As it straps a proton pack on your back, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord provides a very different fantasy to nDreams’ most recent game, Synapse, but it’s no less of a power fantasy for fans of the classic 80s comedy films. We got to go hands and head on with a couple levels of the game in full four player co-op.
The game relocates the new look Ghostbusters from New York to San Francisco, setting up your HQ in an abandoned old rail car station, as opposed to the iconic fire station of the film. This is the game’s hub for gathering with friends, practicing your Proton Gun skills and generally messing about with the smattering of interactive objects while waiting for the party leader to select the next mission. Sadly, if you pick up a pair of hammers for an upcoming mission, they won’t be in hand when you spawn into the level.
It’s always good to see VR games making the most of the respective platforms, and while Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord is coming to Meta Quest 2, it still taps into key features of the PlayStation VR 2. In particular, there’s eye-tracking, which is used here for more than just foveated rendering, but also enables more natural distance grabbing of objects and, when talking to other players, the ability to blink and wink at them.
First up was a timed mission with ten minutes to clear three ghost-filled hot spots on the Golden Gate Bridge. Immediately the proton gun feels great to play with in hand, as you pull it from over your shoulder, grab a second handle to stabilise it and start blasting away with the slightly wild and shaky energy beam. It trails behind the movements that you make, and needs two hands for added control over single-hand firing, but it’s actually surprisingly accurate to what you want, despite the floaty feel.
There’s a bunch of lesser ghosts that spawn in and can be quickly vanquished with the beam alone, with some spiky exploding ball ghosts and shrieking heads floating around you. Then there’s the tougher ghosts, turning up with two health bars to whittle away (they look just like the classic GoldenEye HUD!). The first sees them resist the proton beam’s power, so you need to keep targeting the ghost with a good bit of accuracy. Once that’s dismissed, the beam can wrap around the ghost like a lasso, letting you then pull and drag the ghost around like trying to reel in a fish.
Dragging ghosts back and forth like that, though, increases the heat of your proton gun, and as you reach maximum temps, you need to tap X to release the beam and deal a chunk of damage at the same time.
Of course the game also replicates the other iconic bits of Ghostbuster kit. You need to pull out a trap and fire it off so you can capture a weakened ghost. The trap can be triggered manually, but will open automatically when a ghost is pulled over it, so you really just beware that rats don’t then nibble on the box and set it free again!
Then you have the PKE Meter, which is naturally pretty handy for finding the paranormal activity you’re hunting. In Rise of the Ghost Lord, it’s tweaked to be a bit of an objective finder, and the second level we played was set in a warehouse with a strange rift in the floor and a trio of plinths that needed to have specific spookified items placed back on them.
Exploring the slight maze of hallways for this exorcism mission, the level design is largely quite broad and open, catering to the kinds of space that VR games need to take place in, and especially when considering that four of you can be rampaging around in the space, firing off wiggly laser beams and trying to avoid incoming ghost attacks.
There’s some things that are quite difficult to avoid thought, and that’s packets of angry little Stay Puft Marshmallow men. Where Stay Puft was the big monster at the end of the first film, they’ve been downgraded to miniature menaces. Once they’ve clambered onto you, they’ll hamper your abilities, stopping your gun from working and just being little rotters. You’ll have to tear them off your gun, reach over your shoulder and grab them, and then either throw them away or, in a quite strange twist, shove them at your mouth to free yourself of their menace.
That second level builds up to a climactic boss battle against the Bruiser, and oh-boy, does this ghost deliver as a boss with a variety of different attacks, summoning smaller enemies, and your team needing to target its individual arms.
It was almost too much for our team to handle, and some of us were downed several times by mini whirlwinds of flame and the Bruiser’s other sweeping attacks. Thankfully, players might be downed, but they won’t be out. In fact, they’re not downed in that traditional video game way, which wouldn’t really suit VR, and can still walk around fully upright, just in a greyed out world. The way to revive your buddy? Well, just give them a quick high-five, of course. Or, as we quickly figured out, the downed player can walk up to a buddy and slap their hand for the same effect. It’s a bit daft and certainly not quite intentional, but I kind of love that this works and hope it stays.
If you’re looking for a bit of VR co-op action for Halloween, then Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord will get your PKE meter’s antennae twitching. Sure, it’s new era Ghostbusters, which will never quite capture the same magic as the original films, but it nails the feel of the proton guns in particular and has some fun ways to adapt ghostbusting action to a video game form.
