As luck would have it, I recieved a copy of the retail version of Ghostbusters for Playstation 3 a few days early. I had a chance to play through the first few levels and get a sense of the full game.

Ghostbusters puts the player in the role of a new Ghostbusters recruit. At first you are meant to begin training, but the story begins and learning the controls happens on the job, so to speak.

Graphically, Ghostbusters looks incredibly good. All of the characters from the movie are super detailed and true to life – it’s weird to see Bill Murray with a full head of hair! The addition of the real actors and voices lend an incredible polish to the game’s presentation. It actually seems like a natural extension of the series, with a huge amount of recorded voice.

With all of the story and voice recording, there is a ton of story progression in between actual gameplay. Even during the times when you are controlling the player, there is a constant stream of communication from the Ghostbusters team, almost as if it’s an online multiplayer.

The game itself is a third person shooter of sorts, where the primary weapon is the plasma gun. The player is a Rookie on the Ghostbusters team, and is thrown right into the fire with Slimer escaping and the crew returning to the hotel scene made famous in the movie. You move in a third person view, and primarily are looking to zap and trap ghosts. This is done by firing off the plasma pack at the ghosts to weaken them, and then pull them over a trap. This is the core of the game and the core of what fans would be expecting from the game, and it delivers. Each ghost you catch seems like a battle, first finding it, then trapping it in the stream. The effect of catching a ghost makes the screen explode with color and light as well.

The other main gameplay is the use of the googles by pressing triangle. This basically allows you to scan the area, collect samples and progress the story. This is reminiscent of the scanning done in the Metroid Prime series.

After the game was in limbo when Activision bought out Sierra, it’s great to see that it was picked up and released in a big way by Atari. The production value is exceptionally high, and the game plays in a fun and unique way that will ring true to fans of the series.

I’m only about halfway through the single player game, but so far it looks like Ghostbusters is a real treat for fans of the series. Whether the slow-style of gameplay and “insider” nature of the content, it remains to be seen if Ghostbusters would appeal to anyone not familiar with the series beforehand.

We’ll have a full review of Ghostbusters across several platforms in the coming days and weeks here at Diehard GameFAN as we play through the games to completion. For now, here is a gallery of some PS3 screens:

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