GHOSTBUSTERS: SPIRITS UNLEASHED

A slimy but surprisingly clever take on 4v1 multiplayer

I’m no ghost scientist, but there are a few things I’m confident ghosts do: Spin office chairs as a gag, fry electronics at the worst times, and make soda machines eject cans like fizzy ballistic missiles. I was able to do all three in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, so at the very least it passes my amateur ghostology test with slimy colors.

Ghostbusters is Illfonic’s third licensed, 4v1 multiplayer game after Fridaythe13th and Predator:HuntingGrounds. While the first two have come and gone while Dead byDaylight keeps on trucking and Left4Dead2 settles into old age, I don’t think Ghostbusters is really trying to supplant either. This time Illfonic’s really doing its own thing, making an asymmetrical game where one team never gets torn limb from limb.

Illfonic told me that one of the most common bits of feedback from players is how it’s not fun to get taken out early in a match, so they modeled Ghostbusters after the scene in the first film where the ’busters chase Slimer through the hotel (and blast housekeeping carts and chandeliers along the way). Slimer’s just causing mayhem, so in the game the ghost’s objective is to scare hapless NPCs while the Ghostbusters try to catch them.

As a ghost I couldn’t kill the Ghostbusters, but I could use abilities to slime them, mess with their proton packs, or briefly scare them into an incapacitated state. I haunted objects to spook NPCs while trying to manage my ectoplasm meter. I could chill out in a vending machine or a statue to regenerate, but staying there too long meant I was risking a Ghostbuster coming with their PKE meter raised to sniff me out.

The ghost is slippery, but if a couple Ghostbusters team up you can quickly be pulled into a trap and caught. But dying once as the ghost isn’t the end. You have three ‘rifts’ hidden around the map to respawn from. There’s a clever cat and mouse twist here, in that the Ghostbusters can find and destroy your rifts, too. The ghost can move their rifts, while the ’busters have to split their attention between hunting the ghost and calming down anxious NPCs.

THAT’S THE SPIRIT

Playing first-person as a Ghostbuster, the proton beam has the physicality it does in the movies, writhing like an angry energy snake. Elsewhere, there’s fine-tuning to be done. I had to use the mouse wheel to shorten or lengthen the beam to position a ghost over a trap, but I kept swiping the wheel before fully ensnaring a ghost and swapping to my PKE meter instead. As the ghost I had trouble spotting objects I could inhabit: I wouldn’t have minded ghost-o-vision highlighting every interactable.

There’s too much button mashing to evade a trap or shake off a ghost’s slime: Those could have more interesting mechanics. SpiritsUnleashed feels a bit generic in some of these finer details, but Illfonic still has ample time to work on it.

The developer promises a range of ghosts, along with a progression system that lets you unlock both cosmetics and equipment for the Ghostbusters and alternate abilities for the ghosts. There’s also a story to follow, delivered by original actors Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. It’s hard to judge how much staying power SpiritsUnleashed will have, but it feels like it could become a recurring weeknight Discord pick: The lighter, less intense game you pile into when you need a break from your main squeeze. It’s a pleasant surprise that a new Ghostbusters game in 2022 is a smart use of the licence, not just a nostalgic cash-in.