Ain't afraid of no ghosts? Maybe... but they are afraid of being a decent game (Ghostbusters: The Video Game (PS3))

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Ghostbusters: The Video Game (PS3)
Date:	27/06/09 (82 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A good addition to the Ghostbusters storyline arc.

Disadvantages: No consistency in difficulty, occasional glitches and standard graphics.

Back in the mid-late 80's you may remember a couple of successful films released by the name of Ghostbusters. Over the years these have become cult classics and part of the staple diet of 80s movies enthusiasts, since the release of the second movie there's always been demands by the fans for a sequel to the series and rumours that this sequel was coming, much to regular movie-goers shock there has been a sequel of sorts released, except its not on the big-screen, well that's if you've not got a big-ass TV, as its a game that's been released originally on the PS3 and PS2 that will eventually get posted over to the X-Box 360, PC and DS on 01/11/09.

The premise of the storyline is that of a new outbreak of ghosts in New York City, who just so happen to be running riot in the Ghostbusters old haunts (pun intended) of the New York Public Library and the Sedgewick Hotel, though to help you get into the game play of the game one of your first battles is to re-capture Slimer after he escapes from HQ As you go through the game you'll find that Slimer isn't the only old face from the movies you'll see - the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the Gray Lady and Gozer all make re-appearances in some form. The further you get into the game the more areas open up where the paranormal activity is happening. Instead of taking control of one of the famous characters you get to play the "Rookie" a new starter to the Ghostbusting team who you never find out the name of as the main characters don't want to get too attached to him in case anything happens.

The Game play itself is that of a third-person shooter in which you're looking over the shoulder of the character you're playing seeing everything he's seeing. The actual action that you take part in is controlled very similar to that of your standard First Person and Third Person shooters in which you use the joysticks to control the movement of your characters, the action buttons to make him move faster, deploy a trap or interact with scenery and the shoulder buttons to attack your enemies.

The enemies themselves come to you in 3 different varieties, you've got your standard ghosts who you need to drag into a trap, the lower class ghosts who you just need to shoot until they explode and die, and finally your boss-characters who have different weaknesses which you need to exploit.

To combat the enemies you're initially equipped with a proton way which damages most ghosts and captures the stronger ones for you to drag into the traps, as you get further you get a slime gun that allows you to pull some parts of the scenery across the screen, usually to help you get to a different part of the game field, plus you can buy upgrades for your weapons with cash that you earn from killing and capturing ghosts.

To give the game a further edge there's 2 extra parts to it, first of all you've got artefacts which if you find them and take a reading of them with your EKG machine will be added to your collection, and then there's the on-line co-operative versions where you can play with friends via the net in a variety of different challenges which are:

Instant Action - pretty much what it says on the tin, join in, pick a map and go bust some ghosts, the aim being that between your team you get them all.

Containment - Search and capture as many ghosts as you can within an allotted time limit.

Survival - similar to containment in that you need to capture as many ghosts as you can, but this time you need to make sure that one of your team is conscious at all times.

Protection - there's several structures being made, ghosts are attacking them and you need to protect said structures.

Slime-Dunk - every time you capture a ghost you get some cash, you need to earn as much as possible.

Thief - the ghosts will be trying to steal artefacts - once they get away with one, its game over.

Destruction - there's evil spirits in some artefacts, you've got to destroy the artefacts to get the spirits.

You'd think reading all that lot the game would be fun right? And to a degree it is, but I did end up slightly disappointed, the main action of the game can get very repetitive, as all you need to do is hit your ghosts enough for their energy to run out and on the odd occasion you get to trap them. The on-line modes again whilst sounding fun and varied, essentially aren't, they're very samey and its extremely easy to be tempted to sit back and let the rest of your team do all the work for you, the problem is that you can essentially do that in the single-player campaign as well, mainly because your team-mates will be quite happy to go about reducing your enemies energy for you so that quite literally all you need to do is go in there and finish them off which is at the best a 10 second job.

As well as this there are glitches within the game, I'm on my second copy now and it does randomly freeze up, leaving you no option but to reboot your whole system and start again, which in turn means that you then need to completely start over from the last checkpoint. The mention of checkpoints leads me to my next gripe - in the week and a half I've been playing it I'm still to realise when I've reached a checkpoint and the games automatically saved. Heck on the first night I needed to stop playing for a while as the takeaway me and my fiancé had arrived and it took us just shy of 10 minutes to look on-line and in the manual to find out how to save, a little bit more guidance on as and when its happening would have been nice.

You will also find times when you're wandering around trying to find the trigger for the next part of the game to move along - now don't get me wrong I have no problems with a game throwing in a bit of a challenge, however just walking around with hardly any clue of where you're meant to be going, you do get to use a meter that beeps when you get closer to paranormal energy, but even that isn't that reliable when you're looking around.

The big thing that your non-gaming fans will probably be interested in is the feel of the game and its storyline - in essence the storyline is quite impressive for what is in all intents and purposes a Video Game, and its been helped by the fact that almost all of the characters from the Ghostbusters movies are voiced by the actors who played them in the film, with particular mention to Bill Murray, he completely nails the character of Venkman which is obviously going to have been easier on this go-around as it was only his voice that was needed.

Onto the final element of the game and sadly another slight gripe - the Graphics, they're good don't get me wrong, but a machine like the PS3 has been designed to be pushed a lot more than this game does, and at crucial times you will find yourself in a darkened area shooting out into nothing because you can't see what you're meant to be shooting at.

So overall do I think Ghostbusters is as good a game as Atari would like you to believe? No, no I don't - by no means is it a bad game, but on reflection I'm not as happy that I paid full-price for it and wish that I'd rented it out first instead, as the game play does let you down at times, either being too easy or too hard and seemingly never quite finding the happy medium that we all strive to find, however you will find that if you're a fan of the Ghostbusters movies you will probably enjoy the game a bit more as there's a lot of nods to the previous films that are fun to find, but to say its a full sequel to the films is probably also a long way off the mark, its more of a connecting story between Ghostbusters 2 and the upcoming third entry in the movie series. So buy the game if you must, but its not going to do any harm waiting for it to come down in price in one of the many sales that regularly happen at your mainstream games retailers.

Summary: Good for a couple of hours play, but a bit of a waste of a full-price game.