How does Ghostbusters: The Video Game fare on Playstation 3?
Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson are back as the original Ghostbusters, along with Annie Potts returning as Janine, William Atherton as Walter Peck, and Brian Doyle-Murray (who played a psychiatrist in Ghostbusters 2) as the new mayor, for this blockbuster, multi-platform videogame from Atari written by Aykroyd and Ramis. You play a new, rather silent recruit to the Ghostbusters team, joining the crew on a new mission to save the world from another paranormal threat with interesting ties to the first film in the series. You’ll catch ghosts, travel to other dimensions, fight the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and protect the streets, buildings, and citizens of New York in classic Ghostbuster fashion! It’s quite a ride!
I bought “Ghostbusters“, the videogame, for my PS3 the morning it came out, as I had been waiting to do for some time. Now, I’m not a gamer per say. I enjoy videogames now and then, but I buy and never rent, and I only do it on rare occasion. This is actually only my second PS3 game. I finished it in one long and 2 short sittings on the easiest setting, which seemed fast to me, though I don’t mean that in a bad way. Perhaps it will not seem very challenging for hardcore gamers, but it was just about right to me. I don’t like frustrating moments I can’t seem to get through in videogames. I play them for the fun of it. As it is, I got a little annoyed in the graveyard portion because it was hard to get your bearings, as you don’t have a map at any point (that I was aware of). So, no, it’s not excessively difficult at all, and I found catching the ghosts to be a lot of fun and to feel much like it looks like it would feel in the movie. And that’s what this game is about more than anything, in my opinion.
It’s about getting the ghostbuster experience, like actually being a Ghostbusters and actually interacting with Peter, Ray, Winston and Egon. You really feel like they’re talking to you, and if you’re a hardcore Ghostbusters fan, it’s an amazing experience. Yeah, some people have said Peter sounds a bit like a caricature of himself here, and that’s kinda true, but you get used to it and everyone else is spot-on. The graphics may just be average for games nowadays, but some of the movie bits are really dazzling and enjoyable to watch. Of course, this is still a game, so they are mainly to move you from one action scenario to another. As a result, the overall story is good, but it’s not going to feel a hundred percent like a third film, which the game was touted as, because you don’t get heavily into any side plots about Peter’s romancing of the lead female or anything else in addition to getting done the job at hand. Still, it comes close to a movie experience, or more a movie virtual reality experience. Granted, it would have been nice if more little things were added, like the ability to explore rooms in some of the locales and do other unnecessary things, like drinking from water fountains (the only little extra I was able to discover), but I guess the ability to find and collect haunted objects and PKE readings was kinda the same thing, plus you have the money system of upgrading your gadgets while having to consider money loss for destruction, hoping you end up with some profit in the end. I do feel they should have had some options for what your character looked like though (for example, girls might prefer the choice of a female character). But, those little things aside, it was still a really good time for me, and I look forward to playing it again and again. Some have said it gets repetitious, but I have found all the games I’ve ever played to do that (and I started back with an Atari 2600, even if I don’t play many games nowadays), so I tend to think that’s the norm and it’s one of the reasons I don’t play all that many games, and at least these days some games are fun and visually amazing enough to keep the repetition from being overwhelming. I’d put this game in that category.
Anyway, my final word on the Ghostbusters videogame is that it is great, even a must, for fanatics of the films. Some hardcore gamers, even if they are big Ghostbusters fans, might feel it is insufficient or average, but if what you’re looking for is the experience of joining the original crew of the Ghostbusters films on a mission to catch ghosts and save the world, that’s what you’ll find here! Easily one of the best games I’ve ever played. Now, if the PS3 would do a great game based on the Romero zombie films or Evil Dead, that would just ROCK! Oh, and Indiana Jones! A non-Lego Indiana Jones. My next buy though, will be Batman: Arkham Asylum (the other game I currently own is “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”, which took me MUCH longer to finish than “Ghostbusters”. It was great and I enjoyed it a lot, but I think I enjoyed Ghostbusters a bit more, probably due to working with the team and not taking so long to finish).
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