At long last Ghostbusters:  The Video Game is in stores.  Conceived as kind of the third Ghostbusters movie, the game boasts participation from most of the major characters and a story penned by Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, the two men who wrote the smash comedy hit enjoying its 25th Anniverary this June.  Will it help gamers Stay Puft or will it get slimed? 

I generally try to steer clear of video games based on movies.  They usually feel like a DVD special feature or like you’re stuck in those scenes from Back to the Future II with Marty McFly watching his dad knock Biff out.  Similarly, I have a pretty good sense of where actors are in the pop culture pecking order and desperation is the world’s worst cologne (thank you Cameron Crowe for that wonderful koan from Singles).  Dan Akroyd is in an even worse position than Vin Deisel was after The Chronicles of Riddick (and I skipped those games for that reason).  Combine that with the fact that Ghostbusters II just kind of sucked (how do you waste Pete MacNicol?), and I did not have high hopes for this game title.

Before I got started, I had to decide which platform to use for the game.  For those of you who are not that into video games, your choice of console can dictate the type of game playing experience you’re going to have.  [Those of you who are can pretty much skip these next two paragraphs.]  Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 are basically built like personal computer towers devoted entirely to gaming with faster processing speeds and more video memory to increase load speeds.  Consequently, games for these consoles trend more towards adult gamers with hyper-realistic sound and video.  Games such as Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3) and Gears of War (Xbox 360) are the "killer apps" for their respective systems and take full advantage of the console architecture. 

In contrast, the Nintendo Wii is a powerful little computer, but not chock full of the fastest, biggest, or bestest processors or chips.  Nintendo made a choice with the Wii to emphasize game play over graphics and they compensate with more cartoony characters.  Look no further than Wii Sports for evidence of this as the avatars are more abstract, but the game itself is incredibly addictive.  Don’t get me wrong, they can still get a lot out of the console with some really pretty graphics, but you’re not going to get a game like Uncharted to look as good on a Nintendo Wii.

Ghostbusters:  The Video Game has consciously embraced this divide by having the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 game developed by one company, Terminal Reality, and the Nintendo Wii game developed by another, Red Fly Studio.  The stories are the same, but the Nintendo Wii version looks more like a video game version of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon (just without Lorenzo Music’s voice for obvious reasons) rather than an attempt at Ghostbusters III. 

I am blessed to have a life that has brought me the opportunity to purchase all three consoles (as well as pretty much every previous generation of the consoles), and so doing this review presented me with a little of a Hobson’s Choice.  I typically prefer game play and story over whiz-bang.  And really, it’s hard not be be when you’re raised on Adventure for the Atari 2600.  I mean, in that game your guy is a cube battling two-dimensional ducks with a direction arrow.  But for this review I opted for the PS3 version of the game to get the more cinematic feel.  Sure it cost me a few bucks extra, but I’ve spent a lot more for less reason.

The menu screen on the game is nice (almost DVD like) and it has all the trendy things games have to have these days.  There’s multi-player capability so you can bust ghosts online with fellow movie fans.  You can set your difficulty at easy, normal, and professional.  [I’m waiting for the slasher game that lists difficulty settings like "Rare:  Pink Throughout"; "Medium:  Slightly Pink Center"; and "Well Done:  You’re Cooked".]  I’m a big fan of touching all the bases, so I usually start a game from the easy level and if it game interests me enough, I go back and play through harder levels.  And since I wanted the article to be fresh, I picked easy so I had a better chance of completing the game without too much delay.

The first thing you really notice about the game is that it really tries to be a movie.  Most games start with a lengthy cut-scene or launch you into the action.  This one actually starts with a movie studio intro and opening credits before the first cut-scene route.  Right away, this demonstrates one of the game’s shortcomings.  Most games split time between interactive entertainment and cut-scenes that advance the drama of the story once you’ve accomplished certain goals.  All games do it.  There’s a break, a cut-scene, and then a pulled-back shot that lets the player know he’s back in a screen where he can manipulate his character.  In this way video games owe more to commercial television that movies because they have to play to those breaks.  That’s why the better games like God of War try to keep these events to a minimum or they make you relieved to reach one because you’re character is about to die.  Here, the game seems to want you to feel like you are a Ghostbuster in the movie, but the limitations inherent to most videogames keep taking you out of the action. 

But there’s also something pretty charming about the game as well.  With Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and Harold Ramis all lending not only their voices, but also their wit to the writing of the game, it’s kind of like playing a videogame while the members of Second City provide running commentary.  Part of what made Ghostbusters such a wonderful movie was the sense that Bill Murray kept things loose and made stuff up as he went along.  If it’s hard to capture that in a movie, it’s almost impossible to capture that in a videogame where everything has to not only be planned, but programmed.  But, they did at least manage to give the game a sense of fun.  I didn’t laugh out loud, but I smiled.

The story itself is just about what you’d expect, a Frankenstein of movie pieces and game pieces.  It’s frustrating to "trap" the ghosts, so game-makers throw a bunch of little ghosts at you that you blow up.  Some ghosts have a vulnerable spot, some need that spot to be yanked out of it to make the ghost vulnerable.  You upgrade your gear, but you don’t have to collect health points to recover from being slimed.  You have to alternate devices against the big bosses who float around out of reach only to pop up with some vulnerable moment.  The mayor seems strange, turns out he’s possessed, Peck who as your enemy before is now your boss (guess we can’t make someone from the EPA a villain anymore), but he’s still a jerk.  Eventually you have to cross the streams to save the day.

Perhaps if I’d tried the cartoon version, I might not have felt such a let down.  Or maybe I should give this game more credit for at least swinging for the fences.  It’s not bad, it’s just so linear and repetitive.  The ghosts aren’t scary enough to keep you playing to defeat them, and the jokes aren’t funny enough to make you care what happens to the characters.  Pretty much what you’d expect from a videogame that tries to be a movie sequel.