WHOOOO!!! They finally brought them back and had us fight along side the wonderfully famous Ghostbusters! Alright well it's not the best thing since sliced bread substances, but it is pretty good for a movie based video game. If anyone tells me they never had at least one dream about busting or calling The Ghostbusters to save them from the thing that is hiding under the stairs or in the closest, just has not lived. These guys didn't just try to prove there are things that go bump in the night, they tried to fight the bumps off with lazers. Egon, Ray, Peter and Winston are back as the Fab Four that fight the good fight against the dead that just can't seem to keep off the mischief pills. The story begins after their fight with Gozer. The guys have to save a young woman, and the city of New york once again from the spirits of the underworld, other world, or whatever world that they happen to be from. Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd lend their voices as well as their comedic writing talents to give this game a nice boost of laughs and good plot to boot. A completely new story that still has Slimer and the lovable gelatin pillow known as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I would just eat him up if he didn't always try to step on me first. Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray also lend their voices as their respective Ghostbuster characters.
As far as gameplay goes it is pretty fun to chase ghosts and capture them with one of four weapons built into your proton pack, then capture them in the ghost trap. All the quirky things about the process of ghost capturing actually don't get old, neither does the story which isn't very long. If the story had been dragged on any longer both the gameplay and the plot would have suffered. For two reasons: first, the cg graphics for the cut scenes aren't that great, they are out of place compared to other current next gen games. Second, I am sorry to say this but the comedy is a little dated. Yes the movies are funny and great and so forth, but the writing doesn't translate that well into the game. There are a few good classic moments that remind us why Ghostbusters is so good and a few original ones, but they aren't that memorable.
It is an ok game, there isn't anything amazing about it. There is online gameplay which allows four players to go through survival modes, ghost capture modes etc. It is more like a schizophrenic version of Left 4 Dead only with scary ghosts rather than flesh eating zombies. Hopefully Atari will make another Ghostbusters that steers clear of the movies more than this game did, then we can finally see what really happens when they cross the streams.
