There was only one song that seven-year-old me would dance to at a school disco. When it came to get down, I had 3 minutes and 46 seconds to holler “who ya gonna call?” at the top of my pre-pubescent lungs before I’d slope back off to the edge of the hall while everyone else did The Birdie Song. I was never disappointed. For a while there in the 80s, Ghostbusters was everything, a more cerebral offering than He-Man and a primer for the similarly ooze-infused Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, as a slightly older person, the return of Ghostbusters to both the cinema and our digital platforms has the potential to be everything once again. The Meta Quest 2 and PSVR 2 release of Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord also means that there’s finally a clear answer to “who ya gonna call?”. It’s me. And, potentially, you.
Once you’ve strapped a VR headset to your head – a Quest 3 in our case) the first thing you’ll be doing is heading to a creepy mansion in San Francisco, belonging to eccentric industrialist Gustav Hookfaber. Straight away you’ll likely notice that this isn’t the creepiest of mansions you’ve ever seen – hell, Disney do a better job at this – but in terms of visuals, it’s a vibrant and slightly more realistic take on the comic-book-esque aesthetics of Jurassic World Aftermath. However, where that game was able to ramp up the tension, Ghostbusters leans more on its frantic arcade action to keep you on edge, with a few jump scares to liven things up.
You’re quickly introduced to your equipment through the opening section, beginning with the PKE meter, a launchable ghost trap, and finally the iconic Proton Pack with its wand reachable over your shoulder. There’s a bit of a disconnect here with no visible body beneath you, and your floating hands begging the question of whether you’re one of the ghosts, but thankfully it soon becomes clear that you’re corporeal.
The opening concludes with a ‘minor’ mishap as you release the Ghost Lord, an imposing entity who appears with a ragged cloak, trident, and skull encase within a jar atop his body. As he escapes through the roof there’s a distinct feeling that you’ve caused yourself a bit of bother, and so begins a playful number of hours setting things right.
You’re not going to have to face these apparitions alone. When you arrive back at the base you’ll find that you’ve been matchmade with a group of random players, and thanks to the wonders of VR headsets with built in microphones, you can immediately start chatting away with them. This led to some great moments, whether listening to the expletive-ridden wonderment of a guy from the States – he was absolutely loving Ghostbusters from the moment he logged in – to everyone shouting at each other to pick up an oversized ghost trap that one of you has to carry.
You embark on missions together, and these relatively bite-sized trips into different areas of San Francisco revolve around finding your route through whatever dank location you’ve been dropped off in, battling and capturing ghosts, and fixing broken bits of technology. Things tend to get frantic, and if you’ve been slimed you’re out of action until you get a hasty high-five from another player. You can’t die though, and there’s no health bar or ammunition to keep an eye on.
The central mechanics involve taking down a ghost’s health with your proton stream, either causing them to immediately dissolve or putting them into a state where you can capture and grab hold of them, trying to reel them in like a bass before flinging a trap underneath them and capturing them. It feels exactly as you’d hope. You’re a Ghostbuster, and for many people that’s going to be more than enough.
Interacting can be a little wonky at times, though some additional interactions are great fun, such as coming across a bag of Stay Puft Marshmallows and ending up covered in tiny Marshmallow Men that you and your teammates need to knock off your body and equipment – you can even “eat” them. They are unbelievably cute, causing untold hilarity, even if they can become slightly annoying in the long run.
There’s a real sense of camaraderie to playing Rise of the Ghost Lord, though as with any multiplayer game it can all fall apart if someone isn’t listening or doesn’t want to work together. We struggled with one teammate who hadn’t got his microphone on, but through shouting and gesturing we eventually got through to him. Be prepared that you’ll need to talk to other people though, and that includes the annoying 12-year-old who’s just joined your lobby. If you can, you’ll probably want to tackle this with friends, or if not, you can play on your own with the AI backing you up. It’s arguably less fun though.
The different mission types are randomly rotated, though they all include some level of fighting off ghosts and heading to an objective. You earn money by participating in each mission, and even a failed mission will earn you some cash which you can then spend on upgrading your equipment. If you’re playing with a set group you can talk through the best build to help your team, but chances are you’re just going to upgrade everything to the max.
A TV in your headquarters continually plays a news feed that keeps you updated on the state of San Fran, and it’s a great way to make you feel part of the world, even if I’d have liked an overall stronger narrative thread running through the whole thing. Taking down the Ghost Lord lies at the end of your trail, but you’ve got plenty of Ghostbusting missions to complete before you get there.
