Atomic Nerds

That’s what the new Ghostbusters video game is being touted as in some reviews. Is it good? Oh hell yes. Is it good enough to be considered a third movie? Not really.

The basic premise is that the company is still kicking around in 1991, two years after the second movie, and you’re the new hire. I’m not going to say too much about the plot so as to avoid spoilers, but the upshot is another big upswing in supernatural activity. There be many ghosts what need a-bustin’.

In the good column, we have the graphics, the voices, attention to detail, and the story. The plot doesn’t really stand up to movie-length, but as presented in the interactive format it does very well, and it’s a lot of fun. If this had been an in-theater affair, the run time would probably be right around an hour, but adding in the play time and interaction and exploration and achievement chasing pads this out to a healthy 10-14ish hours of play time before you mess with any of the online content (which I haven’t tried at all, I admit). The characters are all lovingly rendered without falling into the Uncanny Valley, and of course one of the big marketing points is that they got the original cast to do the voice work, up to and including Viggo the Carpathain, the giant painting of whom now lives in the firehouse and will dispense verbal abuse if you talk to it. Conspicuously missing is Rick Moranis, but Annie Potts carries the secretary & support staff role just fine without him. All of the environments are just one continuous shout-out to the folks like LabRat and I that basically have the films memorized. The firehouse has a bit of blend from the movies and “The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon series, and knick-knacks and souvenirs are strewn generously about. Be sure to check all your messages on the answering machine, especially after the island level. Tobin’s Spirit Guide is now built into your PKE meter, and updates as you go through the game, and fills in backstory (and combat tips) on the various slimers, vapors, and phantasms you run into. The proton pack has gotten some nifty upgrades too, and you’re Egon’s guinea pig for new tech. Busting ghosts accumulates cash, cash buys upgrades, you know the drill.

In the downside category, sitting squarely in the lime light, is the combat system. There’s an achievement on the Xbox 360 for beating the game on hard mode titled “Are you a god?” Personally, I’m not convinced godhood would be sufficient. Even on normal/moderate, “hard as hell” is being kind. Any time there’s more than one ghost in the fight, you’re going to have a hell of a time trapping any of them, because while you wrangle one into the box, the other will come bump into you, possibly knock you on your ass, and set the ghost you were working on back flitting about the room raping your co-workers’ faces. The Slam Trap upgrade, where if you basically just whack the ghost into the trap directly on target and with enough force, you can trap the spook without the long drawn out sucked-in-by-the-light process, helps some, but isn’t a sure thing. Also, despite everybody knowing that crossing the streams is Bad, Ray, Winston, Egon, and Peter, combined with the already jittery and dancing nature of a positron beam, seem to do nothing but cross the streams, unless you’re off on your own. Occasionally you can get some work done with just one partner, but in a group you’re going to be hearing warnings and the tell-tale whine of power build up non-stop. Further, you and the rest of the guys are ridiculously fragile on normal or hard mode. One good whack and you’re on your ass, two and you’re down for the count until someone comes over to help you up (unless they’re all down too, in which case you’ll be joining the spirit world yourself shortly). Doubly annoying, when you’re knocked down the camera doesn’t offer any perspective adjustment, and trying to swing it around to see what the hell is going on means that as soon as you’re back on your feet, it swings up to look where your adjustment would’ve had you looking if you never fell. Gosh, that sky sure is awesome, anybody seen where that book golem that was eating my face went? Oh, there it is. It’s in my ass, leaving a trail of paper cuts and there we go, time to try the fight again we all died. I wound up abandoning my first attempt after spending over an hour trying to down one boss with no luck. Oh, that’s another glaring hole: There’s only one save file. No multiple careers for you! It’s not like there’s a friggin’ hundred gig hard drive attached that could store multiple profiles or anything, oh no.

Also a bit of a let down are the upgrades to the proton pack. Yeah, they’re up in the pro category too, and they are nifty in concept. The problem is that, aside from the slime gun, they’re not terribly useful, and the slime gun only gets a pass because it’s how you neutralize environmental toxins, solve puzzles, and close a few ghost-spewing portals. Some ghouls are more susceptible to one beam type than another in theory, but in practice it’s faster to just slam boson darts (rockets, basically) and regular proton streams into them until they can be captured or neutronized.

While the game overall is gorgeous, it does suffer a bit from Doom 3 syndrome, and a fair number of environs are just flat too dark to deal with reasonably. Yeah, it’s a ghost game and all, and the flashlight does help some (and unlike Doom 3, you can even have it on and fire your weapon at the same time) but the excessive darkness didn’t add anything other than a bit of “Where the hell am I,” and not in the good tension-building sort of way. There are a few spots where the lip synching was a bit spotty as well. In terms of characters, whoever did the writing for Peter wasn’t much of a fan. Yes, Peter is a wise-ass, but the non-stop stream of snarky comments and one liners was dialed from the movie levels of “I’m an ass, it’s ok” to “I’m one dimensional.” Oh, and he still chases the girl. Two dimensional. Everyone else was in fine form, and well in character, but I’m having trouble thinking of a single scene where Dr. Venkman wasn’t basically serving as a one-liner machine.

The final main drawback is that the game is basically a run-and-gun with great cutscenes and actual reasons to go from one “Shoot this guy, shoot that guy, shoot that big guy” area to the next. If they’d added in some old school Sierra Adventure elements (combine this weird shit, this fight is was easier if you found the secret book of how to whup ass, etc) it would’ve brought a good bit of depth to the party if done well. Instead all we get is the standard collection game, gathering scans of ghosts for the Spirit Guide, and finding rare artifacts hidden in out of the way places. Fun enough, but nothing ground breaking, even though the descriptions on the artifacts were uniformly cool (Haunted Pin-Up Calendar, I’m looking at you).

All in all, I’m probably being a little hard on the game, but that’s because I just love the movies that much, and it’s hard to measure up when jumping into an entirely new medium that only bears passing resemblance to the original format. Overall this game really is a lot of fun (once you set the difficulty to ‘easy’ at least), and the story is cool, if short. It’s great to have the guys back in action, and there’s just no understating how much fun it is to run around with an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on your back kicking ass and wreaking havoc. As much as I just ragged on it, I’m absolutely going to play it again, and I look forward to trying the online content at some point as well. For $35 or so, it’s well worth the price if you’re a fan of the franchise at all. If you’re not, it’s a reasonably competent run-and-gun with a cool story attached, but really, we’re here for the boys in grey, and overall on that front, the game delivers. Ghostbusters: The Video Game is Nerd Approved.

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