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I just wanted to have fun with Ghostbusters.
Instead, Ghostbusters nearly gave me a stroke.
I was having a great time ridding New York City of ghouls. It was good fun running through the museum, indiscriminately blowing up priceless artifacts with my proton pack. Wrangling ghosts wasn’t terribly challenging, but the mechanic for doing so was simple and immensely satisfying. There really was a lot to like about the Ghostbusters.
Sure, the story should have been much better. Yes, the cutscenes were sometimes awkward and in desperate need of a director’s touch. I won’t argue that the game as a whole could have used the ambiguous, review-friendly-crutch known as “polish.”
I didn’t really care about any of the game’s issues because bustin’ made me feel good.
And then I got to the end.
Fuck the end.
This fun, fairly easy game suddenly turned against me in its final minutes. Ghosts are flying all around, some sort of demon guys are attacking me on the ground, and my dudes are dropping faster than I can revive them. I die a few times, but I keep trying and I keep dying.
I’m getting a little frustrated, because to this point the game had been really forgiving and dying was rarely an issue. I’m also starting to get annoyed that I can’t skip the stupid cutscene where the Ghostbusters try and fail to pull a wall down. Are you trying to tell me that nobody play-tested this game and found it obnoxious to watch this cutscene repeatedly?
Although I manage to get a little further with each attempt, I keep dying and I keep having to watch the stupid cutscene over and over again. Why are all of my guys dying at the same time? Why do they run over to revive me and then stand around for precious seconds, only to die before they even start to save me? These thoughts start in my head, but it’s not long before I’m yelling at the TV:
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?! GET OVER HERE AND HELP ME! YOU DUMB SHIT-ASS BASTARD I HATE YOUR FACE! DIE!
I keep telling myself that I’m only going to try one more time, but I keep playing because I know I’m so close to the end. The whole point of playing Ghostbusters was to have fun and not worry about evaluating it for a review or trying to get achievement points. But that dream is dead. I’m now literally screaming at the video game version of Bill Murray like he just admitted to molesting one of my family members. After 30 minutes that feel more like a few hours, I eventually make it past this part and tackle the last boss.
Oh God, it’s more bullshit.
Everyone starts dying in the blink of an eye; the boss is able to recharge its energy; the whole stupid encounter is terrible. It’s actually not that difficult, but it is ultra-boring. I spend most of my time reviving my guys, shooting the boss from afar, and trying to stop him from recharging his energy. Of course, right before I finish him off he kills me in the blink of an eye and none of my moron comrades are able to save me. I try again and my fate is the same: dead, with idiots that can’t bring me back to life even though they’re mere feet away, and they know the absolutely most important thing about this game is to not have everyone die.
Remember those horrible things I screamed a few paragraphs ago? Imagine replacing all of the non-curse words with profanity — that’s what I’m yelling at this point.
Finally, I’ve had enough. I hit the eject button, remove the disc, put it back in its GameFly mailer, and place it back in the mailbox where the mailman can get it the hell out of my life.
A few hours pass and I start to feel bad about not finishing the game. I think about getting it out of the mailbox and trying again, but I decide against it.
I wanted to share this story with you, not to get even with, or slam the people who worked so hard on Ghostbusters, but to express my disappointment at how such a small part of the game was able to ruin the entire experience. I certainly deserve some of the blame; I think it’s fairly obvious that I overreacted when the game got difficult/frustrating. Trust me; it’s not something I’m proud of. I just can’t fathom why the developers would leave something that’s so blatantly un-fun in the finished product.
I’m dissapointed in the developers and myself.
Ghost-Busted.