Ghostbusters

Developer: Atari Games
Publisher: Teminal Reality
Rating: T (Teen)
Price: $59.99

By Joe Ziemba

After installing the game, the very first screen asking to “press start to begin” had a pretty embarrassing flaw. The smoke effect behind the Ghostbusters logo seemed to have some kind of graphics processing problem which dropped the frame rate to a clunky sub 10FPS or so; not a good start. However, after passing that screen and getting to the main game menu I was greeted with some very nice lighting. What was also nice about the menus was that they weren’t just plain selections with a background but rather a moving rendered scene. However, the graphics during actual game play weren’t as polished. The character models were well done but the environment left something lacking. Building interior textures were of a fairly low resolution and objects in those environments had a very basic physics response. This dissonance between the characters and their environment left a slightly bitter tinge on things but nothing to cry about. Although on occasion, the frame rate would sharply drop for no apparent reason even while inside small rooms.

Shortly after I started the game I was pleasantly surprised to notice all of the major actors from the movie provided the voice talent for their characters! That along with a movie quality sound track really brought in the Ghostbusters feeling. The bread and butter of the game play is capturing ghosts; durrrr. The developers managed to create a pretty simple yet effective system for controlling these situations. The proton streams look awesome and it’s really fun to wrangle up some free floating apparitions. However, the movement controls when just navigating environments felt pretty sluggish. Half way through the game things got a little monotonous but by capturing and scanning more ghosts the player has the opportunity to upgrade and obtain their weapons.

I saw the Ghostbusters movie when I was growing up and loved the Sci-Fi story combined with the light hearted comedy. This special mix allowed for a unique style that I feel translated very well into the game. With this icing on top, Ghostbusters manages to bring a pretty entertaining experience that I recommend to anyone looking for a fun time. The reason I haven’t given Ghostbusters a full five star rating is due to the games lack of polish. Most of the core components of the game were decent but with more testing the developers could have ironed out a lot of the small things and could have really raised the bar.