Illfonic has quickly made a niche for themselves in the gaming landscape. Their unique branding is less so about the characters but more so about how their gameplay is, that being a 4-person human team fighting against one monster of supernatural origin. Evolve, Friday The 13th: The Game, and Predator: Hunting Grounds are a couple of titles that utilize this gameplay idea. Now, the Ghostbusters franchise is gonna call in with their own game, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed.
Unlike other games in this genre, the game is less about a powerful, evil monster ready to kill the players one by one. Rather, the four-player team is a team filled with trainees, ready to join the Ghostbusters crew. As the main Ghostbusters from the movies have to deal with their own story, it’s up to the rookie to hold down the fort out on the field. They have to go to locations and hunt down a singular ghost. This singular ghost can’t permanently kill them, but it can make their lives miserable by spawning minions, sabotaging their packs, haunting furniture, and so on. While the Ghostbusters have to bust and trap the ghost, the ghoul has to scare and slime his way into possessing the entire building with his arsenal of ghost tricks.
When you’re just starting out, you have to go through the orientation of just how you have to bust ghosts. When you first arrive on a map, you have to take out your P.K.E. meter and use it to detect either a ghost or an artifact that holds a ghost rift. If the dots on the meter are going down, you found the ghost. If they go up, you will find their ghost rift, hidden in an artifact, which is just another regular object. Just keep on shooting the ghost, object or rift with your Particle Thrower, and reel the ghosts into your trap. Just be careful to not overheat your pack. And be sure to ping the ghost when you see it so others will know where it is. Along the way, you will also have to keep the civilians calm by holding down one button and pressing another button in time with a moving circular gauge. Ghostbusters also have secondary gadgets to help with either traversing the level or limiting the ghost’s movements. However, you can only have one secondary gadget at a time, so you will have to choose between either scaling up to the second floor easier or using tools that can help hinder the movements of the ghost.
The locations where you bust ghosts during your matches can range from the pristine Whitestone Museum to the desolate old Rock Island Prison. They even release DLC maps for free, with their first one just released last month being the creepy hospital, MOROS Medical Facility. Each location is filled with atmosphere and fitting decorations and furniture to make each building feel fully realized local that you see being open and doing business in. And of course, there is plenty of incentive to cause mayhem and destroy whatever you can in order to cause destruction in the building to increase your score. Bust open some glass panels, burn some furniture up, and hey, if you find yourself finding an artifact somewhere nearby, all the more reason to go wild with your Particle Thrower.
As you play through matches and level up, you’ll also unlock more parts for your gadgets as well as increase and decrease their stats depending on what you choose. You could increase how far you can throw your trap, how long your trap lasts, how long your Particle Thrower can last on ghosts, how effective your P.K.E. Meter can track ghosts at the cost of not being able to track rifts and artifacts that well, and so on. You’ll be able to decide just how you want your tools to work, fitting your play style. However, this does end up feeling like you’ll have to grind matches to get better gear, which wouldn’t be too bad in a role-playing game, but in an online multiplayer game, it ends up feeling like the game favors longtime players and makes newcomers feel a bit lost.
All the while you’re going through your busting ghost matches, back at the firehouse will be an unfurling story between the other four characters there. Two of them are series classics, Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore, alongside their original voice actors pitching in. The other two characters are Catt, a young fan who grew up to become the Operations Manager of the Ghostbusters, and Eddy Chan, a scientist who keeps getting in over his head with his inventions. From what the game is showing, it’s relying on making a story that doesn’t rely on any previous knowledge of the brand. This does help it stand on its own two legs, but it could discourage some lifelong fans. Any other story about the locations themselves is told through clippings you find while playing.
On the bright side, there is one great character in the game; a book. Seriously, he goes by Tobin, full name John Horace Tobin. When he was still alive, he wrote down pretty much everything about ghosts and ghouls he could in his book, Tobin’s Spirit Guide. After kicking the bucket, he ends up kicking around inside the book, teaching newbie ghosts how to be the best ghost they can be. This is basically a guy who learned all about ghosts possessing a book and playing up the whole ghost angle as much as he can. Their loud, booming voice, a boisterous personality, and such hammy way of using their words really make him stand out, and half of the reason why you should be the ghost in these matches. The other half? Being a ghost is just fun and entertaining.
When you interact with the book in Ray’s shop, you’re taken to the spirit world where after being taught by Tobin, you’ll be able to be the ghost. Here, you’ll have to haunt the entire building and survive the Ghostbusters to win. You can do this by haunting rooms, which is done by using your energy on objects within the room to make them move on their own, horrifying civilians by sliming them into fleeing the building or fighting back against the Ghostbusters. You can also use three specific abilities you have with each ghost. They’re an ultimate ability unique to each ghost, a regular unique ability that changes with each ghost or spawn minions. As you can tell, you can be more than one type of ghost, changing how you play. One ghost can lay down pools of slime, another ghost can slam the ground and knock back the Ghostbusters, another can possess scared civilians, and so on. You’ll unlock more ghosts as you play and level up, so be ready to choose and customize your ghost to your liking. Unlike the gear for Ghostbusters, leveling up your ghost only unlocks cosmetic appearances, and each ghost is unique enough that even the basic ghost you unlocked is as powerful as the last ghost you unlock.
When you come face to face against Ghostbusters, you can either flee through walls and floors or hide by possessing objects and rejuvenating your energy. If you want to fight them, make sure it’s a one-on-one, or a two-on-one if you’re feeling confident with your ghosts, and maybe a three-on-one if you have your abilities all ready and have the element of surprise on your side and they’re distracted with something else. You can’t kill them, but you can slime them by attacking them enough times or passing through them enough. You can also sabotage their packs to further hinder them. Most of the time, however, you’re hiding from the Ghostbusters and trying to keep your energy up. This isn’t the type of 4v1 where the one is an unkillable machine. The Ghostbusters can easily trap you if you’re careless and lose the button-mashing events that follow.
When you get trapped, if you have a rift ready, you’ll respawn away from them; otherwise, you lost the match. You’re more of the target than the monster here, having to sneak your way around to scare people, and when the building is fully haunted, you just have to survive. Any rifts you didn’t use, either by reincarnating after getting caught or by detonating them yourself to fully haunt a room, will be added to the final countdown of how long you have to survive till you win. Survive with all three rifts, and the time you have to survive goes down from 90 seconds to just 15. Evade capture and hide till the clock reaches zero, and you win. Being a ghost is certainly more unique and challenging than being the monster in other games; you’re constantly on the move and deciding just what to do to make the most out of your energy, and toying with the idea of possibly detonating rifts to fully haunt a room and get that 25% bonus towards haunting the building is worth it. It’s definitely more fun and engaging here to be the ghost than the buster.
That said, even after getting over half the achievements, I still don’t fully understand the P.K.E. Meter and find it annoying to use when pinpointing specific artifacts and ghosts. Oh sure, they’re good for a general direction, but unless you end up getting quite literally right up next to the item, it’s not going to work. The game does help a bit by giving you small arrows to slowly nudge you in the direction but given how so many objects can be either in the air or on the ground, you’re going to have to practically scan each and every object, looking squarely in the face of each item, and get as close as possible when you get in the general vicinity.
Thankfully, there is one other thing the P.K.E. meter can do; overload itself and give off a small burst of electricity around the player. Any artifacts will be marked as such, and the ghost will be forced out of any possessed objects and stunned to boot, which does help a bit. That said, I feel like I end up stumbling around during a couple of unlucky runs where the rifts were hidden in boxes that required you to look at them directly on the floor at your feet, as the others end up revealing the rifts and ghosts. Alongside that criticism, the Ghostbusters end up making a third of the XP you can earn compared to playing as a ghost, and as such, it feels a bit like it could be balanced out and fixed.
Finally, I still ran into a couple of bugs that make matches feel unsatisfying; falling through the floor as the ghost, joining the game in the middle of it and having to stay in place for 20 seconds being useless, giving Ghostbusters ample time to track and trap me down, and the classic long wait times when queuing up for a match, most noticeable when I first started out. They become a little less frequent over time, but they still pop up every now and then, and it is a drag, especially waiting for queue times without being able to drop out unless you fully quit the game.
Regardless, the game is still a blast to play online. As a Ghostbuster, it’s a nice exercise in hunting down ghosts, and managing your tools to keep your trap ready and powerful enough to trap ghosts. As ghosts, you get the pleasure of creating mayhem and sneaking around like an actual ghost. It’s a system where both sides feel like they can win, and as such, feels fair and fun to play. If you’re looking for a unique twist on the players vs. monster game, you know who you’re gonna call? Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed!
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