Ghostbusters Review

If you came here to find out if the new Ghostbusters game was an unambitious, cash-grab tie-in for the recent Ghostbusters film reboot, I can tell you right now: it is. In fact, it’s barely even tied in. This co-op top-down shooter features not one cast member from any version of the franchise and very little connection to the source material at all.

Ghostbusters puts you in charge of a team of four nameless, B-team ‘busters with no personal motivations, meaningful relationships, or character development to be found between them. Their visual designs and voices are flashy and energetic, in an '80s action cartoon sort of way. But the dialogue and humor are eye roll-worthy, even by Saturday morning kids’ TV standards. There’s no hint of the subversive dry wit and self-awareness that made the original Ghostbusters film successful. 

The top-down shooter mechanics are at least decent, but that’s because they’re so paint-by-numbers. Each of the four playable characters has a different style, from a shotgun-slinging close-combat specialist to the archetypical Big Dude With A Minigun. But perhaps you’ve already seen the problem: when in the Ghostbusters franchise have we ever seen the heroes blasting away at specters with stock shooter weapons? Slapping “proton” in front of their names doesn’t do much to disguise that this is a very thin skin pulled over a generic game. The fact that bosses need to be captured with a proton pack minigame after their health is depleted is too little to make this truly feel like a Ghostbusters game.

"Failing a level outright is almost impossible as each character can revive a fallen teammate back to 100% health."

 The enemies are also repetitive and uninteresting. Some of them get special modifiers, like exploding into immobilizing slime on death, but Ghostbusters' single, utterly unchallenging difficulty level usually renders these abilities irrelevant. Even most elite enemies are just another colorful shape on screen to blast away at, with no need for tactics or critical thinking. I only died a handful of times throughout the entire adventure, and failing a level outright is almost impossible as each character can revive a fallen teammate back to 100% health, for free, an unlimited number of times.


 

The final couple stages, in all fairness, begin to present some sort of real difficulty. The last area, in particular, is a frantic boss rush that managed to tax my concentration several times. It deflated fast, however, when the ultimate foe turned out to be really just a giant, ectoplasmic sack of hitpoints which posed very little danger.

The RPG elements are fairly shallow, so there's no hope of a second playthrough being any richer than the first by making alternate decisions. The boring, linear upgrades available to each of the four characters will keep you pretty rigidly locked to one playstyle. The vast majority of options when leveling up are things like flat bonuses to damage or move speed. There’s no opportunity to experiment with different builds or create a crazy gimmick character. Additionally, each class is essentially some flavor of damage dealer, so there’s no concept of a true support healer or tank that could have added some interesting tactical dynamics to the otherwise-bland combat.

And again, for a licensed game, it’s bizarre to not see any recognizable characters – not even the typical bad impersonators. The most significant references are a Slimer cameo and a couple enemies modeled on those demon dogs that were living in Sigourney Weaver’s refrigerator. Even the cast of the new film are only mentioned in passing, which seemed especially odd considering the entire reason for this game's existence seems to be to capitalize on the attention around that film.

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