Illfonic completely understands what it takes to fulfill every player's wish of being a Ghostbuster in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. I truly felt like a Ghostbuster the entire time. With awesome story beats placed throughout to keep the leveling-up experience worthwhile and exciting gameplay to keep every job feeling fun, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is the realization of the perfect Ghostbusters experience.
Asymmetric multiplayer games have seen a huge rise in popularity over the years. Friday the 13th: The Game, Dead by Daylight, and to a lesser degree Predator: Hunting Grounds, have all taken the world by storm with their delightfully addicting gameplay. As with those games, the genre seems to be ripe with possibilities when it comes to beloved IP. But one obvious franchise has eluded the adored 4v1 gameplay…
…until now! Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed brings everything a Ghostbusters fan could ever dream of into one game and more. From a dazzling love letter to the entire franchise with its character inclusions to absolutely nailing the satisfying feeling of pulling the trigger on your particle thrower, Illfonic shows that they know what it takes to make a great Ghostbusters game. While some of the pitfalls of the asymmetric multiplayer genre are still quite present, I can’t fathom a better way to let players slip on the jumpsuit and go bust some ghosts.
Starting with Illfonic’s love letter to Ghostbusters fans: Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed not only sticks to all of the fun quirks of the franchise and drops Easter eggs everywhere, but it succeeds at providing fun story beats throughout that any Ghostbusters fan will gobble up like Slimer. Ernie Hudson and Dan Akroyd return as Winston Zeddmore and Raymond Stantz, respectively; both providing some fantastic voice work for their characters that build out the story following 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. While the overall story doesn’t completely push the boundaries in terms of moving the franchise forward, there’s enough there to make leveling up your Ghostbuster and an assortment of ghosts a bit less of a chore.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed knows exactly how to deliver a Ghostbusters game: let the players play as themselves, not preestablished characters! From the jump, being able to fully customize your Ghostbuster feels like a dream come true. While the entire game does fall into the more cartoony art style, the character customization options are more robust than I was expecting. Don’t go in expecting RPG levels of detail, but I was able to sit down and create my character that looks close enough to what I look like in real life. On top of all that, being able to see my PSN gamer tag printed right there on the classic Ghostbusters jumpsuit was just icing on the cake. Unlike previous asymmetric multiplayer games, I had a weird connection to my character; unlike previous games where I either played as a “generic horror movie teenager” or a “generic soldier”.
Illfonic has put a lot of thought into their customization options for their Ghostbusters, but any Ghostbusters game is made or broken by its gameplay. Illfonic completely nails the feeling of firing off a proton pack and capturing ghosts, and I’m not entirely sure it could be done any better. From the chaotic particle beam jumping all over the place destroying anything physical in its path, to fighting the resistance of a tethered ghost, Illfonic has been able to dial in what it feels like to be a Ghostbuster.
That’s not to say some things could use a bit of tweaking. Throwing down traps feels a bit clunky, as it’s difficult to determine where the actual trap will land. Some of the additional tools and equipment available to the Ghostbusters do feel a bit out of place. Every game needs a grappling hook nowadays…but Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed offers one that is a bit clunky to use.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed offers both complete offline play and standard 4v1 multiplayer. During this review period, I often played offline since it’s tough to coordinate schedules (we’re all adults, and everybody has 3 mortgages nowadays). Much to my surprise, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed has a pretty great offline mode! While it’ll never beat being able to actively coordinate with live players, the AI teammates were adept enough at capturing ghosts. They did seem to falter at everything else, however. Seeking out ghost rifts (more on these in a bit) and destroying them seemed to be second or third on their to-do list, which often led to me being the lone Ghostbuster to hunt them down.
Ghostbusters have a few main goals in any given job: track down and trap the ghost, eliminate all of the Ghost Rifts, and also ensure that the location doesn’t become too haunted. Tracking down and trapping the ghost is easy enough: follow your PKE meter to the more haunted locations on the map to track down the ghost. Once you find the ghost (could be possessing a chair, so be sure to zap those!), throw down your trap and drag the ghost to its ethereal jail. But wait, there’s more: ghosts can respawn up to three times per round through ghost rifts. Ghost rifts need to be tracked down via the PKE meter, and usually take the form of ancient haunted relics. Once these relics are zapped, the rifts reveal themselves and need to be destroyed via your proton pack. Once all three rifts are destroyed, the ghost can be captured for good.
These rifts are randomly thrown throughout the map, and can be picked up by the ghost itself (sort of like a ghostly football) and be re-hidden; so it’s always a good idea to take them out ASAP. This sort of tug-o-war between Ghostbusters and ghosts is a ton of fun and adds a nice amount of nuance to each map. While the Ghostbusters are ultimately trying to capture the ghost, it’s more in their best interest to investigate the map fully and eliminate the ghost’s means of haunting first instead of going after the ghost itself.
During my time in this review, I sadly haven’t had as much time to play through all four ghost classes, as they each require to be unlocked once you level up your ghost. However, the time I spent playing as a ghost was a ton of fun. Each ghost class has different abilities to slow down the Ghostbusters from capturing them; all the while trying to cause as much chaos on each map as they can. The goal of the ghost is simple: haunt as many objects and scare as many civilians as you possibly can to fully haunt any given location. Ghosts can possess most of the physical objects on a map and move around, and can even pop out of said objects to scare civilians! It’s a ton of fun, and I can’t wait to level up all of my ghosts to see how each can haunt all of the different locations.
It’s a nice change of pace to have the single player being hunted by the other four players, as opposed to other games in the genre. It gives off a sense of urgency as the ghost, as you know your pursuers are just around the corner. And being able to set back the Ghostbusters, even if it’s just for a few seconds, is super satisfying. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of matches happen with fully leveled-up Ghostbusters vs a fully leveled-up ghost.
Illfonic completely understands what it takes to fulfill every player’s wish of being a Ghostbuster in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. While some of the gameplay elements could be tweaked a bit better to provide a bit more of a responsive experience, I truly felt like a Ghostbuster the entire time. With awesome story beats placed throughout to keep the leveling-up experience worthwhile and exciting gameplay to keep every job feeling fun, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is the realization of the perfect Ghostbusters experience.
