Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Review – Frightening 4v1

It’s a great match in spirit world to pair IllFonic and Ghostbusters License, asymmetrical multiplayer specialists. Predator and Jason faced off in previous Friday the 13th outings. Predator and Jason were pitted against camp counselors. With Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, the team has applied everything it’s learned about compelling asymmetrical multiplayer to a property that perfectly lines up with the game style.

On five maps that range from an Alcatraz prison-inspired prison to cozy lodge, four Ghostbusters can face off against the ghost. It is fun for both players, which makes it different than other asymmetrical games. You’re not just biding time until you can play as the ghost. If that’s all you want to do, however, it’s easy to set your preference and be haunting random players online with hardly any wait time (at least during my tests on launch day). The active early player base and full crossplay between all platforms combine to make this happen, and it’s impressive to see such smooth execution out of the gate. If you’re a Ghostbusters fan who doesn’t like online multiplayer, it’s easy to play against not-so-challenging bots and still experience all the content.

Busters start the match with P.K.E. Meters are drawn to locate the ghost and its points of respawn. These rifts are hidden within objects, and destroying them takes away one of the ghost’s three “lives.” If you encounter the ghost directly, you can zap it with your Proton Pack and wrangle it into a trap to eat up a life as well. You’ll be haunting as many objects and as many civilians as you can to raise the haunting levels of the entire map. A final timer starts when the ghost’s haunting has reached 100 percent. The Busters win if they capture the ghost within that period. If the ghost escapes capture, the map becomes officially haunted and the Busters run away with shame. 

You can feel very satisfied calling your buddies when you find the ghost and creating a trap for it as a group. The Busters may be temporarily paralysed by slime but no one wants to watch the game unfold. There’s always hunting or blasting to do. Buster is not good at calming NPCs that have the same voice lines as you.

You can play in a number of different ways with the five ghost types. You can either be fast and mischievous or go all out with God of War-style chains attacks. Or you could use tricks to misdirect and manipulate. All ghosts have a basic attack, a minion summon (for occupying Busters or frightening civilians), an ultimate move with a long cooldown, and a unique action that’s different for every skin. The key to hiding against Busters is to be able to possess objects and recharge the energy needed to do just about anything. You can experiment with different handling options, from a soft rolling beer keg to a large, fluffy giant Teddy bear. While ghosts are extremely powerful and mobile, they’re also vulnerable to capture at any time. One minute you’ll be triumphantly sliming all four busters and sabotaging their Proton Packs, and the next you’ll be frantically mashing buttons to escape the pull of the streams and deadly traps. It’s a delight to hear opponents’ confusion while you stay out of sight, or their frustration as you cover the whole team in a whirlwind of slime. 

The classic firehouse serves as a multi-use hub when you’re not actively in matches. A few cutscenes give a quick overview of the game’s beginnings. It’s not much to be excited about but it’s nice to hear Dan Aykroyd or Ernie Hudson reprise their roles as Ray, Winston, and other characters. Your leveling up will bring you new cosmetics, equipment parts that impact stats, collectibles and contracts that give you special items and experience points. You should check in on a regular basis for both weekly and daily jobs. The steady stream of goodie bags kept our group rushing to the lockers between jobs to get a shirt or sunglasses. The gear upgrades are tangible and feel real, particularly when you can throw more particles at once without getting too hot.

While the core gameplay is strong and engaging, I have concerns about Spirits Unleashed’s long-term sustainability. There’s only one match type, so if you get tired of that, you’re out of luck. The five current maps are solid, but I’m ready for more (IllFonic claims additional free maps and ghosts will roll out in the future). Stories and unlocks make the game interesting for your 30 first character levels. But then, things get boring. You’ll get all the core unlocks by 50. Beyond that, the current endgame consists of completing high-level contracts such as “do X-objective 25 times” and so on. Sometimes I would learn new aspects of the game I hadn’t realized before, but other times I’d be firing up bot matches hunting for floor waxers to shoot, or repeatedly throwing out my trap and picking it up to check off some annoying requirement.

There were some crashes in the pre-release game. I got trapped as a ghost several times, right up to the final match. I couldn’t replicate these issues after the day one patch, but it’s something to watch out for. 

You can enjoy Spirits Unleashed by getting together with your friends. Rotate through maps, play each ghost and then hoot, holler, and have fun. If that’s not an option, matchmaking with random players is smooth and quick, and in-game markers make teamwork possible even if everyone’s playing off-mic. Ghostbusting is a thrilling experience that eventually wears off. But it does take some time to reach this point. There are updates to come down the line to ensure your Proton Packs stay afloat.