Ghostbusters

The catchy signature melody that greets you in the game's menu has us smiling and cautiously nodding along to the beat, little knowing that it would be the first and last time that something even resembling a grin would be seen during the short and abysmal gaming experience that is Ghostbusters. In an era where movie license games have begun to wash away their defilement and make amends for past crimes, it's sad when some developers still see them as quick and easy sources of income in which things such as game design, depth and structure are treated as redundant.

After the theme song has ended and the game has begun you'll meet with four happy but ultimately anonymous ghost hunters - none of the actors from the movie are in the game. This, however, doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. It could be an effective means to do something original and liberate the game from the framing of the movie. Boy, were we wrong. None of the characters have been given even a shred of personality, let alone any form of background. The character portraits are as empty as a blank canvas and the same could be said of the narrative, if you could even blame it for existing. The aim is to shoot and catch ghosts, the end. What more is there to be explained? The fact is that all the game's cutscenes could be summarised in four minutes of introductory nonsense followed by six hours of ghost busting, free of any rhyme or reason. "Great, more focus on actual gaming", we hear you proclaim. But no, it's not good. Not good at all.

When one mentions the word "Ghostbusters" many of us immediately think of Bill Murray and the humour that characterised the first films. Scratch that. You four valiant ghost hunting buddies do their best to fire off the best they've got in terms of jokes, but it never ever gets funny. A lot of it can be boiled down to how good they are at catching ghosts and shoot ghosts, with absolutely none in terms of commitment from the voice actors to top it off. It's all made worse by the fact that you don't have any idea who these ghost busting clowns are and the actors probably don't know either. The dialogue is laughably atrocious, shockingly confusing and always feels out of context. The overlaying soundscape that accompanies your ghost shooting is admittedly quite nice, but in time it gets monotonous as it's too infrequently mixed up to offer any salvation to Ghostbusters.

Mechanically there isn't much good to tell you about either. The game is a twin-stick shooter with all that it entails. You move your poor ghostbuster with the left stick and point your gun in the direction of your supernatural opponent with the right. If you encounter bigger ghosts of demons you'll need to whip out your proton beam to finish the not-so-challenging fight. Sometimes you'll get the questionable pleasure of finding hidden collectibles or mash the A-button as quickly as you can in a meaningless quick-time-event, with the level structure from hell as the cherry on top. The ten levels of Ghostbusters are so confusingly large and without any sense of direction that they manage to bring forth a godlike frustration of humongous magnitude. The comic book aesthetic is hilariously generic even if there are occasions (maybe two) where we found the look of the environments pleasing. The game lacks as much visual variety as it does in audio distinctiveness, and for the most part the levels in Ghostbusters all look the same.

If you have friends you don't like, or don't really care that much for, you can invite them over to experience the nasty spectacle together with you. The biggest incentive to do this is to negate one of Ghostbusters' most game-breaking aspects. You see, as you shoot helpless ghouls you'll earn experience points that can be used to unlock various skills for your ghost hunter. If you play alone your computer controlled companions will do the same, but they won't spend them and before every new level the points are reset, never to be used. At the end of the day you'll stand there, with a heavily upgraded ghostbuster, while the rest of your band of heroes haven't made any progress at all and they'll better serve the purpose of ghost chow than spectral hunter. That's why the best way to overcome that hurdle is to invite a couple of friends over and ruin your relationship with them, but at least you'll be able to iron out that issue. Easily solved. But enough about the negatives, let's talk about what Ghostbusters does right:

The theme song is good.

Ghostbusters is a terrible movie license game without depth and meaning, with mechanical flaws everywhere you look. We can pretty much promise that you won't like this mess, regardless of what you think of the new movie that's on the big screen right now. Besides, a movie ticket will set you back less than half of what this game costs to buy, so go see the movie if you've got a craving for ghost busting, and leave this game be.