Spirits (Like You) Are Unleashed as Ghostbusters Goes Asymmetrical in New Video Game

This week, Lakewood, Colorado-based Illfonic officially revealed a trailer, gameplay, and all of the details for their upcoming asymmetrical 4v1 multiplayer game Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed coming later this year in 2022 to PC, PlayStation and Xbox platforms (and it’s cross-platform for extra multiplayer goodness).

The official reveal comes shortly after comments were made by Illfonic’s team that they had been working on developing a game, but not much was known at that point. However, we now know the game will revolve around “light” story elements that take place after Ghostbusters: Afterlife and featuring Ray and Winston (voiced by Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson, respectively).

But the real meat and potatoes of the game will be the multiplayer which allows a team of four playable and customizable Ghostbusters to hunt a playable ghost character as they terrorize and frighten the general public. That’s right, not only can you create your own Ghostbuster character and build their career from the ground up, but you can also cross over to the other side and play from an ectoplasmic point of view.

I’m definitely looking forward to hopping online with Ghostbusters friends and getting a few rounds in as soon as the game goes live. While this doesn’t sound as intensive of a game like the Ghostbusters: The Video Game and its remastered counterpart were, this sounds like a great bridge to keep the story from Afterlife flowing and for all of us to reconnect and zap and trap a few ghosts. And adding in Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd’s voice performances (plus, as we’ve learned, several other familiar voices including our friend Greg Miller), is icing on the cake. Can’t wait to hear and see more about the game in the time leading up to its release later this year!

Here’s the announcement trailer, five minutes of pre-alpha gameplay, and the full press release from Illfonic:

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed from IllFonic Calls New Recruits to Slime or Be Slimed

LAKEWOOD, Colorado—March 22, 2022—Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, the 4v1 hunt or haunt supernaturally-charged video game from the asymmetrical multiplayer experts at IllFonic, rolls out the Ecto-1 in Q4 2022 on PC for Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4 and 5, XboxSeries X|S and Xbox One.

Put on a Proton Pack, grab a Ghost Trap, and monitor the trusty PKE Meter as a Ghostbusterina team of four brave souls pursuing ghastly ghosts terrorizing public locations. Work together to find the Ghost, blast them with streams from the Particle Thrower to tether the slimy foe in place, and shut the trap at the perfect moment! Keep citizens calm and corral the Ghost before the environment gets too haunted.

Play as a Ghost, scaring unsuspecting citizens at various locations. You ain’t afraid of no Ghostbuster, thanks to the ability to fly and teleport between rifts. Possess objects lying around each room to sneak by roaming Ghostbusters and frighten passersby. If that doesn’t work, sliming and summoning ghoulish minions will. Haunt each map to completion as one of multiple Ghosts with different abilities.

Prepare for each match in the iconic Firehouse by customizing your Ghostbuster or Ghost, upgrading equipment and abilities, and getting some target practice in using the Particle Thrower as well as its different modifications. Talk with Winston Zeddemore, voiced by Ernie Hudson, and get missions before going out into the field. Meet some new and old friends like Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz, ready to hand down some busting wisdom at Ray’s Occult Books.

Who you gonna call when you wanna bust some ghosts? Thanks to cross-platform multiplayer, anyone on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and/or Xbox Series X|S or One can come together to cross the streams or spew slime. AI companions can help fill games, or enable solo Ghostbusters or a solo Ghost to play offline.

“Ghostbusters is one of the most beloved IPs in the world, so we are pulling out all the stops to make something special and accessible to this diverse fanbase,” said Charles Brungardt, CEO, IllFonic. “If you’re someone who loves the movies or asymmetrical multiplayer games, this was made for you.

”Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed will launch on Epic Games Store for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. For more information, please visit lllFonic’s official website and follow IllFonic on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. of the details of their new asymmetrical 4v1 multiplayer video game Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. The game is hitting PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series X/S and One

The Game We Received, Not Necessarily the Game We Deserved

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There's a line in Kids in the Hall's Brain Candy, where the pharmaceutical company is so desperate to find their next hit product after the massive success of the drug "Stummies," and a character begins a pitch by saying, "Well, it's a lot like Stummies..." 

I can only imagine that the pitch meeting for Ghostbusters: Puzzle Fighter started out very similarly. Someone in the room posited, "Well, it's a lot like Bejeweled," and the rest was history.

First, I should mention that the intention of Ghostbusters HQ is not to become a review site. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with differing opinions than mine who will enjoy things that I don't, so I don't want to get into the business of throwing up reviews and opinions that might sway someone away from something they like. I also hate bad reviews, which as I started playing, I knew this would come off as. But a representative of the Ghostbusters: Puzzle Fighter PR team reached out to me and offered me a review copy of the game and I figured, what the heck - I had zero interest in the game before but since they're sending it my way, I'll give it a chance.

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After downloading from the App Store, you're greeted with an incredibly lengthy loading screen that looks a lot like this. Those of the old guard that once played David Crane's Ghostbusters will understand this but this load screen stays up a good ten times longer than the Commodore 64 took to load that game in the mid-1980s. It could have been a result of getting a preview of the game and the servers weren't ready for it, or there was a giant update to the game needed that wasn't in what was downloaded through the App Store, but I gave it a good five minutes before putting the phone to sleep and moving on.

I came back to the phone later in the work day to find that whatever the game had needed to download had completed, but was a little surprised at how simplistic the game was given the lengthy load time on the front-end. What about this game could have possibly taken that long to load? As mentioned, it's essentially a skinned version of Bejeweled with a "RPG" element placed on top of it without much motivation. There's also a story but the writing and voices of the characters are so out of tone that I ended up reading the first couple static screens and skipping past them from that point forward. Janine reads like a strange character from the Nicolas Cage Valley Girl, turning uncharacteristic phrases like, "Shake your tush, bozo." Venkman comes off like a frat boy creep, and everything just feels... off. Between the strange stilted writing and the odd character design (that initially faced a lot of criticism because of how crazy hyper-sexualized it was after the initial announcement of the game), it really reminds you how difficult the tone of this franchise is to perfectly capture.

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Once I was finally into the gameplay, it's identical to the current trend of Candy Crush and Dots mobile games where you're swiping to match consecutive colors/jewels in order to eliminate them from the board. If you've played one of those puzzle games since 2001, you've played Ghostbusters: Puzzle Fighter. The only somewhat new mechanic is the battle aspect of it all. You take a turn, then the AI opponent takes a stab, and so on while you "fight" your opponent draining XP with every eliminated set of jewels.

The Ghostbusters aspect of the game is really just the skin as you amass player cards and characters from the Ghostbusters franchise to do battle with you and you choose your team going into it. This aspect has been sold as a "card game" akin to Magic: The Gathering but because of the gameplay mechanics, it falls flat. Even if I received a super-awesome character card and decide to play it in the next round, I'm still swiping to connect three or more identical tokens. Essentially it feels a lot like one of those puzzle games you got as a party favor at your best friends' birthday where you need to put the marbles into the divots in the playing field: the cardboard background has Ghostbusters on it, but the game pretty much has nothing to do with Ghostbusters at all. Maybe the card game aspect should have been the actual game mechanic and the antiquated 15-year old feeling Bejeweled clone could have been jettisoned, and it would have made it feel more compelling to me? I'm not entirely sure what could have kept me interested, to be completely honest.

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All-in-all, I probably played three rounds of the game and felt finished with it. Total time playing the game maybe five or ten minutes. Which I believe is the purpose. It's a quick distraction while you're waiting in a lobby or sitting at the airport that you don't have to think that much about. The good news is that it's free, it most likely relies on in-game purchases for additional levels, characters, etc. but I never even got to that part of the game and probably won't. 

Hopefully this is just a place-holder for Capcom/Beeline to maintain the license until they unveil something more elaborate up their sleeves. A quick skin of an existing product to keep the brand awareness up while they work on a more complex and actually Ghostbusters-related title. I hate to be so down on it, I'm sure a lot of folks worked incredibly hard on it and worse had to scramble and redesign several aspects of the game at the last-minute. Just not really my cup of tea. I'm sure others will kick a kick out of it.