Ghosthunter

"As scary as soft fluffy kittens."

Somebody REALLY wanted to make a sequel to Ghostbusters with this. The story starts with you, Lazarus Jones, Detroit P.D., the newest cop in the station, and your partner Detective Anna Steele investigating a old abandoned school where a few years ago a Professor Brooks went on a rampage and killed 10 innocent students. Things get rather complicated very fast, and you're suited up and sent out on a ghostly ass kicking quest to capture different spectral entities all over the world. The storyline is cute, but rather forgettable and towards the end full of annoying plot holes, even though most of the dialogue is decent. The VAs give a good performance except for one or two letdowns (Richmond in particular) and Lazarus is voiced by Rob Paulsen (Animaniacs/Yakko, Planescape: Torment/Morte, Doom 3/Research Director Larry Bullman), who really brings the character alive, making him a notch above the average action game hero.

The graphics are good, with lots of color for a ghost themed game, and good use of darkness and contrast. There are a few ghosts that are pure black or invisible, and the game loves putting them into areas that are dark or cluttered, however, Namco missed lots of great opportunities to freak the player out. No tiny ghosts peeking out from corners, no opening lockers or cabinets to see dozens of socks eating bleeding and screaming pairs of underwear, nothing really jumping out at you and scaring you like it should. In fact, for a ghost themed game, I only had two really good scares in the entire game, both in the New School area. And that's a shame, really, because this game could have really done with a good freak factor.

Controls are decent, and you fall into using them without too much trouble (switching from run-around to first person mode, turning on your glasses, and then exiting first person mode without putting away your gun will take you a "CRAP! Wrong button." moment or two even though it only requires one button press), allowing you to enjoy the game without too much trouble. And once you get the controls down you find out that, really, this isn't a ghost hunting game. This is a one-cop-against-the-world game, where enemies love gangbanging you 4 and 6 at a time, and you never do seem to have enough health, though ammunition stays in good supply, as long as you know when to use your infinite ammo pistol and when to use your shotgun or plasma rifle.

This brings us down to the game's weak points. The enemies, while not exactly stupid, aren't horribly bright. They'll chase you from cover to cover, flank you happily and shoot you from behind if you weren't watching, hide behind cover, and generally make life miserable for you. However, should you use my favorite opening attack trick and fling your Ghostcatcher Grenade at them (R2) first thing in a fight, they'll immediately stop stock still for about a second and a half, then run around screaming at the top of their lungs until you either capture them or the timer runs out, at which point your grenade returns to you. (Grenade is a misnomer - think of it as a disc shaped Ghostbusters trap that can be thrown, runs on a timer, and will return to the thrower easily.) This makes for very formulaic fights - see a ghost, throw the Grenade, shoot till even more dead. The second major sticking point for me in this game is the difficulty level. During the entire game I was only killed by enemy ghosts once, during a crossfire in the final stage where 5+ enemy ghosts took up positions above me while 3 more rushed me on the ground. In a game like this you would imagine they would have given you a difficulty setting. No dice - you have the one difficulty, and that's it. No replay value, either - once you play through the entire game, that's it, you're done. It might take you 10 hours, but once done, it's done. And in the end, you won't really want to play it anymore after that, which is a shame - as I said before, Namco could have done a lot more with this game than they did, and while I wasn't expecting a Silent Hill style scarefest, I would have enjoyed a few frights. The only real fright will be the last 30 minutes.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/20/04