Ghostbusters: When a good idea meets a bad medium

It's been a long time since I've given much thought to the Ghostbusters franchise. Sure, I used to have the action figures, and the powerpack, and the trap, and all the movies, and all that crap. And who among us hasn't caught themselves singing 'If there's something strange...in your neighbourhood...who ya gonna call? Ghostbuster!' from time to time. Those times were great.

Were great.

I was pretty jazzed up to play the new Ghostbusters game on the Xbox 360 because it got relatively good reviews, had the actual actors from the movie doing voice-overs, and had a script written by Akroyd and Ramis...how could it go wrong?

For starters, you could get a real studio to make your game and not just do a typical movie ripoff to make some quick cash. Well, the ol' busters didn't go that way with this one and chose the gun for hire studio Terminal Reality to make the game. Now this in itself doesn't prove the game will be of poor quality, but they did make Aoen Flux so you form your own preconceptions.

The game starts off well enough with you being welcomed as a new recruit to the Ghostbusters team and everything is spot on. Venkman is a dick, all the characters sound great, and even the Walter Peck is reintroduced. But the whole thing seems to go down from there. The game itself isn't much fun once you bag your first ghostie. The mechanics feel sloppy, frustrating, and extremely repetitive. If the main point of this game is trapping ghosts...shouldn't we make that part fun? Auto-aim press trigger - hold - hold - oh crap he flew out of my stream - press trigger hold - hold - up analog - down analog - (repeat about 40 times) - throw trap - why won't he go in the trap - go in the trap already - GO IN THE TRAP - GOOOOOOOOO!

While it was a plus that they had the original writers write the script, it's almost embarrassing that rehashing the first movie is the end result. You've had 24 years, guys...no ideas in that time? None at all? Good. Got a movie coming up soon? Let's put out a game real quick and build some enthusiasm for it! Yay!

This was a great time to take the franchise in a new direction before the new movie comes out, but everyone involved seem to just phone it in. Okay, it's fun to fight slimer right in the beginning, but shouldn't there at least be a buildup to fighting the Stay Puft marshmallow man? fight that big bastard in the first 20 minutes. How's that for a climactic plot twist. Take the coolest guy, shove him in my face right away, then have me run through tunnel after tunnel shooting flying books. Oh wait, you get to fight him again later. What?

Had Ramis and Akroyd served a less involved role and just provided the story to a studio that actually wanted to run with this franchise, we might have had a bit more evolution out of the Ghostbusters than this annoying and awkward affair. I played about 75% of the game because I couldn't get the theme song out of my head, and that enthusiasm helped me power through the annoying levels, poor mechanics, and trapping those stupid ghosts in those traps over and over and over. Then I got prototype and I decided I'd rather play a game based in New York that doesn't suck.

I don't want to put much more effort into flogging this game, but it felt like everyone involved in the process just took advantage of my childhood enthusiasm for a franchise that probably doesn't lend itself well to video games in the first place. But it's really disappointing to see good things like original writers and original cast be totally wasted to produce a stunted and annoying product. Oh well, at least we know what to expect from the movie so we can save our $15.