Reviews
‘Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed’ Review – A Satisfying Experience That’s Not Without Its Flaws
In 2009 I was enamored with Ghostbusters: The Video Game. The long awaited video game follow-up to Ghostbusters 2 provided the ultimate power fantasy by letting players suit up in the iconic beige jumpsuit and hit New York City’s ever growing ghost population with the original Ghostbusters right by your side. Now in 2022 I’m getting that same sensation with Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed… though with a few caveats.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is the new 4v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game from Illfonic (the Friday the 13th: The Game team). In it players are able to create custom ghostbusters and team up with 3 others to take down a ghost player whose goal is to completely haunt one of the maps inspired by certain settings from the films. Where Spirits Unleashed differs from the quickly oversaturated 4v1 market is that it can be played entirely offline and solo, which is how I spent a bulk of my time with the game. The game also features a brand new story that picks up some time after the end of Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s post credits scene.
With the Ghostbusters’ firehouse back to full operation, players are asked to create a custom character and take on jobs. When on a job, players have to explore one of the self-contained maps in first-person view using the recognizable PKE meter. Using this, they’re able to flush the ghost or “ghost rifts” out of hiding. Ghost rifts allow the ghost to respawn when captured but there are only 3 allowed to a level so spectral players are encouraged to protect and hide them from the Ghostbusters. In addition to exploration, it’s up to the Ghostbusters to calm down civilians in the area using a skill check system, not unlike Dead By Daylight’s, to keep the building’s haunt meter down.
Ghost players are dropped into the level in third-person view to cause as much mayhem as possible using one of the multiple ghost classes. From haunting various objects, to scaring civilians, and even outright possessing objects to recharge their spectral meter to cause more frights. Ghosts come with 3 skills to defend themselves from Ghostbusters that I would compare to abilities from a typical hero shooter. For example: one ability allows the ghost to summon a slime tornado when surrounded to make a quick getaway.
Ghostbusters are able to customize their gear in the game’s hub area: the iconic firehouse and the adjacent Ray’s Occult Books, all recreated right down to meticulous details (keep an eye out for an appearance from an appliance from Ghostbusters 2). In this area players are free to upgrade their gear from XP they earn over use, test out said gear in the alley way, customize their Ghostbuster with new unlocked cosmetics, and take on other jobs be it online or solo. I grew fond of revisiting the firehouse after a job to wind down, and tinker with my setup by adding things such as faster cooldowns or less recoil from the aggressive proton pack. Firing up a piece of iconic Ghostbuster gear always feels instantly gratifying in ways that previous games were unable to capture. From the start up stream of the proton pack to throwing out the ghost trap and opening it up at the right moment and picking it up after a successful capture.
The firehouse and Ray’s Occult Books are also where story cutscenes play out. The game tells a new story post-Afterlife that has you play as a new recruit Ghostbuster under the guidance of Winston Zeddemore and Ray Stantz (voiced here lovingly by Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd); soon enough, of course, spectral hijinks ensue. The story gets a new update every 5 or levels so players are encouraged to go out and complete jobs to progress the story which I found to be a worthwhile goal not seen in other 4v1 games that for the most part feature no story aspect at all. The problem starts to appear when jobs soon become repetitive and I found the story, while charmingly written and voice acted, to ultimately be lacking in substance. Though it does hint at where the Ghostbusters story could possibly be heading in a world post-Afterlife. It’s enjoyable, but expect to complete all the story elements in five hours or so.
At the end of the day Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed provides a satisfying experience of bustin’ ghosts either solo or with a group of friends while at the same time giving the player a chance to experience the other side as a spectral tormentor. It’s not a game marred down by a mediocre shooter experience such as 2009’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game, but doesn’t tell a story nearly as gratifying as the one from that game. Overall with the lower barrier to entry, I can confidently recommend Spirits Unleashed for die-hards, fans, and people looking for a good multiplayer time. Hopefully the experience can be improved overtime with some much needed content updates but ultimately “bustin’ makes me feel good”.
Disclosure: Review code provided by Illfonic.
Books
‘Scary Movie Night’ Review: A Hitchcock-Themed Thriller Full of Juicy Twists But Not Much Else
A secluded mansion. A group of friends each harboring secrets. A party built around one woman’s love of Alfred Hitchcock. These are the ingredients laid out to begin Scary Movie Night, the sophomore novel from Miranda Smith and follow-up to her breakout debut, Smile for the Cameras.
They’re all, standing alone and taken together, very promising ingredients, and when Smith starts to bounce all those secrets and all that seclusion around with a little murder in the mix, they make for some juicy plotting. But fun twists and macabre themed party nights do not a thriller make. There is fun to be had here, but for all its reliance on classic horror tropes and the films of a master of cinematic suspense, Scary Movie Night never quite finds a way to become something more.
Movie blogger and influencer Tippi (yes, she’s named for Tippi Hedren from The Birds) is going through a rough patch. Her upcoming marriage was just called off, and she’s planning to hit the Cannes Film Festival then travel the world as a newly single woman, even shifting her career focus from movies to travel in the process. Her friends Ava, Marlowe, and Constance are supportive, but they also know it might be the last time they see Tippi for a while, so master party planner Ava comes up with the perfect sendoff: A themed scary movie night party, complete with costumes, hosted at the elegant estate of Tippi’s grandmother, Marmee.
Marmee, you see, has her own history with the glamour of Hollywood, and even has a private cinema set up in her mansion. It’s the perfect venue for the perfect night, at least until Tippi starts receiving vaguely threatening notes from her ex, and the first body turns up.
See what I mean about all the ingredients being there? This book starts with so much promise, particularly when guests turn up for the party and reveal their various movie costumes. There’s so much to chew on, and Smith wastes no time diving directly into the drama of it all. The book moves primarily through Tippi’s first-person perspective, so we get the lowdown on her friends, their various relationships, the quarrels that have defined previous social interactions, and much more. It’s a series of rich veins all tapped at once, and it feels like the book is genuinely going somewhere quite fun.
Here’s the thing: The book does go somewhere quite fun; it just gets there in a way that I found both frustrating and often unfulfilling. The characters aren’t defined by their choices in the book so much as they’re defined by what Tippi tells us about each of them, and while the notion of Tippi as an unreliable narrator is key to the plot, her supporting cast never really gets a chance to sit up and exist as anything other than archetypes in her head. The dialogue doesn’t help matters in this regard, and I kept finding myself wishing one of Tippi’s friends would just seize the narrative, just for a moment, so I’d get some sense of these people beyond the broad brushstrokes of the protagonist.
Which brings us to the issue of Tippi as the narrator in the first place. Like the Hitchcock blondes on which she’s clearly modeled, we’re meant to learn about her through her choices, and constantly question whether or not she’s made the right ones. Why did she leave her ex with a wedding looming? Why is she changing career paths? Why does she have to be talked into her own going-away party? How she reacts to these things, and what she’s really after, will be what defines her, but here’s the thing: Tippi, for all her Hitchcockian layers of plotting, never steps forward as a fully formed character. Like the Hitch films playing in the background during the party, she’s more like a suggestion of a character than a person.
Writing first-person present-tense is tricky under the best of circumstances, but doing it when your protagonist is meant to be harboring secrets of her own is especially challenging, and it just…never quite entirely works here, and drawing very direct parallels between her and Hitchcock’s various leading ladies doesn’t really help matters.
But here’s the really interesting part: I wouldn’t be invested in any of these issues were it not for a story that genuinely kept me reading. For all of this book’s shortcomings, and I found a few, it ultimately holds together because Smith has a genuine gift for plot twists, and secrets, and the kind of juicy drama that makes a thriller keep barreling forward on the page. There’s good stuff in here, even if it’s sometimes overshadowed by missteps, and that means that while Scary Movie Night might not obsess you or give you nightmares or stick in your head for weeks on end, it will entertain you. I wanted more from this book, but I also want to see what Miranda Smith writes next, and that’s an achievement in itself.
Scary Movie Night is available July 14 wherever books are sold.
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