Review by: Danielle Riendeau

25 years after Drs. Venkman, Spengler Stantz and Zeddmore (ok, so he’s an honorary Dr., lets not fight) came on to the scene capturing ghouls and busting jokes, they return for a thoroughly entertaining chapter in videogame form. With a cartoonier aesthetic and excellent motion controls, the Wii version stands out from its bigger brothers, though many of the puzzles would have best been left to 2nd level torso apparitions.

At its heart, this is the third Ghostbusters movie disguised as a third-person action game. The plot is like a particularly comfortable (but awesome) remix of elements from the beloved flicks, complete with whacked out lore, favorite baddies, and a certain Sumerian deity that we all love to hate. The cutscenes (and all of the in-game dialogue) are spot-on, recreating the zany spirit of the films, and each character (voiced by the original actors, thank the lord) is true to his live action counterpart. Venkman is the deadpanning ladies’ man, Spengler is the geek/mad scientist, Stantz is the over-enthusiastic big kid, and Zeddmore is the everyman in the middle of it all.

Your role in this happy mess is that of the nameless rookie, and, like a certain mute elf in the Legend of Zelda series, you never emit a peep. What you will do, however, is scour the various stages for ghosts with your trusty PKE meter, solve a variety of simple environmental puzzles, and duke it out with an impressive host of spooks.

The combat is the highlight here, as tracking and puzzle solving are pretty rudimentary. You’ll amass a small arsenal of hilariously named weapons that hook in to your proton pack, everything from goo guns (green slime beats black slime) to a sort of freeze ray to the Ghostbuster’s “bread and butter” weapon of choice, the energy stream. Each weapon has a primary and secondary function – making great use of the Wii’s simplified controller.

Generally, combat flows in a set pattern. You’ll weaken the hostile spirit with whatever works best (some are more sensitive to the green slime, for example), then you’ll wrangle them with your proton stream. While everything is done with the Wii-mote, including all aiming functions, wrangling feels the best. Your hand will rumble and shake as the ghost tries to break free, requiring you to shake it up a little with some mild (read: non-annoying) QTE directions. Once you’ve slammed your charge around enough, it’s time to chuck out a trap using the nunchuck, and you move on to the next threat.

It’s fairly simple, and more than a little repetitive, but it feels great. Since you’ll frequently be working with swarms of different spirits, you do have to switch weapons and tactics a fair amount, though the overall pattern is set from your first encounter. The only aggravation is in the weapon changing – since all of your instruments are mapped to the Wii-mote’s cursed d-pad, you will almost certainly miss crucial changes mid-battle.