Bustin' Ghosts
So among my Christmas gifts this year was the Ghostbusters video game. I haven't tried the one-off missions or multiplayer, but the career mode is a fun little romp through the setting. It's short (I want to say maybe eight hours, if that), and lacks a little of the depth I might have expected, but high on nostalgia value.
Seeing and hearing most of the characters from the first movie is a blast and may well be what really makes the game. For the most part, it's a third-person shooter, where a third or maybe half the "shooting" you do involves wielding proton streams and traps to capture ghosts. It does seem a little odd, as things escalate, that amidst enemies you just blast there pop up ones that must be captured, but I suppose that's part of the job.
The proton packs get a video game overhaul, gaining a miniature version of the second movie's slime throwers, a "freezing" ray/spray, and what might be described as a particle machine gun mode. Practically, though, I think you could totally ignore two out of the four. You need the proton gun and slime thrower for some puzzles as well as opposition, the others may be neat but don't seem necessary. And as for those puzzles? Some are devilish unless you make a little leap of logic, then they become obvious. And some are just... ugh. I spent ten minutes or so knowing I had to pull some beams out of the way to progress, but it took me that long to find the right spot/angle for it to actually work.
The story is reasonably in-theme. It does suffer in subtle ways from being derivative movie-to-video game material, where you get cameos that might be gratuitous, interactions blatantly copying what the audience has seen already, and pacing that just can't match the movie. It's still fun, though, and manages the right tone.
I'm not sure about replay value at this point, but it was still fun to play.
Seeing and hearing most of the characters from the first movie is a blast and may well be what really makes the game. For the most part, it's a third-person shooter, where a third or maybe half the "shooting" you do involves wielding proton streams and traps to capture ghosts. It does seem a little odd, as things escalate, that amidst enemies you just blast there pop up ones that must be captured, but I suppose that's part of the job.
The proton packs get a video game overhaul, gaining a miniature version of the second movie's slime throwers, a "freezing" ray/spray, and what might be described as a particle machine gun mode. Practically, though, I think you could totally ignore two out of the four. You need the proton gun and slime thrower for some puzzles as well as opposition, the others may be neat but don't seem necessary. And as for those puzzles? Some are devilish unless you make a little leap of logic, then they become obvious. And some are just... ugh. I spent ten minutes or so knowing I had to pull some beams out of the way to progress, but it took me that long to find the right spot/angle for it to actually work.
The story is reasonably in-theme. It does suffer in subtle ways from being derivative movie-to-video game material, where you get cameos that might be gratuitous, interactions blatantly copying what the audience has seen already, and pacing that just can't match the movie. It's still fun, though, and manages the right tone.
I'm not sure about replay value at this point, but it was still fun to play.
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