Spook Central

All-New Cheap Moves

From here, we venture up to the roof — harassed by Stay-Puft en route, as he punches through the walls to try to stop us — and it’s here we get to bust some actual ghosts with Stantz and Venkman. As we chase hardhat-wearing spooks flitting around the ventilation ducts, we’re free to read the situation and chase our own targets — nobody’s taking or giving strict orders. “We originally worked on having squad commands, but it was really awkward because you’re the rookie — why would you tell them ‘Hey, throw out a trap’?” reasons O’Keefe. “So if they see that you’re wrangling a ghost, they’ll come out and help or throw out a trap. But if they’re occupied with other ghosts, they won’t — they’re more worried about their own butts.”

“Wrangling” is a good way to put it. Actually containing a spectre in a proton beam is a little like fishing upside-down. When you’ve got one on the line, they fight to get away, and you’ll find yourself yanking the controller in the opposite direction out of pure instinct. Even if you do tap X to throw out a trap, the full-torso vaporous apparitions won’t exactly dive inside. Clever Ghostbusters will use the left trigger to slam ghosts into the ground, dizzy them into submission, then steer them over the porta-prison. O’Keefe says that with practice, you can actually slam ghosts directly into open traps.

And while your teammates may help you by throwing up a second containment stream, they won’t accidentally cross — which, as you’ll remember Egon warning, would result in “all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.” Important safety tip…but will you do it anyway? “I don’t want to give away too much,” says O’Keefe reluctantly. “There will be stream-crossing, but it’s not something that happens often, because obviously, all life in the world is supposed to end! It will be in special occasions in the game, but it won’t be something that players are doing all the time.”

We’re Ready to Believe You

Much of Ghostbusters’ success will depend on how it strikes a balance between franchise love and pure fun, but our all-too-brief hands-on session satisfied us both as gamers and as Ghostbusters nerds. “Most of us in the office can quote Ghostbusters chapter and verse,” admits Randel, who adds that it hasn’t been very difficult to make sure the game is equally accessible to both casual and hardcore fans of the movies. “We’ve been doing a lot of focus tests where we’ve taken people who are just familiar with it as well as people who can recite every line. It’s testing, testing, and more testing.”

That helps, but nothing trumps getting assistance from the boys in gray themselves. “The inclusion of Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis…they wrote the script, they named the equipment, they’re keeping it in track with the Ghostbusters universe,” says Randel. “We think the hardcore fans will be really happy, because it’s official, it’s authentic. It’s real Ghostbusters.”

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