Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009)

After letting the days settle back in and getting to play some old games that I got for Christmas, I do have to say that if one is a fan of the Ghostbusters, get Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Preferably on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, as it is the "Realistic" version of the game while the Wii and PlayStation 2 have a rather cartoony look about them that I think looks so unlike the Ghostbusters I'd rather have played the same game with the Real Ghostbusters cartoon versions.

This is going to be a breakdown between the "Realistic" version and the "Stylistic" version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. And for more preface, I'm comparing the Xbox 360's Realistic version and the PlayStation 2's Stylistic version of the game.

Overall Pros for both versions
- Voice acting. It has all the old team back (sans Rick Moranis): Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Raimis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and William Atherton.
- The Story. It connects the movies together pretty well, with cameos from Vigo, nods towards Gozer, and the return of some old ghosts as well as new ones.

Overall Cons
- Repetition. The only area that this doesn't come to fruition is on the PlayStation 2/Wii versions. Otherwise, it just feels like the same exact thing over and over again with different maps...


Realistic's Pros
- Feels like you're more in control over things such as PKE Meter scans and actually using the Proton Stream.
- It actually looks like the team from the late 80s, early 90s era (namely before Harold Raimis gained a few pounds and grew a beard).
- Xbox Live/PlayStation Network. You can play with other people in a special multiplayer mode. As well as getting to choose your Ghostbuster.
- Seems like you're actually following the rules from the movies. Namely not looking directly into the traps, wrangling the ghosts into the trap, and even the little light and smoke effects the traps make after a successful trap.

Realistic Cons
- Sometimes the animation looks a little off. I can't really explain it, but at times the animation for the speaking and facial expressions of the characters seems a bit strange.
- The Ghostbusters seem to go down a lot more than you'd expect for paranormal investigators and eliminators that have had about 10 or so years of practice under their belt.
- The auto save system seems to skip cut scenes if you quit after completing a mission.

Stylistic Pros
- Unlockables. If my reading of the code book is correct, once you get 100 percent you can unlock a never-overheat proton pack, and once you finish the game on the hardest difficulty, you can get invincibility, basically.

Stylistic Cons
- The cartoony look. It just doesn't sit right with me for some reason.
- Controls. It seems like they took the Wii's control scheme and decided to make it universal for both the Wii and the PS2. Moving things out of your path seem to
- Lack of control over things. Namely the ghost trapping. You can't do any of the things you can do in the realistic version, namely "Slam Dunking" the ghosts into the traps, wrangling them in and keeping them in the trap's range, and it just seems anticlimactic when you put a ghost into the trap in this version.



If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm severely biased towards the more advanced console versions.