It’s been a couple weeks since I finished playing Ghostbusters, and I figure that if I don’t write down my thoughts on it now, I’ll probably forget entirely.
My take on the game is some good, some bad, like most games. What the game really nails is the feel of the original Ghostbusters movie. When you first fire that proton stream, the sound of it and the feel of it are so excellent and so exactly like the movie that it’s difficult not to smile. Likewise, the voice-overs by the original actors are spot-on. Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis are absolutely brilliant, and Ernie Hudson also does a good job. I have to say that I was disappointed by Bill Murray’s performance, and the annoying strut that they gave his character in the game didn’t help.
Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis were also the writers on this project, and they did an excellent job. There are some very funny and quippy one-liners in there. While it probably wasn’t the quality of the original movie, the humor is far above average for a video game.
That’s the good stuff. Now for my complaints. Firstly, the game is way too effing hard. After getting killed a dozen times by some ghost candlesticks, I restarted the game on “casual” difficulty. And while I almost never died on this difficulty, there was one spot at the end that I nearly couldn’t get through. I am not a wuss. I play most games on “normal” difficulty and do well. But Ghostbusters is in need of some major difficulty tweaking.
My other complaint is bugginess. At least 3-4 times in the game, I’d find myself in a situation where I couldn’t progress. A door wouldn’t open, a boss wouldn’t appear, or some other game trigger that was supposed to fire simply wouldn’t. In this situations, I’d quit out, reload a save, and without fail it would work just fine the next time. But these are serious bugs, and they were seriously annoying.
Overall, I’d still recommend the game. It was a good game, and if you’re a fan of the original Ghostbusters movie, you’ll probably have a lot of fun with it. But when you pick it up, for the love of God, save yourself some agony and start on the easiest difficulty.
