Previews
‘Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed’ Looks to Make Multiplayer Busting Feel Good [Preview]
We pick up a proton pack and throw out a trap to catch a glimpse of IllFonic’s ‘Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed’ in our preview of the new multiplayer experience.
In hindsight, it’s actually quite surprising we hadn’t seen an asymmetrical multiplayer Ghostbusters game before now. The format feels right for the license.
IllFonic has spent the past few years honing its multiplayer chops, learning from mistakes, and getting a better idea of what’s needed from a modern asymmetrical experience. In Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, it now has perhaps the perfect template for it.
Having taken on cult two 80s icons in Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th: The Game) and The Predator (Predator: Hunting Grounds), where the lone aggressor is largely more powerful than the team of prey, IllFonic looks for something of a role reversal with Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. The ghost has tricks up its nonexistent sleeves, but the Ghostbusters? Well, they have proton packs.
IllFonic’s Ghostbusters takes up the legendary mantle after the events of Ghostbusters Afterlife, and focuses on a brand new set of Busters, namely…you and your friends. Four player characters will enter one of several maps to deal with the local spectral pest, who can also be controlled by another player.
The footage I saw, both from the perspective of the Ghostbusters and the ghost, was set in a museum. IllFonic developers explained the way the game plays out as the footage played. The ghost’s aim is to cause enough havoc that the area gets increasingly haunted and panics the local populace. To that end, it can set up destructive rifts, possess objects to taunt the Ghostbusters (a bit of Prop Hunt effectively thrown into the mix), throw ectoplasm about to slow them down, and generally mess the place up. The bigger the ghost’s lead, the more the map changes. The Ghostbusters, meanwhile, must use their PKE meters to pursue the spirit, flushing it out with proton streams, and eventually, hopefully, trapping it.
Right out the gate, IlFonic was quick to note there will be a newfound flexibility to its latest game’s multiplayer setup. A more accessible asymmetrical experience in keeping with the more universal appeal of the Ghostbusters franchise. Not ready for online play? Bots will take over any roles you want. Not confident at a certain kind of playstyle? There are rewards for all kinds of actions. There’s even cross-gen and cross-platform play. The play is peppered with second chances that try to prevent a quick washout. The emphasis is clearly on fun, not elitism, and that’s pretty refreshing. It’s even aiming to be a cross-generation, cross-play game to ensure it has the widest possible pool of players united.
Before getting into the action though, Illfonic is out to make you feel the Ghostbusters experience. The game’s hub is the iconic fire station HQ, and you can wander around it with friends, practice your skills, and chat with the likes of Winston and Ray about the spooky goings-on around the world. When you’re ready to tool up, the loading screen sees Ecto-1 barreling towards your next destination. By handing the player their own unique Ghostbuster, IllFonic makes it a more personal experience than if it were just the usual faces again.
On the ghost side of things, there are various different types, so hopefully, there will be a type of ghost that suits everyone’s playstyle. Going into a match, players on the Ghostbusters side won’t know what kind of ghost they’ll be up against, so despite the odds being slightly against them, the ghost player does have some strategic advantage. At present, there are no plans to allow for a switch in ghost type mid-match if things aren’t working quite right, but IllFonic hasn’t ruled it out.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the various other multiplayer horror games currently, or soon to be, swimming in the pool. Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Evil Dead: The Game, Dead By Daylight, Back 4 Blood, World War Z. all bring their own ideas, but what can Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed bring to carve a sizable niche in the market?
I’d say, from what I’ve seen and heard, the two key factors are the license itself and the open and accessible all-ages approach. A horror-themed game you can play with your kids where no one gets killed and the spookiness is the fun kind. I’m sure some will scoff at a kid-focused horror game, but we really don’t have enough of them, let alone ones with a cooperative and competitive side.
If IllFonic can deliver on strong servers, a good gameplay balance, and the aforementioned accessibility, then the ceiling is very high indeed for Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is due to hit Q4 2022 on PC for Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Preview impressions from an Alpha build.
In the past 10 years since the release of DOOM (2016), we’ve seen a surprising amount of evolution on the core concept of the series. DOOM brought the series back with a clever push-forward combat system with a glory kill system that forced you to stay in the fray. DOOM Eternal added wrinkles to the combat by giving you tools that exploited specific enemy weaknesses, while also increasing the focus on precise platforming and narrative.
DOOM: The Dark Ages slowed things down a bit without decreasing the intensity, giving you a shield that added defensive verbs to your arsenal in a way that allowed you to be even more aggressive. It’s very clear throughout all these titles that id Software is very thoughtful about the ways they try to replicate the experience of original games in a modern context.
Recently, id hosted a virtual event to show off the latest iteration of the DOOM series, Revelations, an upcoming DLC for DOOM: The Dark Ages, which they promise will be a celebration of the entire series. Set after the conclusion of Dark Ages, the Doomslayer finds himself trapped in a purgatory, forcing him to rip and tear his way out of a prison of his own mind with the help of a mysterious ally. While they emphasized that this would be a narratively pivotal chapter for the story of the Doomslayer, they were keeping details under wraps, instead focusing on the level structure and combat feel of the DLC.
A More Demanding Challenge
One thing they wanted to make clear about Revelations is that they are going to be pushing the level of difficulty higher than the base game, challenging even the most seasoned series veterans. Game Director Hugo Martin wanted to emphasize that they’ve been listening to fans, so while it will be more challenging, the ramp-up of that difficulty is more gradual than in the DOOM Eternal Ancient Gods DLCs. The difficulty and accessibility sliders from the base game will all be sticking around, so you’ll be able to customize your challenge level however you want, if you find the game too punishing.
In order to prepare you to meet this challenge, they’ve introduced a new weapon, the chain spear. This can be swapped into your left hand, where you also use the shield from the base game, giving you a new suite of options for your tactical arsenal. Not only does it allow you to parry projectiles like the shield, but it also adds a grappling hook and dash to your toolkit, giving you ways to move around the battlefield quicker than before.
If you’re more comfortable with the shield, that will still be available to you, but Martin said by the end of the campaign you’ll need to be integrating the spear into your repertoire, as upgrades make it essential to your survival.
While id still wants to retain the slower, more brutal feeling of Dark Ages, they’re hoping that the spear will feel like strapping a jet engine to a monster truck, combining the best of the last two games into one violent package. It’s hard to say how this will feel without getting my hands on it, but a lot of the new skills appeared to add a dynamism to the encounters, particularly the clever-looking orbit ability that allows you to attach yourself to a monster and revolve around them, almost like an aerial version of the z-targeting lock-on from Metroid Prime.
The modern DOOM series has always been about finding just the right balance of giving you enough tools to make combat both tactical and reflex-based without making too much complexity as to overwhelm you. It looks to me like the chain spear will be a solid addition that adds exciting ways to close the distance or get around an arena, rather than forcing you to remember the utility of each weapon like DOOM Eternal did.
Six Levels and an Endgame Built for Experts
Revelations will feature six levels, including the hub, and will provide about 10 to 12 hours of content, roughly the same size as the two-part Ancient Gods DLC from Eternal. As Martin explained it, this will be divided between the main campaign and the endgame content, with the main campaign taking up about 60% of the overall runtime. After completing the main campaign missions, you’ll be given access to a wide variety of challenges that will continue to increase in difficulty until you unlock what Martin called the Uberboss. I’m curious to see how substantial this endgame content feels, as it sounds like it will take you on new paths through the previous levels rather than providing completely new content, but id seems confident that the challenge and spectacle of these encounters are going to be worth it.
The team said that exploration is going to be one of the highlights of the DLC, which is a fun prospect for me. The best DOOM levels are the ones that are littered with satisfying secrets, and they’ve promised Revelations will be full of them, including hidden recreations of classic levels. After hearing fan feedback for DOOM: The Dark Ages, they decided not to mark these secrets on the map, allowing you the satisfaction of finding them yourself. Every level is designed to be fairly maze-like, requiring you to retrace your steps as the campaign goes on.
There’s even the promise of Metroidvania-like exploration in the hub level, opening up more and more of the space as you gain abilities. The dragon and the mech will not be showing up in the DLC, but leaving them behind feels like a good decision to me, as they exhausted those gimmicks in the base game.
Smarter Enemies, Tougher Fights
Over the course of the presentation, they showed off a few more enemy options that are being added into the mix. In addition to an all-new Wizard enemy type, there are variants of enemies seen in the base game featuring new behaviors that change up the encounters in meaningful ways. Importantly, they said that there would be a focus on giving more enemies evasive AI, pulling you around the arena space to keep you from hunkering down in one place. DOOM has always been a fast-paced game of tactical chess, requiring you to scan the battlefield and prioritize the various targets, so hopefully adding more enemy behaviors to the mix will make for a fun way to add challenge to their already challenging combat.
In addition to the difficult endgame, id is releasing a 3.0 version of the Ripatorium, the customizable endless mode that was seen in the Dark Ages. This will add new maps, new levels, and deeper customization to the fan-favorite mode, allowing you to run through some particularly diabolical encounters. While I personally would prefer more focus on the main campaign of the game, it seems they are trying to cater to people who want more ways to push the challenge of the series as far as they can, and Ripatorium 3.0 looks like the culmination of that effort.
Final Verdict
The DOOM series is so much about how it feels in the hands, and while I didn’t get to experience that, they closed the presentation with a combat sizzle reel that looked like an exciting evolution of Dark Ages, a game that I thought felt great to play. The new grapple function of the spear allowed the arenas to have a bit more verticality than those found in the base game, and the visual design of the enemies remained consistently readable, allowing you to understand the encounter at a glance. The orbit ability in particular looked fun as hell, allowing you to dynamically move around the environment while still staying focused on offense. It’s looking extremely promising, but it’s impossible to judge until I get to play it myself.
After experimenting with the formula for over the last decade, id is hoping that Revelations is the culmination of the series from both a mechanical and narrative standpoint. They closed by saying that Revelations is to The Dark Ages what DOOM Eternal was to DOOM (2016), which is both exciting and worrying for me. In my mind, there’s a dial they’ve been tuning over the course of this reboot series. The dial felt perfect in DOOM, then turned too far up for me with Eternal, before reaching a great point with The Dark Ages, though not quite as perfect as where it started.
Time will tell where it lands on this spectrum, but the new chain spear seems like it’s going to be just as welcome an addition as the shield was in The Dark Ages. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait too long to find out.
DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations will be available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and the PC via Steam on July 7.
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