Ghostbusters: The Video Game
By Terminal Reality and Atari
Genre: Third person action/adventure
Rating: T for Comic Mischief, Fantasy Violence, Mild Language
If you’re like me, you have fond memories of that excellent pair of science-fiction-fantasy movies from the late 80s/early 90s, Ghostbusters and its sequel. They saw a ragtag trio of “paranormal investigators” (everyone THOUGHT they were fake, even themselves!), and another guy they hired, battling malevolent ghosts and the spirits of powerful deities and conquerors in Manhattan.
To assist them, the “true scientist” of the group, Egon, constructed Proton Packs, unlicensed nuclear accelerators in back-pack form, and Neutrona Wands which deliver focused particle energy to weaken and eventually trap the ghosts in hand-held traps. They drive to their destinations in the Ecto-1, a souped-up car whose white paint job and heraldry have become iconic in the movie industry.
And guess what? You get to control all of that. And on top of that, the four original actors return! Peter (Bill Murray), Ray (Dan Aykroyd), Egon (Harold Ramis) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) sound as great as ever and very comfortable in their virtual roles.
But you don’t play any of them. You play an unnamed (forcibly so; the team don’t want to get attached to you should something horrible happen) rookie who serves as the guinea pig for all the new technology which will slowly be unlocked through the course of the game. Basically, the Neutrona Wand will eventually output its energy in various ways, more or less analogous to the standard weapons in a game like this: machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, and so on.
And you’ll need all of them; each Manifestation (inanimate object possessed by malevolent energies which can be destroyed) and Ghost (semi-transparent, nearly-always-hostile entity which must be trapped) has its weakness, and you must choose which weapon or tactic to use in dispatching each of them. When you’ve scanned them with your handy PKE Meter (which can also detect the signals which keep the plot moving, as well as the several secret items in each level), their details, including weaknesses, are saved in Tobin’s Spirit Guide, which can be accessed at any time.
After each mission you return to the Ghostbusters Firehouse, where you can look around and see the secret items you retrieved, receive occasional visits from the Mayor, “Jock” Mulligan and the smarmy Environmental Protection agent Walter Peck, and visit briefly with secretary Janine and the painting of defeated conqueror Vigo. I would have appreciated being able to stay in this area after saving and quitting, but if you do that, then you move on to the next stage immediately; any cutscenes involving characters you meet in the Firehouse will be skipped.
Graphics are great, and really evoke New York City’s largest borough, including Times Square, hotels and museums and more! Prepare to face off against at least one enemy you thought was put down for good; yet, one with such marshmallowy goodness, you can’t stay angry at him for long, even when he’s throwing cars at you.
I most definitely recommend this game, even though the multiplayer, present in the console versions, was clipped from the PC version. Five out of five anyway!