Hot Play
We ain’t afraid of no ghosts
By Scott Gardner
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
DS, PS2, PS3, PC, Wii, Xbox 360
Twenty-five years ago this month, the action-comedy Ghostbusters, starring Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and
Bill Murray as oddball paranormal-psychologists-turned-ghost-exterminators, exploded onto the big screen. Lodging in the #1 box-office spot for a now-incredible seven weeks, it earned a zillion dollars, and launched a mini-industry of ghostly products, including five videogames.
Well, make that six. And this long-gestating game has — like the movie itself — spared no production expense. As well as impressive visuals and realistic physical interactions, it features the voices and likenesses of all four original Ghostbusters, in a story penned by original writers Aykroyd and Ramis.
Set two years after 1989’s Ghostbusters II (meaning cast members glory in full heads of hair and trim waistlines), New York is once again experiencing a spike in paranormal activity, including return visits from old foes like Stay Puft and the Library Lady. You play as the overwhelmed team’s newest recruit, hired as a somewhat expendable “experimental equipment technician.”
That equipment includes the classic proton-stream weapon, still powered by an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on your back (don’t cross the streams!), plus an even more unstable dark matter stasis beam. Third-person action includes chasing, wrangling and trapping slime-spewing spooks, environmental puzzles and multiplayer modes.
For a little sex appeal, Alyssa Milano voices a comely antiquities expert at the centre of the otherworldly weirdness, who just might be able to help the Ghostbusters save the city — if they can keep Venkman (Murray) from hitting on her every three minutes.
Release date: June 16
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
With too many guns and too little law, the Wild West is a pretty great place to set a first-person shooter. Blending gritty realism and over-the-top action, this prequel to 2007’s fine Call of Juarez sees the McCall brothers searching for Aztec gold in Mexico, armed with rifles, lassos, dynamite and a distinct attitude problem.
Release date: June 9
Prototype
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
In this open-world action title, Alex Mercer wakes up with amnesia to find he can climb or wall-run across any surface, jump 30 storeys high, mutate his hands into claws, knives or tentacles, and grow body armour. Now he’s trying to unravel a sinister conspiracy and find out what happened to him. Our guess: something bad.
Release date: June 9