Review of Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord is underway

Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord releases today for PSVR 2 and Quest headsets. We’ve been playing the game this week, here’s what we think so far.

Note: This is an ongoing unscored review. While we can play pre-launch, many games are designed around multiplayer. As such, we await further development during the campaign and test the online dating experience before making a final verdict. Stay tuned for our full review with updated thoughts and final results next week.

Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord marks a pre-holiday launch as one of the biggest titles to release this year. It’s a potential sigh of relief for Quest 3 and PSVR 2 owners who have been waiting for exciting new content, but it’s also a rare partnership that brings together a massive multi-film intellectual property and one of VR’s most veteran development studios.

It’s a big bet in every way, but will it pay off?

Ghostbusters has always been about team efforts, so it makes sense that Rise of the Ghost Lord is built around co-op multiplayer. While it is possible to play solo through the game, the experience will be worse as this game is 100% made to be played with others online or even better with your friends.

The game supports up to four players and offers solutions to make team building as easy as possible. Not only is the game coming to Quest and PSVR 2 headsets on the same day, but it also supports full cross-platform play right from the start, which is awesome.

There are room codes if you want to party with friends, as well as online matchmaking options if you prefer to let the system find players for you, with a built-in voice chat to communicate between teammates.

The San Francisco Ghostbusters HQ lobby serves as a central area to upgrade equipment, change skins, and start missions alongside your friends. You’ll also hear bits of dialogue between missions and receive other updates that advance the narrative.

A loop of Ghostbusting gameplay

Rise of the Ghost Lord begins with an intro sequence that runs through the basic controls and mechanics, while setting up the game’s loose story premise with the villain Ghost Lord.

After this introductory sequence, you are placed in the lobby and left to your own devices. The order of the missions is dynamic and players can choose between three choices at any time. Missions last about 10 minutes (give or take) and are divided into four types, each with different objectives from Harvester, Giga Trap Retrieval, On the Clock and Exorcism.

After completing a mission, you’ll be sent back to the hub, where you can spend your hard-earned cash on gear upgrades and more.

So far, I’ve had the most fun with the Harvester missions, which involve locating a large ghost hunting device on the map, finding parts to repair it, and then trapping ghosts in it until your team has two ghost cans. to fill

On the Clock is a simple timed objective mode that asks you to hunt down as many ghosts as you can in 10 minutes, while Exorcism sees your team find objects on the map that will help close the ghost portal. Retrieving the Giga Trap involves the most teamwork, requiring you to find a Giga Trap and carry it around the map for mining while fighting ghosts. If a team member drops the trap and no one picks it up again fast enough, the mission will fail.

Maps are set throughout San Francisco, including iconic locations such as Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. While not the most detailed environments ever, some are impressively scaled, especially for a standalone headset like the Quest. Maps repeat themselves, but with variations in accessible areas and mission types. They are designed to allow areas to be blocked off or restricted and to route players through a specific mission and across. For example, the map of the Golden Gate Bridge has two sides and areas at different elevations. I did one mission where I moved between both sides of the map but stayed on the ground, then I did another mission where I was limited to one side but also explored the elevated section overlooking the bridge .

It’s an understandable solution that allows nDreams to get more out of the maps it creates, but we’ll have to play more to determine if there’s a good balance between total maps, how often they repeat, and the variety available. .

Ghost hunters and collectors

So Rise of the Ghost Lord has a dynamic mission structure across a diverse set of maps, but what about capturing ghosts? Is ghost hunting really fun?

For the most part, yes, although there are a few lingering questions about potential duplication.

Players are equipped with some key tools for their ghost hunting adventures, a PKE meter (for tracking targets and scanning the environment), a throwable trap (for catching ghosts, of course) and a proton wand (for shooting the currents that draw out the currents). . Evaporation of spirits).

The first two are on your hip and the main proton node is on your shoulder. Best used with two hands, this wand throws a curved stream that can target the surroundings and tracks the movement of ghosts as they fly around you.

Smaller ghosts don’t require traps and your teammates can just shoot them with the Proton Wand to vaporize them. However, larger ghosts require more teamwork and coordination, with two weak bars floating on each side, their shields on the right and health on the left.

Tracking them with the current wears down their shield. Once completed, your current will bind the soul in a lasso. You must swipe your proton wand in the opposite direction of the soul’s movement to destroy its health. Doing this will also heat up your proton node and you’ll need to press the A button right at the peak to drain it. Otherwise, your wand will overheat and shut down temporarily.

Once the soul runs out of health, you can drag it to a nearby trap or reaper. It’s a smart overall system that uses motion controls to create an experience that feels right at home in VR. Being efficient often requires communication between teammates to ensure that you target multiple of the same spirit streams at the same target, making the spirits work faster.

Ghosts will also attack you in all of these, with each ghost having different attack patterns that you’ll need to dodge appropriately. Things can get pretty intense, as more types of ghosts are introduced if a team member is knocked down, they can be revived with a high five. Evasion is one of the keys to success, and although the game offers fluid movement and teleport options for movement, it’s much easier to simultaneously fight and dodge attacks with the former.

Diversity questions

Even with an interesting set of ghost hunting mechanics and decent variety in enemy types, maps, and objectives, our biggest question right now is how long they’ll all be involved.

So far, we’ve done a few missions in co-op and a few in solo offline (for which you’re joined by an AI-controlled ghost ally who fights alongside you). With our limited pre-release experience, we can’t speak to how the overall narrative/campaign will play out, as well as the total number of missions. That said, even with our limited experience, it looks like Rise of the Ghost Lord’s gameplay can translate into a consistent feel throughout the campaign.

We’ll have to play more to confirm if this is indeed the case, perhaps some gameplay twists are in the pipeline. Undoubtedly, a lot of fun comes from the social aspect of the game as well, which we’ll be testing more now that the game is playing properly.

Review of Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord is underway

Sony Pictures VR and nDreams have laid a solid foundation for a decent multiplayer experience with Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord. We’ve found good mechanics and an attractive overall presentation in what we’ve played so far, but we’ll need to play more to properly report on the online multiplayer experience and performance on different headsets.

The biggest question that remains is whether there’s enough variety to keep players coming back for multiple sessions throughout the main campaign, let alone beyond.

Stay tuned for our updated review in the coming days with more information and our final verdict.