Ghosthunter
Quite possibly the prettiest PS2 game ever made, but can style overcome substance?
Published: September 7, 2004
There are few things as horrible as a game being too ambitious. All the cool design sketches, all the ultra-detailed textures, and all the twisting plot devices in the world can't save a design team or a system that's just not up to the task of conveying all that promise. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's Studio Cambridge may have stretched themselves a bit too far with 2003's Primal, offering a decent (if rather clichéd) storyline and some impressive vistas, but lackluster combat and an overall lack of polish.
It's still important to remember, however, that this is the same development studio that birthed the MediEvil games, which certainly did well in their own right, and the talent pool there certainly hasn't diminished if Ghosthunter is any indication. With the general reception of Primal being what it was, it's not hard to see why SCEA passed on publishing Studio Cambridge's sophomore PS2 effort, but luckily someone (that someone being Namco) decided it was worth putting out here.
Unlike Primal, Ghosthunter doesn't try too hard to be something massive with the storyline. Detroit cop Lazarus Jones and his partner Anna Steele are investigating a call at a local school that was the site of a grisly mass murder a few years back. Deep in the basement, ol' Laz comes across an odd machine and accidentally lets loose the contents of a massive storehouse that just happens to house a huge stockpile of ghosts, one of which melds with Jones, giving him the ability to see normally invisible spirits.
Now freed, they proceed to go about haunting the school and a handful of places all over the world, though none are quite as dangerous as medieval knight William Blacksmoor, who promptly abducts Steele, taking her to parts unknown. As Lazarus quickly discovers, it's up to him to get them all back, refilling the Array where they were stored and juicing up the ghost-powered computer and its AI so it can offer computery-type advice along the way. The computer, a digital version of its creator, Peter Richmond, teaches Jones how to capture ghosts by weakening them and then tossing a Ghost Busters-like pod that sucks them in and deposits them back into the Array.
The actual process of capturing ghosts takes up the bulk of the action in the game, and as such a handful of different weapons from ghost energy-powered beam rifles to shotguns and rocket launchers slowly become unlocked as you return more ghosts. The other 25 or so percent of the game is split between basic fetch quests and solving puzzles by allowing Astral, the scantily-clad ethereal hottie that possessed Lazarus, to explore the world by floating around to areas he can't. Capturing certain types of ghosts allows Astral to take on their powers, such as becoming solid, moving objects with her mind and possessing other ghosts.
The problem is, most of the sections that involve conjuring Astral are horribly unintuitive, with almost no clue as to what you're supposed to do. You can zip into first-person view and objects you can interact with pulse, but there's still no way to know exactly what you're supposed to Literally hours can be spent just trying to figure out where to go if you don't default to a walkthrough, and it completely kills the pacing of the game.
The rest of the game is, fortunately, much more fun. Capturing ghosts never really feels too repetitive, because the game strikes a nice balance between informative (and at times, hilarious) cutscenes, basic puzzles, and exploration to spread out the ghost capturing bits. The actual storyline, as basic as it is, does offer a number of twists and piecing together what happened with the murders in the school and the various ghosts is done with a storyteller's pacing.
By far, though, the best thing about the game is its visuals. Ghosthunter could easily be the most impressive game on the PlayStation 2, or at least would be if the game had kept up the level of design in the first (and incidentally longest) section of the game. Located in Louisiana's bayous, the game not only sets up a fantastic sense of mood with lazy sliding banjos playing in the background and intense, gloomy lighting, but conveys a sense of atmosphere that Primal only hinted at (amazingly, the games use the same underlying engine).
There's also a seriously talented set of artists at work at Studio Cambridge. One particular sequence late in the same bayous involves visiting a mansion where children have been captured. As you descend deep below the mansion, the game quickly becomes more and more surreal and twisted. Angles skew, the lighting becomes richer in deep greens, reds and blues. It's here where one of the coolest visual designs since Alice on the PC takes place.
After stepping into a hallway where cabinets literally in the floor and walls are lined with twisted dolls doused in eerie green light, stepping into a nearby room shows off a spinning colored nightlight where shapes dance across the walls. If you walk up to the light, the same shapes slide off Lazarus in an incredibly effective demonstration of how good the lighting really is in the game.
Not to be outdone, the texture and model detail is simply stunning. After playing literally hundreds of games on the PS2, I've never seen characters that were this detailed. Both in modeling and insane texture detail, but there are even smaller touches like realistic moving eyes and a cool effect where light actually reflects off of the lenses, giving eyes a frighteningly accurate, slightly glassy look. Watching some of the characters, like a dreadlocked hillbilly with a swiss cheesed cowboy hat, are such a sight to behold, you'll double-check to see if it really is the PS2 rendering all that detail.
The audio follows suit, with appropriately spooky screams and whooshes from the ghosts, and zappy lasers, though the shotgun feels a little flat. It's in both the voice acting and the stellar music that the game really hits its aural stride, though.
The music in particular never falls into one distinct feel; the aforementioned music that plays during the first Louisiana missions bounces from long, sliding guitar strums to more twisted children's songs (though it never falls back on anything familiar). Later on, a staccato snare drum report gives way to a more electronica-tinged driving, almost lumbering score, and towards the end of the game, builds into light string arrangements during some key parts. Throughout the whole soundtrack, there's a very mildly spooky trend, though the scariness of the game always takes a backset to more lighthearted parts or more action-heavy sequences. It shows an impressive level of control that I honestly wish more games would practice, and like the work that Bob and Barn did in Primal, is worthy of a stand-alone soundtrack.
The dialogue for Lazarus is witty, laced with sarcasm and a touch of arrogance, and the delivery is made all the more perfect by Rob Paulsen's (of Pinky and the Brain, The Tick and Animaniacs fame) performance. Everyone else, from the hillbillies to a British commander sound spot-on; it's honestly one of the best voice acting casts I've ever heard in the game.
Ghosthunter is just an all-around solid game. The visuals are second to none, the voice acting and music are stellar, and the underlying gameplay, while flawed in some parts (if I never see one of Astral's summoning circles again, I'll die a happy man), the overall experience is so damned good that you can't help but overlook the weaker parts of the game. For the sheer fact that writing this review has made me want to replay some particular parts of the game shows that the development team has accomplished more than just a simple game, they've created a genuine indelible experience here, and that something that few games can tout.
While it's just shy of being a must-have, there's enough here that just about everyone should give this a rental, and graphics whores or anyone with a penchant for experiencing truly surreal and wildly imaginative creations would do well to put this on their buy list. If for nothing other than those key moments that will live on in my mind, I'm infinitely grateful that Namco decided to grab onto something that would've probably otherwise never been gifted to American audiences. Do 'em a favor and go pick up a copy.
It's still important to remember, however, that this is the same development studio that birthed the MediEvil games, which certainly did well in their own right, and the talent pool there certainly hasn't diminished if Ghosthunter is any indication. With the general reception of Primal being what it was, it's not hard to see why SCEA passed on publishing Studio Cambridge's sophomore PS2 effort, but luckily someone (that someone being Namco) decided it was worth putting out here.
Unlike Primal, Ghosthunter doesn't try too hard to be something massive with the storyline. Detroit cop Lazarus Jones and his partner Anna Steele are investigating a call at a local school that was the site of a grisly mass murder a few years back. Deep in the basement, ol' Laz comes across an odd machine and accidentally lets loose the contents of a massive storehouse that just happens to house a huge stockpile of ghosts, one of which melds with Jones, giving him the ability to see normally invisible spirits.
Now freed, they proceed to go about haunting the school and a handful of places all over the world, though none are quite as dangerous as medieval knight William Blacksmoor, who promptly abducts Steele, taking her to parts unknown. As Lazarus quickly discovers, it's up to him to get them all back, refilling the Array where they were stored and juicing up the ghost-powered computer and its AI so it can offer computery-type advice along the way. The computer, a digital version of its creator, Peter Richmond, teaches Jones how to capture ghosts by weakening them and then tossing a Ghost Busters-like pod that sucks them in and deposits them back into the Array.
The actual process of capturing ghosts takes up the bulk of the action in the game, and as such a handful of different weapons from ghost energy-powered beam rifles to shotguns and rocket launchers slowly become unlocked as you return more ghosts. The other 25 or so percent of the game is split between basic fetch quests and solving puzzles by allowing Astral, the scantily-clad ethereal hottie that possessed Lazarus, to explore the world by floating around to areas he can't. Capturing certain types of ghosts allows Astral to take on their powers, such as becoming solid, moving objects with her mind and possessing other ghosts.
The problem is, most of the sections that involve conjuring Astral are horribly unintuitive, with almost no clue as to what you're supposed to do. You can zip into first-person view and objects you can interact with pulse, but there's still no way to know exactly what you're supposed to Literally hours can be spent just trying to figure out where to go if you don't default to a walkthrough, and it completely kills the pacing of the game.
The rest of the game is, fortunately, much more fun. Capturing ghosts never really feels too repetitive, because the game strikes a nice balance between informative (and at times, hilarious) cutscenes, basic puzzles, and exploration to spread out the ghost capturing bits. The actual storyline, as basic as it is, does offer a number of twists and piecing together what happened with the murders in the school and the various ghosts is done with a storyteller's pacing.
By far, though, the best thing about the game is its visuals. Ghosthunter could easily be the most impressive game on the PlayStation 2, or at least would be if the game had kept up the level of design in the first (and incidentally longest) section of the game. Located in Louisiana's bayous, the game not only sets up a fantastic sense of mood with lazy sliding banjos playing in the background and intense, gloomy lighting, but conveys a sense of atmosphere that Primal only hinted at (amazingly, the games use the same underlying engine).
There's also a seriously talented set of artists at work at Studio Cambridge. One particular sequence late in the same bayous involves visiting a mansion where children have been captured. As you descend deep below the mansion, the game quickly becomes more and more surreal and twisted. Angles skew, the lighting becomes richer in deep greens, reds and blues. It's here where one of the coolest visual designs since Alice on the PC takes place.
After stepping into a hallway where cabinets literally in the floor and walls are lined with twisted dolls doused in eerie green light, stepping into a nearby room shows off a spinning colored nightlight where shapes dance across the walls. If you walk up to the light, the same shapes slide off Lazarus in an incredibly effective demonstration of how good the lighting really is in the game.
Not to be outdone, the texture and model detail is simply stunning. After playing literally hundreds of games on the PS2, I've never seen characters that were this detailed. Both in modeling and insane texture detail, but there are even smaller touches like realistic moving eyes and a cool effect where light actually reflects off of the lenses, giving eyes a frighteningly accurate, slightly glassy look. Watching some of the characters, like a dreadlocked hillbilly with a swiss cheesed cowboy hat, are such a sight to behold, you'll double-check to see if it really is the PS2 rendering all that detail.
The audio follows suit, with appropriately spooky screams and whooshes from the ghosts, and zappy lasers, though the shotgun feels a little flat. It's in both the voice acting and the stellar music that the game really hits its aural stride, though.
The music in particular never falls into one distinct feel; the aforementioned music that plays during the first Louisiana missions bounces from long, sliding guitar strums to more twisted children's songs (though it never falls back on anything familiar). Later on, a staccato snare drum report gives way to a more electronica-tinged driving, almost lumbering score, and towards the end of the game, builds into light string arrangements during some key parts. Throughout the whole soundtrack, there's a very mildly spooky trend, though the scariness of the game always takes a backset to more lighthearted parts or more action-heavy sequences. It shows an impressive level of control that I honestly wish more games would practice, and like the work that Bob and Barn did in Primal, is worthy of a stand-alone soundtrack.
The dialogue for Lazarus is witty, laced with sarcasm and a touch of arrogance, and the delivery is made all the more perfect by Rob Paulsen's (of Pinky and the Brain, The Tick and Animaniacs fame) performance. Everyone else, from the hillbillies to a British commander sound spot-on; it's honestly one of the best voice acting casts I've ever heard in the game.
Ghosthunter is just an all-around solid game. The visuals are second to none, the voice acting and music are stellar, and the underlying gameplay, while flawed in some parts (if I never see one of Astral's summoning circles again, I'll die a happy man), the overall experience is so damned good that you can't help but overlook the weaker parts of the game. For the sheer fact that writing this review has made me want to replay some particular parts of the game shows that the development team has accomplished more than just a simple game, they've created a genuine indelible experience here, and that something that few games can tout.
While it's just shy of being a must-have, there's enough here that just about everyone should give this a rental, and graphics whores or anyone with a penchant for experiencing truly surreal and wildly imaginative creations would do well to put this on their buy list. If for nothing other than those key moments that will live on in my mind, I'm infinitely grateful that Namco decided to grab onto something that would've probably otherwise never been gifted to American audiences. Do 'em a favor and go pick up a copy.
