Bustin' Makes Activision Feel Good: Ghostbusters Is Out

I saw that there new Ghostbusters last night. It's a fun-enough summer blockbuster, innit? I liked the bits with the ghosts and any time Kate McKinnon's character did anything. And just as an old series is back, an old practice is too: the movie tie-in game.

Activision today released Ghostbusters [Steam page], a shooty third-person action-RPG with a story that's set after the new film but stars even more new 'Busters. No Holtzman? Pfff. Anyway, tie-in games are rarely worth mentioning but I'm fascinated because it feels like it's been so long since movie games were ubiquitous, doesn't it?

I can remember when tie-in games were everywhere. Every movie got a video game in the nineties and noughties. Seven games. One unique game for each platform, all of them awful. It's telling that most of our favourite movie games are based on the worlds of movies rather than trying to adapt them directly. Evidently licensed games for profitable enough to keep making them for a long time, but they've definitely ebbed.

Electronic Arts bailed on movie games by the tensies, saying that they were better off spending time and money on brand new games based on their own ideas. Activision, one of the other main culprits, slowed their pace a little too - though they have kept a steady flow of licensed games coming all along. And I suppose EA are still going hog-wild with Star Wars. And now here's this.

Made by FireForge Games, the game simply named Ghostbusters is supposedly based on the film Ghostbusters - itself a reboot of Ghostbusters - but it might as well be unrelated given that the Ghostbusters of Ghostbusters are replaced by a lineup of new Ghostbusters because the Ghostbusters Ghostbusters are busy busting ghosts elsewhere. It's a third-person action-RPG with local co-op for two to four players, sending amateur Ghostbusters to bust ghosts around a cartoony New York City.

Ghostbusters is £31.99/39,99€/$49.99 on Steam. Yeah, I know, but who knows what fans will pay for? Fans are weird.

If you want to bust ghosts with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson, heck, they're all in Ghostbusters: The Videogame and that's only £6.99/9,99€/$9.99 on Steam these days. Alec liked the gags and palling around so it's a shame the actual ghostbusting wasn't up to much.

Anywho! Here's the launch trailer for this here new Ghostbusters game:

Sorry, I can't find a good place to drop this link in so I'll just leave it here, okay? Talk to you later, bye.