Ghostbusters Review

Use your PKE meter to find the ghosts

Ghostbusters is at its best when you're having to trap ghosts, so it's a real shame that a large number of bosses don't need you to do this, instead going down from weapons fire alone. A handful of bosses stand out in terms of design, but the battles generally fail to live up to the spectacle – in fact many of the sub-bosses that crop up throughout the levels are more entertaining to face off against. Even the fan favourite Stay Puft bows out in a final battle that roots your character to the spot as you fire at its face and mini-mallows.

Another part of the core gameplay experience is how you use the PKE meter, the handy device that shows where ghosts are hiding. When selected the game switches to a first-person perspective and the pace slows down a notch. Other than numerous artefacts that are hidden in each level the ghost hunting is fairly linear, but the pacing is good and there's the odd decent scare too. We reckon the game would have benefited from more hunting, with the level of freedom increased, and far less machine gun/shotgun blasting. The story is excellent, bar one or two dud lines, the locations feature plenty that you'll remember from the movies and the voice acting is superb, but the game itself becomes far too generic when it tries to be a third-person shooter.

Multiplayer is thankfully present and correct, although not in the form most will be hoping for. Although the game more or less has you battling alongside other members of the team for its duration (and moments when you're not could have been tweaked, we're sure), there's no story mode cooperative play. The main multplayer mode is called Campaign, and lets you play with three other Ghostbusters (in multiplayer you can play as the core team, which is nice), but it's really a collection of game types thrown together. These include defending items, staying alive as long as possible, trapping as many ghosts as possible and a few others. Aside from the fact that this isn't what we really wanted, playing with friends is still a good deal of fun and will provide plenty to do once you've rattled through the relatively short single-player campaign.

Just as the gameplay is a mixture of brilliance and baffling genericness, the visuals are equally varied. When everything's kicking off, proton streams are being fired from all directions, ghosts are swirling about in the air and traps are being let off, Ghostbusters is an impressive sight. The big problem is that this often comes at the cost of the frame rate, which ranks as one of the most unstable and poor we've seen in quite some time – it even manages to hamper gameplay at various points. Character models are superb, the locations are varied and the visual effects are great, but the lip syncing is terrible, the environments are sparsely decorated and the load times are bordering on horrendous. It's certainly a decent looking game on the whole, but not as polished as we'd have liked.

If you've been waiting for Ghostbusters 3 or simply a video game that does the classic series justice, Ghostbusters: The Video Game won't disappoint. The attention to detail here shames most other movie-licensed titles and there's plenty of fan service that will please gamers and non-gamers alike. Had the core game been more focussed on the hunting and trapping we'd have had a potential classic, but even with issues (some poor weapons, difficulty spikes, slowdown and disappointing multiplayer) you'll likely have a great time.