After years of waiting and watching, it was finally time to explore the world of Ghostbusters: The Video Game last week, and I jumped into the river of slime with excitement and anticipation. Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong. While reviewing the Sony PlayStation 3 version of the game, I ran into several showstopping technical glitches and problems that held up my progress. The worst of the lot is that sometimes the game forgets my saved progress, insisting that I start the game over from scratch. Other times it loses part of my progress, zeroing out collected items and scanned enemies. But on the other hand, when the game behaved properly, it was as much fun as I'd hoped. Read my review over at Kombo in which I mix glowing praise with disappointed gloom.
It's difficult for me to assign a single score to the PS3 version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. When the game handles save data properly, it's an enthralling addition to the Ghostbusters mythos that provides plenty of fantastic gameplay as well as hilarious performances from a talented cast. On the other hand, I cannot overlook its collection of frustrating technical issues. So, in the end, here is my recommendation: devoted fans of the franchise must not miss this game, so while it is possible to play the PS3 version through to the finish if you have the patience (goodness knows I did), if the Xbox 360 or PC versions are available to you (which, from what I understand, are not hideously broken), you would likely be better off with one of those. Short of a patch to fix the technical problems, I just can't stamp a gold seal on this one, and that really is a shame. The level of care that went into the story and gameplay raises the bar on what a movie-based video game can be when the developers actually care about the source material. I only wish that the same level of care had gone into testing the PS3 version for bugs.
Some of the Terminal Reality development team looked into my technical problems and were unable to reproduce them with their testing kit, so it seems that I'm stuck with a slightly crippled game. The working theory seems to be that there's something about my model of PS3 that Ghostbusters doesn't like or that I have a bad disc. For the record, I reviewed the game on a 160 GB North American model of PS3 that was purchased in November 2008 and is currently running the 2.76 firmware. Have you had similar issues with Ghostbusters? I want to hear from you. Maybe we can put together the clues and give Terminal Reality enough information so that they can get a first-hand look at what some of us out there are enduring in the battle against Gozer.
