GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Excellent
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 06/17/2009
- Released on: 06/16/2009
- Originally published on GameSpot: Ghostbusters The Video Game (Wii) Review
It's not just good: it's great. If you were on the fence about the Wii version of Ghostbusters the Video Game, you can make your purchase without worry. This licensed game is a lot of fun, filled with in-jokes for Ghostbusters fans and clever gameplay for just about everyone. It's only about five hours long, but those five hours are riotous, and local cooperative play and a catch-'em-all scanning mechanic offer reasons to return. This third-person adventure maintains a quick pace and will keep you grinning from beginning to end.
6212070Everything this ghost needed to know, he learned in kindergarten.None
No shocker here, but Ghostbusters The Video Game is funny. The script was penned by original film scribes Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, and while it doesn't quite reach the heights of the 1984 comedy classic, it rides the film's coattails quite comfortably. When you begin the game, you choose either a male or female avatar and join the Ghostbusters team as an unnamed, mute rookie. The other members of your illustrious team are voiced amiably by the stars of the movies: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson. There are some moments when the performances sound phoned in (Bill Murray sounds a bit too sleepy even for Bill Murray), but there's no doubting that these are the same characters that delighted us in the '80s. Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis don't reprise their roles, but you'll hardly miss them as the plot careens forward, reuniting you with old spectral friends and propelling you through a pleasant variety of earthly and otherworldly locales. Not every joke soars, but you'll find it difficult to stop grinning, and you'll probably let out a few guffaws from time to time. Venkman's laconic womanizing, Egon's deadpan pseudoscientific explanations--there's wit here for fans and newcomers alike.
The best part of Ghostbusters The Video Game is, well, busting ghosts. Using your proton pack, your first order of business is to weaken your ethereal adversary. You can do this in a number of ways, depending on the weakness of the poltergeist in question. Your pack has a number of different firing modes, letting you spray a stream of green goo, slow down enemies with your stasis stream, blast enemies with a boson dart, and more. Once you've whittled down the ghost's health bar enough, you lock on to it with the grappling stream and bash it around a bit. You do so by flinging the Wii Remote in the direction indicated onscreen, and it's a good, sensible use of the system's motion controls, because it feels as though you really are flinging the bugger around. Once the ghost is dazed, you maneuver it over a trap, and it's automatically sucked in. The controls for combat feel just right. You can lock the camera on enemies, but you can't lock the targeting reticle on them, which means you still need to be conscious of where you're aiming. And the blend of standard button presses for firing your weapons and gestures for finishing enemies works extremely well.
Take that, Dewey Decimal System!
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