With the success of Ghostbusters: Afterlife in the cinema and on release, the Ghostbusters franchise has made a huge resurgence of late. With a new movie sequel coming out, and all of the other news going on why wouldn’t we get a new game? Illfonic has come out with a new title called Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, and boy have they been unleashed. Keep reading for our review.
First, it has been fun to play Ghostbusters games over the thirty years all the way back to the Nintendo and Gameboy. Playing Spirits Unleashed has been an enjoyable time over the past couple of days prior to its launch date. Winston and Ray are both there and ready to send you on your first mission as a Ghostbuster recruit. Between those two, the firehouse, and of course, the Ecto-1, you will feel all sorts of nostalgia mixed with a sense of newness. The firehouse has been refinished but it still feels like the old house and it still has all four of the original Ghostbusters lockers there. Eagon will always be my favorite Ghostbuster and it is my honor to hunt for all of the spores, molds, and fungus as I play through this title.
The main thing I love about Spirits Unleashed is the attention to detail in the packs, the tools, and all of the locations. Everything is very detailed from the smallest plant to the biggest wall. This isn’t the end of the detail though. Each main tool in your arsenal, as well as your character itself, has customization options that are earned through leveling up. The pack, the neutrona wand, and the other tools have four optimization options. The wand, for instance, at different level increments gains newer pieces that can be mixed and matched very easily. These parts offer buffs to your character’s attacks and skills.
There are little items spread out throughout the firehouse that allow you to join your friends, play cutscenes, customize your characters and gear, and the place where you drop your ghosts off, the ghost storage mainframe. It seems like such a simple piece of the game but it makes it that much more in-depth.
The gameplay is where Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed really shines. Set up as a four versus one buster versus ghost action game things will get interesting really fast. After you go to the desk where you can search for missions, there will be several maps to choose from. Each map contains ghost rifts that you have to find with your PKE meter and then destroy with your proton pack so that you can capture the ghost that opened it. As an added difficulty, each ghost boss has minions that run around attacking you. Your characters get slimed when they are hit and you can wipe it off of yourself as well as your allies. If everyone goes down and can’t clear the slime off of them then you lose the level. If you capture all the ghosts and destroy all the rifts then you win the level.
Inside each level are spores, molds, and fungus that you can collect. Just like Spengler, you will collect these items to increase your collection in the firehouse. Little details like this from IllFonic make you feel attached to this title. Within each level, there are also NPC characters that will be scared by the ghosts. People will leave the buildings and cause you to lose points as well as increase the ghost haunt status of the map. When the ghost, whether a player or AI, haunts the entire map then your party loses. Once you level up your Ghostbuster to a certain level you can choose to play as the ghost character so that you can cause your own brand of chaos. This can be done in single-player mode or multiplayer mode. Play with AI teammates or real-life friends as you progress through each situation. You can participate in crossplay with consoles and PC as long as you link your accounts together. I have only played single-player so far but look forward to playing with friends soon after the launch.
Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed releases on October 18 for PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on the Epic Games Store. It releases for $39.99 or $69.99 for the Physical Collector’s Edition. I have been having a lot of fun with it and I can’t wait for you all to have fun with it too.
Note: This review was provided by IllFONIC PR on PC for Review.
