Guest contributor Adam Rosenberg resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, where he slaves away daily as a contributing editor for UGO’s Gamesblog as his dog Loki looks on in bewilderment. In addition to the noble pursuit of video games, Adam enjoys spending time with fine film, finer food and his fine fiancée Bekah.
I haven’t seen shit that will turn you white. The shit I have seen, namely a fresh build of Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Xbox 360 and PS3, will make you green. With slime. And envy.
Last summer, a preview build featuring a portion of the widely seen New York Public Library level made the gaming press rounds. The unfinished code appeared out of thin air, its sender listed only as “Evil PR Monkey”. The demo was raw. Very raw. But not so raw as to diminish Ghostbusters’s promise. There were Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddmore (noVenkman in the demo), fully voiced by Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Aykroyd and Ramis’ script, even just that tiny chunk, was characterized by the same wit that made the original films such classics. Then a few weeks later, Activision announced that, following their merger with Vivendi, they would not be hanging onto the Ghostbusters license.
News on the game since, even following Atari’s confirmation that they would be publishing Ghostbusters in June 2009, has been disturbingly light. No more of the actual game has been shown since that messy preview code. Until last week. While I didn’t actually get to go hands-on with it, I did get an eyes-on playthrough of the remainder of that library level. And now… well… I ain’t afraid of no Ghostbusters.
The presentation — third-person perspective, story, voice actor/likeness participation, core ghost-wranglin’ mechanics — are unchanged. What’s fresh is a new sprint button and a multi-directional quick dodge. Both significantly tighten up the gameplay. If you haven’t gotten a look at any video of play, there are two types of spooks and specters to combat.
First are capturable Ghosts, boss and mini-boss-style baddies. You wear them down with the Proton Beam — Or another weapon. More on those in a sec. — and then snare them in a Capture Beam. The captured ghost has to be slammed into walls until it is weak enough to be pulled into a trap. Then there are the more common Entities, supernatural conglomerations of physical objects, such as books, papers, lamps, and the like. These spirits can be flat-out destroyed (or is that neutronized?). They typically have shields that must be stripped away before they can be taken down. Still others manifest as hulking beasts; these must be worn down with sustained attacks until their head – glowing lamps, during the library demo – can be ripped away with the Capture Beam.
That’s the talent, so what about the tools? Weapons stem from the Proton Pack which, along with a dangling PKE Meter, serves as your HUD. The pack itself changes appearance depending on the beam type in use, and each beam now features primary and alternate modes of fire. The vanilla Proton beam is supplemented by the Boson Dart, a concentrated burst shot which works like a rocket launcher. The newly introduced Dark Matter Beam fires either a damaging shotgun-like spread or a sustained stasis beam which has the effect of slowing down targeted enemies. There’s also a Slime Blower, which is used to clear away dark, red-tinged slime. No “Higher and Higher” to accompany it though. Throughout the game, you can upgrade the ‘busters’ equipment with money earned from capturing ghosts and collateral damage. The bill for the latter goes to one Walter Peck, by the way. It’s true what you’ve heard about his genitalia. Just saying. The demo ends with a knockdown boss fight against a familiar supernatural librarian. Cornered in a cavernous space tucked away in a distant corner of the NYPL’s sub-basements, the librarian ghost mounts a final offensive from behind her shield of floating books and candelabras. After finishing her off, the team moves to investigate a trans-dimensional portal which has appeared in the center of the room. The walls peel away to reveal a hellish landscape and… the pause menu pops up. Demo over. A good portion of the game will send the Ghostbusters hurtling into these Otherworlds, though the “what” and the “why” of them remain a mystery for now.
It’s clear that Atari is giving Ghostbusters: The Video Game the triple-A attention it deserves. The publisher switch has resulted in remastered FMVs, newly written and recorded lines of dialogue, additional mo-cap work, and an apparent tightening of the gameplay. Plus, even though it wasn’t shown, I was told off-duty Ghostbusters will be able to explore the team’s iconic firehouse. No concrete details were shared, but I was promised that “rewards” await those who take the time to explore. As long as we can use the pole, all is good. The mid-June release date is creeping ever-closer, and I have to it’s very exciting to see this polish applied to Ray, Egon, Peter, Winston and Nameless New Guy’s (i.e. You) HD-console adventure.
Related links:
NYCC 2009 - Ghostbusters Wii
Screen Test: Ghostbusters
Films to Games: Ghostbusters Really is Ghostbusters 3!
Ghostbusters. Peter Venkman. Walter Peck. The World is Just.