Post 25: Ghostbusters

The life force of all gamers.

Picture this: It's 3AM in the morning and you're sitting around in your underwear playing Darksiders or some bullshit, and you get up to grab a Dew.  You walk into the kitchen and bust open the fridge, but you don't find a life-giving, caffeinated rink.  Instead you find a second dimension.  A disembodied voice booms out "Zool," and you shit your pants.  Who the fuck are you gonna call?  I'm not sure that Jay and Grant from TAPS are going to be your best bet here, they mostly handle the more mundane, non-violent hauntings.  Instead, this is a job for the Ghostbusters.  Yeeeaah.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts!

1984 is the year that the first movie came out and it was a huge hit. The film was a great cross between the horror, comedy, and science fiction genres and it generated enough prestige and fanbase to cause need for a sequel.  If you don't know about Ghostbusters, you'd better get your ass out to a rental place, or log onto Netflix, because this baby's a piece of history.  The premise is that a few parapsychologists form a ghost hunting team and clean up New York.  Unfortunately, they also kind of cause a cataclysmic event for the entire city that ends up with them having to save the city from a giant marshmallow man and a crazy genderless lady-boy.  Fun times.  Ghostbusters 2 was less well-received but it kept the original ghostbusting spirit.  Ultimately the audience and critics were mixed on their receptions of the movie and it gave the Ghostbuster legacy a single bad mark in the minds of most people.  For me, both of these movies constitute a great entertainment experience and I'll throw them in any time to relive old memories and hear those one-liners for the fiftieth time.  Of course, if you aren't in the mood for a film-trip down memory lane, you can always pull out your old Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II video games and fuck about with those for awhile.

Not a real poster by any means.

I'm going to use both games as my Retro Game of the Week, so expect a two-day post there, and it's only fitting given the ground-breaking even that's up and coming in 2012.  That's right, Ghostbusters 3 is coming.  I am completely psyched for it.  That's why today I wanted to take a glance at the latest Ghostbusters video game that came out in 2009.  I grabbed the game for almost nothing at a closeout sale and was pleasantly surprised, but we'll get into the meat of it below.  For now, I just need to end this paragraph.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a third person shooter that was released across all platforms.  The main reason that I enjoyed it was the super-nostalgia factor.  Not only did many of the actors provide their likenesses and voices to the game, but many of the levels are familiar from the first movie.  When you were a kid, didn't you want a proton pack to capture ghosts with in an environment where all the other kids didn't think you needed counseling?  Well now's your chance.  The game puts you into the shoes of a new recruit for the Ghostbusters crew.  As the "Rookie" you go around from level to level using the PKE meter and goggles to find paranormal activity.  Once you find it you proton pack it to a weakened state and then capture it with a trap.  Think of the trap like a Poke Ball.  In Pokemon, if you didn't weaken the other Pokemon enough, it could escape.  The same principle applies here.  You can also use your proton pack to interact with objects in the environment, though most times this ends in your breaking of shit and losing money.  Money is used to purchase upgrades and is generally good, similar to real life.  There are times that having a steady hand to move objects in the world is integral to the mission.

This is epic, I can just smell the burnt marshmallow.

The plot takes place two years after Ghostbusters 2 and involves a giant PKE shockwave that causes a ton of ghosts to be released into the city, including our old friend Stay Puft.  Fighting and running away from Stay Puft is an excellent level.  You're basically running through a maze of fire, traffic, and marshmallow while the giant guy hounds you.  Eventually though you get to beat the ever-loving mallow out of him, and damn is it satisfying.  The story leads the group back to the original designer of the Central Park West building from the first movie.  It turns out that he was designing buildings and tunnels to channel slime throughout the city.  Essentially it's a means to merge the real world with the ghost world.  Eventually they find a mansion that came out of the water near New York and they go to inspect.  This level is extremely interesting and graphically fun as it's very mechanized-looking.  You have to find all of the busters and rescue them from various traps strewn throughout while you demolish several machines that pump slime out into the tunnels for the grand design.

My game froze as I got to the final level.  Bunch of shit, right?  I was so pissed.  I tried to play it about seventeen times and finally gave up. Essentially the final level involves exorcising a ghost and fighting the architect in his Destructor form.  It sounds really exciting, but I've never played it.  My goal is to re-play all of the Ghostbusters games before the third movie is released to theaters so that I can experience everything to do with the series.  If you have never seen Ghostbusters, go see it.  If you haven't played the game, go play them.  In 2012, go see the movie.  Like I said, Ghostbusters is a piece of our history and it's integral that it be added to everyone's film repertoire.  Even if you don't like it.  Of course, in that event I'm going to have to freak the hell out and sic Stay Puft on you.