This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise.Although there is talk of a 3rd Ghostbusters Movie, as of today, that is all it is, talk. So what are we to do in the meantime? Well, why not play the part of a Ghostbuster with Atari’s new video game for the Sony PS3? That’s right, here’s your chance to stand side by side with Dr. Peter Venkman, Dr. Raymond Stantz, Dr. Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddmore as you free New York of the tyranny of an army of disgruntled spirits. Who you gonna call?

Things That Go Bump In The Night

Now I should point out that the Sony PS3 version of the game is rated T for Teens and though there aren’t any violent, gory, or vulgar language aspects to the game, it does feature a bit of spookiness that may give the preadolescent set some unsolicited fuel for nightmares. That said, Caleb, my 5-year-old, enjoyed watching Nikolai, my 8-year-old, and I play the game, and neither one of them suffered ill effects.

Free Floating Vapors

When you sit down to create a video game based on a movie, there is a right way and multiple wrong ways to do it. In creating Ghostbusters The Video Game, Atari decided to favor the right way. First, the story for the game was penned by the original Ghostbuster writers, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd. Second, the game expanded on the Ghostbusters’ story without merely rehashing the events in the movie, like a lot of video games based on movies do. And third, the game features the voices of some of the original actors brought together for the first time in 20 years: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton (Walter Peck) and Annie Potts (Janine Melnitz) along with new characters played by Alyssa Milano and Brian Doyle-Murray. In other words, it was a little like playing the 3rd movie that is still all talk and no substance.

Full Body Apparitions

In the game you play the newest Ghostbuster… Scratch that, you play the New Trainee Ghostbuster and get to work alongside Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston as you do battle with some old favorite spooks from the two movies as well as with a set of new specters. The game takes place in 1991, 2 years after the last movie, when you discover that Ivo Shandor, the architect that designed 55 Central Park West (the building that summoned Gozer in the 1st movie) is not done designing, as far as his job on Earth goes. Part of the charm of this game is visiting the Sedgewick Hotel, where you wreak more havoc, and battling Elenor Twitty, the Gray Lady at the New York Public Library, as well as visiting new eerie locations. Speaking of eerie, the only paranormal entity that really spooked Nik and I was the Black Slime, which actually didn’t do anything scary, rather it featured the audio of whispering voices that you could barely make out, and in those cases when you could understand what was being said, it made the hair on the back of our necks stand up. Also, there is a scene that features the voices of Ghost Children… Yeah, gonna have to say that I don’t like the voices of Ghost Children.

Grab Your Proton Pack

In this game you also get to pack some heat, in the guise of Egon’s new untested Proton Pack, a perfect ‘Make or Break Exam’ for the Rookie. Along with firing the original Blast Stream as well as having a Slime Blower Mark 2 (as seen in the movies), the new Proton Pack delivers Boson Darts, Shock Blasts, Stasis Streams, Slime Tethers, Overload Pulses, and contains a Meson Collider, all of which impart major discomfort to ghosts. And that’s not all, you also get you’re very own Ghost Trap, PKE Meter, and Para-Goggles to complete the ensemble. If the thought of having all of this firepower at your fingertips makes you a bit nervous, don’t worry, you do receive a bit of training in its use.

“I Looked At The Trap, Ray.”

Ghostbusters The Video Game is a fun, fast-action, fast-paced video game that was over all too quickly according to Nik. It is also a First Person Shooter, which we normally don’t allow Nik and Caleb to play, but since this one featured mostly ghosts we let our rules slide just a little. Since this game was designed for the PS3, it was made to play on a HiDef TV, which we don’t have,so some of the print and images on the screen was a bit hard to make out on our 27-inch standard screen… Need to upgrade that soon. The game also features Multiplayer action, but you have to play with your friends via the Playstation®Network, so unfortunately we weren’t able to test that feature out.

Overall Impression

As a game watcher, Caleb has decided to give Ghostbusters The Video Game 10 out of 10 Stars because it was fun to watch. Nikolai says he’s giving it 100 Thumbs-Up out of 100 and would like to increase it to 200 Thumbs-Up by playing the game again. I think it’s a sign of a good game if he races to start it all over again as soon as we’re done. As for me, I’ll have to admit that is was one best times I had playing a video game and like Nikolai, I was disappointed that it was over all too soon, so I’m giving it 7 Dancing Elephants out of 8. If it lasted a few more days, I’d have given it a perfect 8.

Parting Thoughts

Under the heading, “It Pays to Read the Rules of the Game”: A part of the game features purchasing upgrades to the ghost busting equipment with the money that is earned by capturing ghosts. At one point Nikolai and I noticed that we were racking up dollar signs every time we destroyed something, be it a bookshelf, window, painting, furniture, statue, priceless antique, etc. Thinking that we had just stumbled onto the money making scheme of the century, we started destroying everything, and I mean everything. We found out later that the rapidly increasing $$$$ was our Damage Claim HUD (Heads Up Display) counting the amount of “accidents’ and incidental damage caused while we were on the job. The Financial Records of our Ghostbuster Field Guide hit us our cumulative total… Who’d have thought an Unlicensed Nuclear Accelerator could do that much damage???