When supernatural evil invades... Who you gonna call?
'Ghostbusters Remastered' brings back the good old days of the Ghostbusters-franchise. Two years have passed since the events of Ghostbusters II. Life in New York has been more or less ordinary since then. However, things change when a large number of paranormal events occur within a short span of time throughout the city. In response, the team decides to recruit a new member into their ranks. The newbie is given the potentially dangerous duty of field-testing all of the new weapons designed to boost the team's capabilities in their battle against malevolent supernatural entities. In this case, 'potentially dangerous' means that mishandling could cause the weapons to explode and send the user flying to the side of New Jersey. The game clearly intends to re-create some of the most iconic moments from the movies, such as chasing Slimer and the fight against the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. But the game also features a large number of new ghosts and new weapons. Plus the voices of the primary characters are provided by their original actors, such as Bill Murray for Peter Venkman.
The game is a third-person shooter, where the primary objective is to advance through levels and defeat all of the ghosts along the way. The most common method is to weaken the ghosts, usually with proton stream, then switch to capture stream and slam them around until they're stunned, and finally dragging them into a ghost trap to be contained. Though some enemies need to be dispatched in different ways, such as golems who can only be broken apart by tearing off a specific part using the capture stream.
But your arsenal isn't limited only to the proton stream. There are several weapons for different purposes. For example, PKE meter is used for tracking ghosts down, slime blower can neutralize harmful black slime, stasis stream can temporarily immobilise enemies and shock pulse deals devastating damage at close range. Not only are different weapons effective against different enemies, some foes need to be taken out with a specific weapon. The other team members will often assist in the fights, but you are still the one who will be dealing most of the damage. Should any ghostbuster be incapacitated, you can revive them. It can get frustrating on higher difficulties, but on the other hand, other busters may also revive you should you get hit too much.
All of the levels also contain a number of collectables, appropriately called haunted objects. Once collected, they can be found in different parts of the headquarters.
As far as I'm concerned, the game has everything one would expect from a proper piece of the Ghostbusters franchise: thrills, action, ghosts and no shortage of witty and humorous dialogue, especially just about anything coming from the mouths of Peter and Ray. Even though one would assume continuous blasting of spirits to eventually get repetitive and monotonous, the large variety of different enemies and weapons effectively ensure this is not the case. This is helped by the fact that the levels feature several different environments, from the old library and the Sedgewick Hotel to the ghostworld itself. It's clear that the developers of the game were devoted to their work and it shows. In fact, the game draws a great deal of inspiration and influence from a script that could have been the basis for the third Ghostbusters film. Personally, I'm fairly certain that if people would have to choose between the video game and the infamous 2016 reboot, they would choose the video game without question.
