Game review: Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Sony PSP (From Your Local Guardian)

Game review: Ghostbusters: The Video Game - Sony PSP

9:58am Thursday 19th November 2009 in

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If you want to play a game on your PSP, who you gonna call? Not Ghostbusters.

I had high hopes for this video game conversion given my fond memories of the iconic 80s movies.

Sadly it turns out to be one of those licensed titles where the appeal of the subject matter outweighs the quality of the game.

Let’s start with some positive aspects of the game, which is best described as a third-person action/shooter.

For one thing the game boasts some impressive contributors. With many movie tie-ins the original writers and actors don’t want anything to do with them, but here the stars are very much in attendance.

The original cast has been reunited for the first time in two decades, with Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson all providing their voices and images for the game.

Ramis and Aykroyd were the original Ghostbusters writers, and they have used their writing talents for this game too.

The plotline they have created is actually pretty good. The story takes place two years after the Ghostbusters 2 film. Manhattan is being besieged by ghosts and ghouls once more, and the Ghostbusters team are called upon again to rid the city of all things paranormal. Only this time they need a bit of extra help – which is why I, you or whoever else plays the game comes in.

In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, from Atari, the player takes on the role of new recruit to the team. This means you get to grab a proton pack and join the Ghostbusters on a series of missions using weapons and gadgets you’ll be familiar with from the movies, plus some new ones as you become their official equipment experimenter.

Some but not all of the spooks will also be familiar as you take on Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as well as an array of other spirits and monsters. The Ghostbusters’ car, the Ecto-1, is on show too.

With authentic props, spooks and characters, as well as the trademark quirky humour, everything in the game feels true to the original movies.

When you start out in the game it’s exciting to feel like you’re part of a new instalment of the movie series, even though the art style is much more cartoon than cinema.

Unfortunately, starting out in the game is about where the good things end and the negative aspects of the game begin to reveal themselves.

The cartoon style adopted by the game would be fine if the graphics were decent, but they are very low quality.

Character modelling, animation and scenery detail are pretty dismal, compounded by various graphical glitches such as flickering lines, jagged edges, characters walking through objects and occasional framerate hiccups.

The PSP has its limitations but it can do better than this. These graphics are what I might have expected to see maybe 10 years ago.

The graphics might be acceptable if the rest of the game played well, but it doesn’t.

The controls are very cumbersome and clunky.

The aiming of the crosshair for firing weapons and scanning is handled by the face buttons, as is the camera movement. Meanwhile, you make your character walk using the analogue stick.

This configuration leads to some awkward and clumsy moments as you try to get your Ghostbuster to turn around or follow a fast-moving phantom around a room. Fluid movements or speedy reactions are not easy. Tracking a nippy little ghost while getting your character pointing in the right direction is frustrating.

There is also some very dodgy camera work as your character often pops in and out of view.

Controls are completed by the d-pad buttons which are used for switching between different pieces of equipment such as your scanner, ghost traps and weapons.

It’s fun changing between different devices for different jobs, but overall the controls are too frustrating.

This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the action was exciting, but sadly for the most part the game is bland, and gets monotonous after a while.

The missions aren’t very engaging. Two many of them involve aimlessly wandering around empty environments, such as a deserted hotel. I’ve often resorted to blasting random objects to pieces, such as paintings and tables, just for something fun to do.

The ghost hunting is too frequently peppered with banal tasks such as finding batteries for a generator.

When you are assigned to trying to find one monster or another it usually ends up as a tedious chase from one room to another as you try to get close enough to begin the process of capturing it.

This process of catching ghosts isn’t vey interesting. It involves fixing your blast stream on them and relentlessly blasting away while shaking them using the face buttons to wear them down. Eventually they get sucked into your trap.

Even on the bigger monsters such as the marshmallow man it’s just a case of repeatedly blasting away with one of your gadgets until you eventually take them down.

Thrills and frights are very few and far between in this game. There is no intensity and very little atmosphere.

With PSP players having to wait longer than everyone else to get their hands on a Ghostbusters game, this version could and should have been better.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it sullies the good name of the movies it's based on, but fans of the films and gamers in general definitely deserve more.

While it's some way off being the worst game on the PSP and there are far more atrocious movie tie-ins out there (yes Golden Compass, I am scowling at you), Ghostbusters fans are still likely to be haunted by the experience of playing this lacklustre and weak effort.

For the chance to play a new Ghostbusters adventure and the fact it contains the original actors and writers, the game at least deserves half marks. But it doesn’t go any higher than that because it’s a disappointing game of a much-loved movie franchise.

Verdict: 5 out of 10 – More slimy than spine-tingling, more ectoplasm than exciting, the game suffers from poor graphics, uncomfortable controls and mediocre level design. What could have been frightfully good ends up being a flop.