Ghostbusters

While not quite the best game in the franchise, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Ecto Edition douses its thoroughly serviceable online 4v1 gameplay in positively charged psychomagnotheric nostalgia slime. From small touches in the visuals to snippets of dialogue, the detail and care that has gone into recreating the Ghostbusters’ world here made us forgive the occasional visual glitch and basic, predictable plot. If 'busting makes you feel good, you'll have a great time.

It wouldn't be Ghostbusters without jokes and the game certainly attempts to land quite a few. The game's characters have a lot of energy and banter, but the enthusiasm for ghostbusting doesn't carry over to humor that well. It feels a lot more in line with the tone of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon in its attempt to connect with a younger audience, but it isn't quite as self-aware as that series was.

This is the sort of game that great uncles and grandmas are going to buy for the young people in their lives because they heard Ghostbusters was popular, or that littler kids will point out in the mall just after seeing the movie. But no informed gamer should fall for the siren song of that catchy main theme. It’s not actively painful to play if you happen to be at your eight-year-old cousin’s house and need a co-op game for six to eight hours that’s not going to require much skill. But you could do so much better. I can’t imagine ever wanting to drop a full 50 dollars on it, especially consid...

The one saving grace is that Ghostbusters is dull rather than boring. Played in short bursts, a level or two at a time, it’s still rather fun, even more so when you have some friends in tow. Parents with young children who fancy a break from endless LEGO titles may also consider a look at Ghostsbusters, but for everyone else, I recommended you hunt down the far superior Ghostbusters: The Video Game from 2009.

If you can get it for far cheaper than it's going for, if you can play it with friends, and if you have totally exhausted every other twin-stick shooter on the market, then I can give Ghostbusters a very weary "maybe" recommendation. Yet everything this game does is done far better and far cheaper by so many other games.

Don't call them.

Who you gonna call? A video game tie-in to the new film has been released. Check out our Ghostbusters PS4 review to find out if it's any good!

The hubbub surrounding the new Ghostbusters movie has been so well documented that even the Internet-deprived people of North Korea have likely heard about it. The response to the first trailer for the 2016 reboot of the supernatural comedy franchise has been nothing short of vitriolic, to the point that it's one of the most hated videos ever put on YouTube. Even Nickelback doesn't have a video with that many dislikes. Perhaps it's selective memory or maybe it's rose tinted glasses, but it seems like a lot of people have forgotten that the "beloved franchise" that Internet warriors are uniting...

Those two ideas that come with gigantic BUTs attached to them are the kindest things I can muster about Ghostbusters. The rest is a vapid, hackneyed slog that feels incredibly long despite being rather short. Ghostbusters does the bare minimum required, and it’s apparent that this is a project that nobody cared about. It’s ironic that a game so entrenched in specters and spooks is so completely lacking in spirit.

Feig’s Ghostbusters won’t be an iconic film in the same way Reitman’s was, but it is both hysterical and fun that doesn’t fail to entertain.

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Playing with a friend or two may hasten up the playthrough but only to an extent; say, maybe bringing it down to roughly around 20 minutes per level. Also, revisiting a level as a ghostbuster with a much higher stat is kinda futile since there’s not much to go back to unless you missed picking up a part of an unlockable, which is highly unlikely in the first place; you can get all for the level in one go most of the time. That, or you just want to experience how it feels like to breeze through that certain level and beat your own clear time.