
Combat feels stiff and imprecise, but that feels like a mild quibble about such a consistently pleasing experience.

Combat feels stiff and imprecise, but that feels like a mild quibble about such a consistently pleasing experience.

As an officially licensed instalment in a beloved franchise, Ghostbusters: The Video Game is still a resounding success ten years on. But as a third-person shooter with physics-based ghost capturing, it's a bit one-note. The atmosphere, design, and voice cast are perfect, but the combat peaks early and quickly become a bore. The main campaign is enjoyable enough that it's worth enduring the repetition, though.

Agatha herself is a wonderfully complicated character; we see things from her innocent and skewed perspective, for good or ill. The puzzling is relatively simplistic -- there's nothing here to match the nonsensical item combinations of the genre's luminaries. But this is a game more about story and tone than pixel hunting, and the result is a decent, bizarre experience.

SNK 40th Anniversary Collection is essential for game historians and recommended for anyone that wants to experience some old-school charm without the annoying difficulty gates. The titles themselves are hit and miss, but the good outweighs the bad by a healthy amount.