Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Reviews
Easy to learn, intuitive to play, with hours upon hours of new toys to play with, Spirits Unleashed is a real labor of love. For a franchise that’s long struggled with a consistent margin for quality, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed goes above and beyond to answer the call. Now if someone can just convince them to incorporate some ghosts and levels from the IDW comics, then it’ll be darn-near perfect!
As an online service game, I can’t wait to see what comes next, whether it new levels, ghosts, or cosmetics to name a few. If you’re a Ghostbusters fan, you’ve probably pre-ordered this already. If you're a fan of asymmetrical games like Evil Dead the Game, Dead by Daylight, or others, this is a must-buy. This is IllFonic’s best game they’ve ever made and everyone on the team should feel incredibly proud of the work they put into it. It’s no easy task to create a Ghostbusters game, but they did it. Grab your particle thrower and remember the wise words of Louis Tully: "Stay fit. Keep sharp. Make good decisions."
Look, I’m not going to present this to you as a definitive judgment on the game, because I haven’t put in the time I’d usually put into a real review. But part of the reason I’m calling it quits is because I have zero compulsion to play any more than I already have, and I think that’s a kind of verdict of its own.
The core concepts for a good adversarial game are certainly present in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. With a patch or three to fix the crashes that I ran into while playing the PC version for review, as well as the various issues that I mentioned, along with improving the overall online performance during matches could potentially make it a viable online game. And if you can find like-minded folks to play it with, it can definitely be quite a bit of fun for the little that there is to do in it.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is the best Ghostbusters release in years. The way it handles and plays, the respect it shows the source material, the way it marries up into recent canon and the gameplay asymmetric hook itself is actually quite enjoyable. While content is a bit thin on the ground and the bot AI is a bit lackluster, I’m excited to see how the game continues to grow and what else Illfonic have in the works. Get a group of friends together and dive in, it’s one of the most refreshing multiplayer takes you’ll see this year.
While Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed isn't a full priced, AAA style release, it's still a solid ghostbusting experience overall.