Ghostbusters Remastered Review

"Ghostbusting Still Feels Good"

Campaign

October 12, 2019 at 9:15pm
By Jason Stettner

This was one of my favorite games from the last generation, it took the thrill of being a Ghostbuster and presented a great experience around it. This game acts as the third movie, bringing back the entire cast while expanding the concept further by taking place after the events of where the films ended. You get to play as the rookie, and join Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray (Dan Akyroyd), Egon (Harold Ramis) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) as they deal with a new threat.

Janine (Annie Potts) is also there, can’t forget her. Some other surprises are there as well, I’ll leave those for you to discover as you play. The story brings in a balance of nostalgia, while taking things in a new direction. You get to use enhanced catching tools, face off against more dangerous ghouls and enjoy some laughs in a fairly funny narrative. It has the charm of the movies, while expanding the scope further than ever before.

Visit classic locations, and travel beyond that. It was great to visit this world once again, and take on the many ghosts along the way. There are collectibles too, as you can scan for special mystery items. You get a fair in length campaign to work through, with difficulty options. I found it a bit harder than I recall. That aside, it should be noted that the multiplayer has been stripped from the game. It is apparently coming as a post-launch update mode, but isn’t here yet.

Gameplay

With this being a remaster, the visuals have been given a boost and it’s far more fluid. I played this version on Xbox One X, so I was able to take in a 4k resolution with the enhancement. I will note that while the pre-rendered cutscenes did look better, it seems like they weren’t quite up to the standard of the rest of the resolution boost, likely being just higher resolution video that was sitting there.

For the most part everything ran smoothly, and it felt great. You get a variety of new ghost busting tools to use, a very dynamic world where most things can be thrown around and interactions with the full team. The environments are great, they capture the city authentically and you get to visit so many cool places that are certainly nostalgic. A great sense of scale with each area too, feels like a large full life city.

It was a bit dark at times, they could have done more to revamp the lighting. That aside, it does feel spooky enough to be entirely on brand. I felt the checkpoints could have been better, and it does take an excessively long time to load levels or checkpoints after death.

The Conclusion

Ghostbusters Remastered brings the thrills of the game back, by doing little and leaving the multiplayer behind. It sounds more negative of a statement than it is, the experience really is worthwhile. If you’ve never played this before, it’s definitely worth trying.

I’m not sure if it’s going to draw in older fans for another run, but I played it almost entirely through in a sitting and enjoyed doing so. The characters are great, it’s incredible to have that old cast back and it essentially is that third film. It has a lot of fun with nostalgic locations, keeps the charm and feeling of the films. It does all of this, while also feeling fresh, expanding the universe and having a nice self contained story that fit well into the overall lore of this franchise.

You get to battle iconic ghouls, face off against scary new ones and also run into characters you likely remember from the past. I wish they had included the multiplayer at launch, hopefully they’re true to the note of it coming in a post-launch update. I thought that was a really cool part of the original release.

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Ghostbusters Remastered Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Sandbox Strat

Rating Overall: 7.5