In a better world, a third Ghosbuters movie would have been released in 1991. The gang would be found in good spirits working under a lucrative contract for the state of New York to protect New York City. And it would start off with a bang: Gozer wreaking havoc in the form of the iconic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Other characters would also return, including the scary librarian, with her murder being revealed as an attempt by the Gozer Cult to find the Gozerian Codex and kicking off a story that would brings closure to the events from the first two films. A fifth wheel everyman rookie would also be introduced, whose muted presence makes him easy to ignore and largely forgettable. There would be twists and turns, alternate dimensions, cool poltergeists, and a massive battle at the end that would look great but be a little anticlimactic – but it’s Ghostbusters so we’re still okay with that. Sadly, we live in the world we do, and that movie was never released. While we might not have had new film in 1991, we do have a new game set in 1991 that plays out all of the events above. Close enough.

The easiest way to summarize Ghostbusters: The Video Game is to say that, if you’re a fan, then just go out and try it. You will get a kick out of the gang palling about as they clean up New York and interact with the many returning side characters, as well as getting the chance to toy around with the proton pack’s new firing modes.  If you aren’t a fan of the film, or at least more of a passing fan, then what you get out of it really depends on how you found the chemistry between the guys, because the so-so mechanics are easily overshadowed by the writing and vocal performances.

In a very rare case, Ghostbusters: The Video Game is an instance when the license overshadows the game. In an attempt to do justice to the films, the game has managed to become a better film than a game. That isn’t too surprising when considering that both Dan Aykroyd (Dr. Raymond Stantz) and Harold Ramis (Dr. Egon Spengler) approached the game as if it was the third film, as mentioned in the videos found on the PlayStation 3 version, and in that regard the game is wildly successful. Although Aykroyd and Ramis didn’t write the script, the majority of the material was written by Terminal Reality, the two did contribute by tweaking for lingo and thematic consistency.  However the combination of contributions worked out to be, it was a triumph: the back-and-forth banter is spot-on, and the crew delivers their lines perfectly.

The narrative outshining the mechanics isn’t to say that the game was simply tacked on to a script. Terminal Reality had some really good ideas, and they managed to pull off a number of them. A great addition is the proton pack expansions, with three new modes all each having an alternate firing mode. The standard blast stream from the film is the workhorse of the bunch, with a lasso ability that automatically grabs ghosts after the powerful boson dart pulses and stream weakens them. A stasis stream will slow down and eventually freeze ghosts, while its secondary mode is a powerful shotgun-style shock blast. The meson collider fires rapid shots, homing in on the secondary overload pulse shot that also paints targets. Last is slime blower, which weakens ghosts as well as destroys the interdimensional slime that is seeping through and acting as a gateway for ghosts to travel through, while its secondary slime tether interacts marvelously with the physics engine by moving levers, doors, and whiplashing ghosts into traps. It’s possible to stick to one firing mode for most of the game, but that isn’t nearly as fun (see: perfecting the various trapping methods).

Your official title is actually Experimental Equipment Technician, so you get all of the new equipment first. To ease the new proton attachments and their refinements into service, there is a rudimentary upgrade system where equipment is purchased. Blasts are strengthened, cool down times shortened, and the traps engage faster. I found the system to be a bit contrived, because you need the updates to proceed and you end up with far more money than all of the upgrade costs combined; it seems to exist solely to justify the inclusion of money, which is so abundant that it renders the process pointless. The damage tally that Walter Peck (voiced by William Atherton) keeps as head of the Paranormal Contract Oversight Committee, which is even pointed out in a video by the developers, doesn’t get deducted from your account because the city’s insurance policy on the ghostbusters insulates them from paying anything back. So while money is tallied throughout, there isn’t much of a point to it. The introduction of the equipment is handled well, though, with humorous descriptions and commentary by Venkman and Stantz, but the monetary aspect seems like a missed opportunity that was shoehorned in.

The ghost-capturing process is quite good. The various firing modes add the variety needed to stay satisfying over several hours, though some of the wrangling can go on for a bit too long, but the encounters more often succeed at faithfully conveying the struggle of having to wrangle agitated ghosts towards the traps using erratic proton streams. A number of ghosts and creatures simply die, which is a bit odd at first but ultimately a necessity given the length of the game. To be sure, there are some truly epic struggles that take place, evoking the feeling of being a poltergeist cowboy, and some memorable encounters are relived – slimmer in the hotel - due to several locations and villains from the films being included. While some of the new poltergeists are a little bland, a few fit in well with the universe, including one that is nothing but a collection of books and has a lovely death animation that involves hundreds of pages flying up and floating to the earth. There are also levels that lie within a nether realm of floating platforms in front of a warping background that include several puzzles that use the slime tether to great effect.

I often found myself fighting the controls almost as much as the ghosts. Many of the levels take place in confined areas and it can be very chaotic trying to contend with ghosts flying around above and the smaller monsters running along on the ground below. I found myself hitting tables, chairs, barrels, and just getting hung up on any number of objects. Enemies also had attacks with heavy splash damage, and I frequently found myself falling over from being hit and having no idea what even happened; the red that appears on the edges of the screen when hit was also better at obscuring my vision than conveying information. The resulting fall from a knockdown blow only added to the frustration. For some reason, you have a long falling sequence where you tumble about while the camera focuses only on you and is limited to swirling around your characters – it’s very disorienting. The other ghostbusters will come to your aid to revive you, often to the detriment of the mission, and you can also revive them, which you will do quite often; there were some fights that consisted primarily of me running from guy to guy, reviving each in turn. While fighting side by side with the guys and sharing in the danger definitely had me feeling like one of the gang, it was pretty trying.

Some of the best moments were whenever I was creeping along dark hallways and scanning for activity with the PKE Meter. Following the beeping red and blue lights, towards enemies and artifacts, set a more investigative tone. The game often uses soft jazz and whimsical effects to keep the mood lighthearted, but true to the films it can suddenly turn and become very creepy: the music becomes eerie, ghosts whisper, chairs and tables begin to float, and the meter goes crazy. The in-goggle view during these moments added to the tension, registering stats about ghosts and illuminating trails left by poltergeists. The slower moments were great, and surprisingly tense. The faster, more action-packed portions didn’t fair quite as well. The Gears of War-style run was a bit unwieldy and often unnecessary in the cramped levels, and I also found the game oddly attached to its dodge command: moving out of an attack’s range will still register a hit, but dodging, even when far closer, will evade the blow. For all of its shortcomings, however, the game certainly does a great job at conveying the different aspects of the job.

At under 8 hours, the game might seem to come up short, but I think that length is about right. It’s disappointing when you realize that the story is coming to an end, but the last level drags on a bit and by the end you’re ready to see the finale. The length feels about how long a movie would be if you were a character tasked with all of the menial duties – moving objects into place with your plasma stream, solving puzzles, and single-handedly solving electrical problems in flooded basements – which, as it happens, you are. It’s fun to spend some time with the gang, but it’s better to leave while you’re still laughing.

I’d like to say that multiplayer adds the kind of longevity that would really flesh out the package, but it doesn’t. Developed by Threewave Software, multiplayer allows for ranked and unranked games of up to four players to compete in a number of modes – survival, destroying as many relics or capturing as many ghosts as possible within a time, and conditional options for victory. Matches can either be one-off with random, set, or no rules (such as slam dunking, that being tethering a ghost to a trap so they slam into it), or part of a campaign. Before a match begins, each player chooses one of the ghostbusters and one of firing modes to be given a handful of rounds at the start of the match. Cash earned in ranked games is added to your career total and unlocks new titles and uniform variants. That sounds nice, but I experienced frequent lag spikes while playing, and even when things were going smooth I found the action so chaotic that it was difficult to get an idea of what was happening. I regularly received awards and cash and had no clue why.  Campaigns aren’t as interesting as they sound, either, as they are just a sequence of stages with different rules and your weapons gradually become more powerful until the campaign ends. Single rounds have same rules and levels as campaigns, except you’re sent back to the server list after the time is up. Multiplayer still manages to be decent for an hour or two, but then it becomes tiresome.

There are also a handful of niggles that I have with the game. For starters, there is a lot of loading. Even after installing 4 gigs onto the hard drive, you’re still looking at 10-15 seconds loading between single player and multiplayer and around 40 seconds to reload after dying. That might not sound like much, but the difficulty spikes and online boots back to singleplayer add up to a lot of downtime. The graphics suffer from slowdown and pop up as well, and the textures have a fuzzy look that washes out a lot of detail. Your character actually looks good, and the proton pack is especially nice, with meters registering heat and health and all sorts of gizmos popping in and out whenever you switch firing modes, but the surroundings are often drab. While the CG cutscenes are lovely, the in-game sequences are filled with mannequins whose lips can’t seem to match what they are saying. The poorly synched vocals is really the most jarring problem, the colorful effects and ghosts do their part to liven things up, but hearing Murray say something that his character isn’t hits directly at the cinematic experience.

Overall: 7/10

Ghostbusters: The Vide Game is actually a tough call. One the one hand, it’s not a terribly good game; it’s by no means bad, but it can be strikingly unpolished and downright dull at times. On the other hand, it really is like experiencing a third film, and the developers did a fantastic job of integrating you into the team and game world. In the end, I wanted the banter and interaction between the gang more than I wanted to catch ghosts. In this rare case, the license actually carries the game, thanks to good writing, excellent vocal performances, and an attention to detail for the universe that really provides a true Ghostbusters experience. Even passing fans will want to play this, and no doubt get a kick out of playing through the story, but there will be a lot of groaning along the way.