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I'm not a little kid anymore. There are things that I used to believe that I grew out of. There are things I used to enjoy that I'm too sophisticated to even bother with now.
But I'm not talking about ghosts or PG comedies. Not at all. This is a game review and the childish beliefs I'm referring to are mainly the ones having to do with movie-to-game adaptations. When Ghostbusters came out in 1984, you might have suckered me in with a movie tie-in. Oh, how many Batman games I've given a chance to! But I've been burned over and over and now I have put away childish things; I approach each and every movie game with a jaded eye, when I approach them at all.
Ghostbusters: The Game has made a believer out of me.
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But Ghostbusters: The Game has made a believer out of me. It not only ties in intelligently to the movies, it not only has a story good enough to stand as its own episode of the series, it also happens to be a damn entertaining game.
The two games I thought of the most while playing Ghostbusters were Luigi's Mansion and Gears of War. The first is a given, since Mansion's creators clearly cribbed their core gameplay mechanic from Ghostbusters' proton packs. Like the Nintendo title, this game is humorous and lighthearted while still requiring more than simplistic point-and-shoot to dispatch an enemy. Like Gears, Ghostbusters: The Game plays in a third-person view and includes the option to revive downed teammates.
However, true to its subject matter, Ghostbusters: The Game exists on another plane of existence. The fan service is there: I noticed a lot of little nods to the movies, the cartoon, even the NES release, when exploring the game world. But there is a lot more than nostalgia powering the Ecto-1. The voice acting is handled by the original cast, so the lines are delivered funny as well as written funny. Several readings by Bill Murray were laugh-out-loud hilarious. Series icons like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man are organically worked into the story, instead of just being plopped in for a cheap reaction.
The developers took a lot of time with all this. Facial expressions convey a real sense of familiarity, the dialogue feels genuine, and capturing ghosts is a lot of fun. Work, but still fun. Part of the game involves documenting the various spectral entities you run into, but the collection aspect (taking snapshots of ghosts and haunted items) doesn't just exist for its own sake. The PKE scan entries provide some witty backstory and scouting reports on the abilities and the weaknesses of enemies.
And the scouting reports can be very useful late in the game or on the highest difficulty, since the way to win is to first divorce yourself from the Kratos/Marcus Fenix mentality and start to think like a scientist. You have a number of tools at your disposal and each is best against certain enemies. You also have a modest but effective dodge move and the aforementioned revive option. The sooner you start using your information and environment wisely, the better off you will be. Your character (an unnamed recruit) is not exactly an eggshell, but he is definitely not the typical supersoldier one typically sees in this genre.
Ghostbusters: The Game is not wildly original, but it is a solid buy. From the roughly ten minutes of one-liners, boasts, and taunts you can elicit from the haunted painting of Vigo the Carpathian to the "Naah!" the Ghostbusters deliver in unison just when you think you're about to start a driving stage, you are reminded again and again that this is a project put together with care - not some heartless paint-by-number cash-in. I want more.
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