooldown the device otherwise you’ll be waiting for sometime before blasting away once more. You can throw a grenade for good measure, but all these seem to do is briefly incapacitate. Outside of combat you can use your PKE meter to seek out hidden secrets, I say hidden secrets, I mean obviously placed green glowing markers on the ground, and the game even gives you symbol on-screen to not so subtly hint at a secret. As there is very little in exploration, going ever slightly going off the beaten track rewards you with bonus points and four not very well hidden collectables.

As for the enemies themselves, well credit is due, they are original but after you’ve cleared a wave of the same ghouls, floating skulls and ghosts they become nothing more than a chore to get to the boss. Each level has a specific haunting by evil spirit, they’re unique ones, but even they’re dispatched in same way alongside the same atrocious dialogue by the characters. “In your face ghoul friend” and “piece of slimey cake” are just two of the lines of dialogue you’ll hear constantly.

The big bad ghosties vary from a knife wielding countess, a crazy voodoo enchanter, to a mean green demon. In order to defeat you have to blast away their health till you can use your proton pack to play a game of wrangle, pulling back on the right analogue stick in the direction on screen, you slam them into submission in order to the trap them. The trapping of ghosts is a game in itself, if you want those extra points, then boy have fun mashing away at your X button to fill the bar and you’ve caught yourself America’s most haunted (another piece of masterfully written dialogue). Wasn’t that fun, now go do again and again till your thumb is sore.

Outside of gameplay and at the end of each part of a level you’re scored and awarded skill points for your character. You can upgrade you weapons, health and cooldown timers, but considering that there is hardly any difficulty spike nor or difficulty levels for that matter, apart from a slightly varied remix level, it’s all very tacked on. I will say and the one thing they got right was the theme song. I enjoyed my time in the menus more than ingame all because of the use of the original and the best Ghostbusters theme. Bravo, still it doesn’t justify the rest of the experience.

What we have here is the definition of cash-grabbing and at £40 you’ll be as braindead as the ghouls ingame to buy. The release is obscenely catered towards parents or grandparents who would buy this for their child/grandchild because, it’s all the kids are talking about these days. I feel sorry for the developers who created this, it’s almost like they’re were creating something original as the style and visuals are decent, but it’s like as though Activision stepped in and forced them to turn their project into a movie licensed game with a tiny and time constrained budget. If you really must play, wait till it goes very, and I mean very cheap and for the Ghostbusters fans, what are you doing? You’ve already got the best released Ghostbusters game, it came out in 2009 and it’s called Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Go play that, as for this, who you gonna call? An exorcist, as this needs to be banished from whence it came.