REVIEW: “Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed” – Is It Any Good?!?
Written by ABC AUDIO on November 6, 2022
If the goal of Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed was to provide an authentic Ghostbusters experience, Illfonic Entertainment has succeeded. The game looks, sounds, and plays like it should, even down to the voice acting from Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson as Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore. The ectoplasmic adrenaline rush you feel when you use a proton pack and PKE meter for the first time to hunt and capture ghosts. However, it also falls into a trap typical of video games: the thrill quickly gives way to tedious routine. While Spirits Unleashed does a good job of evoking the Ghostbusters mood, its shallowness and monotony rapidly grow tiresome.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Review
You play the role of a new Ghostbusters recruit in Spirits Unleashed, an unnamed grunt brought to New York City to cope with the city’s hauntings. Your headquarters, a refurbished firehouse from the Ghostbusters movies, comes equipped with a workbench for upgrading equipment, lockers for personalizing your Ghostbuster, and a training facility for working out the kinks. Ray Stantz, played by Dan Aykroyd, runs an oddities shop directly across the alley from the firehouse, where you can have a conversation with him about the latest events.
The basic gameplay loop is an asymmetrical multiplayer experience in which four Ghostbusters take on a single ghost; the Busters must trap the ghost with no opportunity of escape, while the ghost must evade capture and scare NPCs through noise and possession to fill a “haunt meter.” When the ghost’s three respawn rifts are obliterated, the Busters will have won when the specter walks straight into a trap.
This strategy is a lot of fun when played by a party of five human players. Spirits can cause all sorts of trouble, from sliming Ghostbusters by running right through them to calling out petty artificial intelligence henchmen to divert the team’s attention. The ghosts have complete freedom of movement in 3D space, allowing the ghost player to cling to the ceilings of some rooms to avoid being caught. On the flip side, if a Ghostbuster fires their proton pack long enough, they may tie a ghost and drag it in any direction they like. As an added bonus, the PKE meter is equipped with a rapid blast that may wipe out a large number of enemies simultaneously.
This is the brilliance of Illfonic’s game design: Efforts made to gain an advantage in a conflict can always be met by an equal or greater effort to counteract it. If a ghost can control the tether for long enough, the proton pack will overheat and the ghost will be free. If a ghost is caught in a trap, the “last chance” mechanism allows it to free itself. The buildup and release of momentum during a battle is handled expertly, and the whole thing is a spooky good time up to a certain point.
In the last paragraph, I emphasized “a group of five human players,” because the experience falters if even one of the five spots is filled by an artificial intelligence companion or ghost. Spirits Unleashed’s artificial intelligence, especially the Ghostbusters’, is exceedingly thick, making choices that can be counterproductive to the squad. In one game, I was tethering a ghost and bringing it to a trap set by an AI colleague when the AI suddenly picked up the trap and started moving it itself, as if to say, “nope, this match has to run a little longer.” Although the crew was ultimately successful in their pursuit of the ghost, I was never able to get over the trauma of that night. It’s for the best that Podcast (yes, that was his name) was just an AI teammate, because otherwise I might have scolded him.
No matter how many people are competing in a single game of Spirits Unleashed, the game’s primary flaw, and it is a fatal flaw at that, is how long it takes to complete a single battle. It’s exciting when you’re in the middle of it, but that excitement quickly fades into boredom. One match with four human Ghostbusters and one AI ghost lasted less than four minutes, but that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the larger problem. The basic game mode doesn’t provide enough of a challenge or variety to keep my interest for more than a couple of matches.
The main gameplay mode has a simple loop, but it’s still a lot of fun: the Ghostbusters go into a building, look for the ghost, and combat the ghost. That’s the only game option currently offered, and as was said up top, matches can end in the blink of an eye. Each of the five maps, which range from a museum to a microbrewery to a cruise liner, does very little to differentiate itself from the others, exacerbating the situation. This makes the matches feel stale after a time, which wears on the novelty of being a Ghostbuster. I’d love to go right into this part, but the game is only giving me access to the ectoplasmic shallow end for now.
It’s not that nothing else happens during each game; it’s just that those things don’t contribute nearly enough. Two button presses are all it takes to calm agitated onlookers. The artifacts on each map, such as newspaper articles about the Ghostbusters’ prior missions and various sized fungus, are enjoyable to discover but ultimately serve no meaningful use. While the fungi contribute to a meter that awards bonus experience at particular milestones, the clippings fill a wall with readable journal entries. These ancillary features ultimately amount to little, and you may safely disregard them during gameplay.
As you hunt for ghosts, a unique story starring Dan Aykroyd and Rock Hudson unfolds. Once in a while, when you return to the firehouse, you’ll be presented with a one-off task, which may consist of nothing more than “go chat to Ray in the shop.” After the special sequences conclude, the regular gameplay will resume. The story doesn’t offer much to the experience beyond some small breaks from the game’s main monotony (albeit the voice acting is excellent). In any case, the game’s personalization options are a major plus. Killing ghosts will grant you experience, which may be used to buy better weapons and armor. As the stat increases from these upgrades are variable, you have a lot of room for experimentation in terms of how you construct your characters. One member of my group was more interested in tethering and dragging ghosts than in releasing them, thus they prioritized modifications that would improve the tether and make it simpler to drag the ghost. As someone who enjoyed discovering secret rifts and ghosts, I cranked up the PKE meter as much as possible. It’s awesome to make the finest possible Buster. I really wish we had more time to spend together.
The experience of being a Ghostbuster is brilliantly recreated in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. Playing this game with friends, whether as a Ghostbuster or a ghost, is a lot of fun at first since it’s evident that a lot of care and love for the IP went into making it. However, the game has a very short lifespan because the gaming cycle becomes boring and stale very quickly. There are several fantastic features here—deep customisation being a big one—but they all feel inconsequential because the gameplay itself becomes repetitive and uninteresting so rapidly. Even if Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed succeeds in turning me into a Ghostbuster, the job is just temporary.
The Bottom Line
Gather some pals, switch off maps, take turns being the ghost, and get ready to yell and scream; that’s the best way to enjoy Spirits Unleashed. If that’s not possible, the game’s matchmaking system is quick and easy to use, and in-game markers allow players to work together even if they’re not using microphones. Sooner or later, the novelty of Ghostbusting wears off, but it takes quite some time for that to happen, so future updates may be able to keep those Proton Packs running smoothly.
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