16th Nov 2007

Movie and game fans of a certain age are now buzzing from the news of Vivendi’s newly announced Ghostbusters game. It’s a license deal guaranteed to send geek excitement alarms wailing with ambulance sirens and flashing with blue lights, but an important question must be raised. Why?

Ghostbusters is now a twenty-three year old movie, and aside from a few vague promises of a sequel from co-writer and star Dan Ackroyd and a couple of comic books, the franchise is largely dead. Previous attempts to turn classic movies into modern videogames have been rewarded with middling reviews at best, and Ghostbusters being a cult property, is there anyone left who still cares? Is there any need for this game at all now?

Yes. Yes there most certainly is. Ghostbusters has more going for it as a videogame adaptation than almost any other movie franchise you could think of, old or new. The list of reasons why this is a good idea is longer than a proton stream, and if you’ll accompany us, we’ll take you right through it.

Monsters

Any good action game needs cool enemies to take down. Games designers spend months trying to sketch out creatures that look great and stick in the mind long after the console has powered down. With Ghostbusters though, all the work is already done.

With so many fantasy and horror action games around these days, it’s becoming harder and harder to come up with a good monster, and our drooling gun fodder is finding it difficult to stand out. A Ghostbusters game will have no problem in that area. The monster designs have been around for over twenty years already, and they contain some of the most distinctive creatures ever seen in any medium. From the librarian ghost, to Slimer, to Gozer, to the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, they brilliantly straddle the line between gruesome and cartoony, and all are stuffed full of personality. In short, they’re perfect for a videogame.