Cleanin’ Up the Town

As a child of the 80s, I’ve got a deeply ingrained fondness for the Ghostbusters. Unlike so much other pop culture ephemera from my youth (I’m looking at you Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Ghostbusters as a movie still stands up remarkably well. I’m a guy who rarely geeks out in public, but I could hardly contain myself several E3s back when I realized that the hotel we were staying in, the Biltmore, was the same hotel where the boys in grey first encountered Slimer. It’s also worth noting that I’ve had more than my share of Ecto-Cooler. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that bustin’ makes me feel good. After seeing a short demo of Terminal Reality’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game, I’m feeling pretty good about that as well.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game could very well be called Ghostbusters III. The game will take place two years after the events of Ghostbusters II, and while Sierra is being deliberately vague about the overall story, all you really need to know is New York City, ghosts, and the busting thereof. On its own, the idea of a video-game-only Ghostbusters sequel is an absolutely dreadful one. Thankfully, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who wrote both of the Ghostbusters movies, worked on the story for the game, with Aykroyd being especially involved in making sure that all of the Ghostbusters’ fun little toys look and feel they way they should. Add to this a voice-cast that, in addition to Aykroyd and Ramis, includes Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and everyone’s favorite 1980s pencilneck, William Atherton, and the game’s chances really start looking up.

You’ll actually play as a new, fifth Ghostbuster, with the rest of the team acting as AI-controlled companions, though you won’t be rolling five deep for the entire game. The portion of the game I got to see for myself took the Ghostbusters back to the New York Public Library, where the team encounters numerous apparitions, including a familiar ghost with a penchant for symmetrical book stacking, as well as a ghost that takes form by possessing books. There’s a really great moment during the book-monster fight where Ray Stantz excitedly identifies the nature of the ghost with rapid-fire pseudo-scientific jargon that just feels authentic.

As the standard tools of the ghost busting trade, proton packs, PKE meters, and ghost traps will feature prominently in Ghostbusters: The Video Game. During the demo, the PKE meter was used to sniff out the trail of a specific ghost, though it’ll also serve as a sort of general purpose device to keep you on the right track. The proton packs will naturally be used for busting ghosts and blowing holes through nearby valuables. Not all ghosts will require you to use the ghost trap, though, with smaller fodder ghosts disappearing after a good blast. Crossing the streams is, of course, a bad thing, though Sierra was acting pretty coy about how that might figure into the game. All the effects for the proton streams and the ghost traps looked right-on, and there were some good displays of physics, courtesy of Terminal Reality’s Infernal engine. The book-monster–which Sierra claims isn’t a static model, but is instead generated procedurally–stood out in particular.

The Ghostbusters are scientists first and foremost, but they’re also shameless capitalists, a characteristic that will figure into the gameplay and the story. Every time a ghost is busted, you’ll earn some cash. But, every time you break something with your unlicensed nuclear accelerator, you’ll be charged for it. Luckily for the Ghostbusters, the new mayor of New York, who ran on a pro-Ghostbusters platform, has formed a commission whose purpose is to manage the financial impact of ghost busting. Unfortunately, Walter Peck, the EPA lawyer who shut down the Ghostbusters in the first film, will have some say about how the Ghostbusters spend the city’s money.

With a game like this, the best you can hope for is that it stay true to the source material, and so far, it looks like the Ghostbusters are in control.