Ghostbusters is one of our favorite entertainment franchises of all time. We grew up watching the movies, the cartoons and even bought the Kenner plastic proton packs. So we obviously can't wait to play Sierra's upcoming video game, which takes the movies' best elements and fuses them with a cool, ghost busting video game experience. Fire up those particle accelerators and ready the traps. This one looks ready for the big leagues.
The demo started with a trip back to the New York City library, where the nameless new recruit (that's you) battles ghosts alongside Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler, voiced by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, respectively. Armed with their proton packs, the Ghostbusters make their way into the heart of the building, occasionally pulling out their PKE meters to check for spectral activity.
First impression? Ghostbusters: The Game looks incredible. Sierra still has tons of work to do to eliminate a few visual glitches and add more detail to the environments. The characters look identical to their movie counterparts, each with cool-looking proton packs that act as the game's HUD. Blinking lights on the pack let you know when it's going to overheat (when it does, smoke billows from the equipment and you can't use it for a second or two). The particle beams swirl all over the place and ensnares ghosts and causes incredible amounts of property damage; it's OK, since NYC pays for the damage, though we're not sure if and how that will factor into the game. Whatever you do, don't cross streams! You won't die, but crossed beams will turn off and that could be a problem during a more crucial part of a battle.
Destruction plays a huge role, and you'll be able to tear about the library, blowing up desks, chairs, lamps and stacks of books. Enemies make use of Sierra's "Gollum Technology" and will use objects in the environment to create gigantic monsters. Basically, you'll walk into a room, and all of a sudden a bunch of stuff will fly into the air and come together to form a bad guy. Could be books, desks and debris, and the artificial intelligence randomly pulls stuff together, so no one encounter happens the same way. In the demo, for example, a nefarious spook used desks and chairs to form a creature that the new Ghostbuster character attacked and eventually blasted to pieces with a proton beam.
Ghosts look equally as good as the game's main characters. The transparent apparitions fly around, pass through walls and burst out when you least expect it. The Ghostbusters will fight two types of ghost -- ones that can be defeated with a simple proton blast and others that require trapping. To trap these ghosts, you work alongside your fellow Ghostbusters -- just like the movies -- to weaken them and then get them close enough to their signature trap, open it and watch the ghouls get sucked in.
After exploring the library, Sierra took us to the streets to show off its crowd technology. Hundreds of people ran in terror from the skyscrapers tall Stay-Puft, who slowly lumbered down the street. ("Hey, how did Stay-Puft come back to life?" we asked. "I can't tell you that!" says the game's producer). Watching all those virtual people scramble around looks impressive, but hardly captures the feel of New York, since there were no cars and blaring horns, which we hope will be added later.
Aykroyd and Ramis worked together to write the script, and Sierra also secured numerous actors from the films to reprise their roles, including Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts. The actors have recorded thousands of lines of dialogue, which means their will be plenty of talking (and jokes) throughout the adventure. You'll also recognize familiar music from the films as well as 70 minutes of unreleased tracks.
This fall, we're sure lots of gamers will be dying to play Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and whatever Nintendo has in store for the Wii, but don't count out Ghostbusters. The game still needs a lot tweaks, but if done right, it could easily become one of 2008's best video games. Now all we have to do is avoid getting slimed.
Reader Comments (6)
amazing!!! This is going to be the sleeper hit of the year. really looking forward to it.
God, it looks like a horrible game. Probably nearly identical to Luigi's Mansion for Gamecube.
it looks stupid
why did they w8 so long for the game to come out. ill prob. never buy it it looks weird.
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i cannot wait to play this game!