*clears throat* so this is the first Monthly Musing blog post I've ever done (so forgive me if I fuck something up) and the first blog post I've done overall in a while, but here goes....

Ghost Hunter



this is a game that I seem to be one of the few people on earth who played and enjoyed, it got mostly a cold shoulder from the gaming press at the time and seemed to come and go without much fanfare

but for me this is a game that holds a special place in my heart that I still revisit every couple of years and back before the official Ghostbusters game came out, this was the closet thing to a good GB game you could get

the game follows Lazarus Jones (what a name eh), a Detroit cop voiced by Rob Paulsen (of Animaniacs fame) who after investigating a creepy abandoned school where murders took place years before with his partner, unwittingly stumbles upon a secret lab containing a machine filled with ghosts that a scientist captured before the murders, of course he presses a big red button like an idiot and releases all these said ghosts (one of which kidnaps his partner) and must now recapture them all



Ghost Hunter is a game that's more than the sum of it's parts, the basic gameplay is mostly standard third person shooting with controls that can sometimes feel a little sluggish, but what makes the game interesting of course is the fact that you're fighting ghosts

some of the ghosts float through the air, some just walk on the ground and some (the troops in the above pic) even have (ghost?) guns that they shoot you with, there's even poltergeists which float objects around and have to be exposed with smoke or water to see

another twist to the gameplay is that you have to "capture the ghosts" ghostbusters style, while it's simple (just toss a doohickey at them after you've weakened a ghost enough) it's still surprisingly satisfying in a "bustin makes me feel good" way




but what REALLY makes the game allot of fun are it's graphics, story, characters and settings (plus the cool ghosts themselves)

while the Bayou level goes on for too long and eventually becomes dull, most of the levels are really cool, ESPECIALLY the haunted mansion level (where you fight the teddy bears and see the baby-doll thing pictured above) which is like a surreal trek through some creepy painting and is surprisingly scary. That's another cool thing about the game is it's balance of humor and horror, there's plenty of other cool levels too like the ghost ship (filled with silly bloated ghosts of WW2 era British soldiers) and the school (filled with poltergeists)



this has gotten a little long winded so I'll try to wrap it up with some bullet points

* the game features the voices of Sir Michael Gambon (as the villian) and Joe Morton (as the scientist who captured all the ghosts the first time)
* the music in the game is good and sets the mood, plus there's a great spooky piano theme that plays in some of the levels, sadly a soundtrack was never released
* the game was developed by SCE Studio Cambridge, makers of MediEvil 1 and 2 and Primal (another very underrated game), the game even includes a very fun reference to MediEvil with the ghost of Sir Daniel Fortesque's descendant in the Ghost Ship level
* the final level in the game is pretty out of left field and bizarre (I wont spoil what it is though) and unfortunately one problem with the game is that the ending is disappointing (disappointing endings in games seems to be a rising trend lately)
*at some points in the game you actually take control of the ghost of a woman in a shear robe who helps Lazarus solve simple puzzles, these parts are mostly a gimmick however
* one bizarre thing about the game that has confounded me for years is for the first chunk of the game the game lets walk around the laboratory that acts as a hub and view the ghosts you've captured in the "array" complete with descriptions of them, I found this really cool, but for some reason after a certain point the game no longer gives you control between the levels and instead moves from level to level with cutscenes not allowing you to view the "array" again, why the game does this I have no idea and it even seems to taunt you at one point by having Lazarus say "check out that array!" and then walk through the portal to the next level not allowing you to view the cool ghosts you've captured, I guess the writers got too lazy to come up with descriptions for all the ghosts

whew, so there you have it, Ghost Hunter, a game that I really wish got more recognition, I highly suggest anyone who hasn't played it pick it up