Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another game breakdown. Video Game hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan are busting out the proton packs and hunting down Slimer as we dive into Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. Ryan was hijacked by legendary listener Morgau and was forced to play this asymmetrical multiplayer game and now it’s time to see what it’s all about, how the experience went, and what our thoughts are on this video game that puts you in the seat of either a ghost, or a ghostbuster! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona, Morgau, Disratory and Jwaf Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hello fellow gamers! Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP,

clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full-trance mediums, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis? Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We are three lifelong gamer dads. Today we are here to deep dive Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, I want to talk to Josh, but there is no Josh. There is only Zool. Are you the Keymaster? There we go. All right. And then joining Josh and me, he is the undisputed pickleball champion, defeating Josh decidedly six to four. It's Ryan. Yes! Ryan, did you put him up to this? ball champion defeating josh decidedly six to four it's ryan maybe i told you josh would not expect it this was perfect okay i wish you guys could have seen

his eyes right now he just lit up that i like this trend of you two having these little secret things going on and then springing them on me on the show i mean i kind of do like it but also uh ryan lost a few games too yeah i heard you were up big josh but then ryan said you majorly choked and lost the last few uh i got tired okay must be because he's 51 now oh all right that's it rematch rematch 1v1 me bro oh boy all right well That's it. Rematch. Rematch. 1v1 me, bro. Oh, boy. All right. Well, you know what?

We are here to talk about Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed. This is a deep dive that's been a long time coming. We've been able to jump in this game and play it quite a bit. Josh, do you want to remind our listeners, or maybe tell them if they haven't heard the pre-dive, why is it that we're covering this game? Oh, we just love Ghostbusters, guys. who doesn't want to play a ghostbusters game uh no so the reason that we are covering ghostbusters spirits unleashed is because morgal went legendary and hijacked a host and exercised his rights. Oh, right. To pick a game for one of us to play,

hijacked a host. More gal picked Ryan to play Ghostbusters spirits unleashed. We did our reveal episode on that a little while back. You can go check that out. But more gal picked Ryan because he said, listen, Ryan claims to love all multiplayer games. This is a game that me and my buddies played a lot. We had a ton of fun with it. Morgal felt

like it was drastically under known as a game. None of us had ever heard of it before then. And so we all jumped in. Now, normally we don't all jump into a game that somebody gets picked to play, but in this one, being that it's a multiplayer game, we said, you know what? Let's all just check it out. We'll play with Ryan. We'll have some fun and we'll see amongst the three of us if this game lands or if it doesn't. So that is why we are covering this game. Thank you to Morgal for going legendary, supporting the show, and also throwing games at us that we've never heard of before or tried. Yeah. And we didn't leave Ryan out to dry. We jumped in, gave it the old college try. I will say Ryan played a lot more than we did. I think Ryan felt like he needed to be

the in-house expert. I think Josh and I played enough just to be able to talk about the game and to know what it is we definitely played several matches here i was kind of curious to ask you guys before we actually start talking about the game what is your guys relationship to the ghostbuster movies like did you watch them growing up are you very fond of them what do you think that's before my time wait being the being the resident youngster here no no i uh they they were a little bit before my time but i definitely did watch ghostbusters i loved the cartoons as a kid i you know it's definitely um an a thing an entity if you will that i i have been heavily invested in since i was a kid so it was

always cool and i mean the music's so great cue the music boom yeah no copyright infringement there yeah Okay. So as the resident old guy of the show, I love Ghostbusters, dude. And whether you love Ghostbusters or not, there is no denying that Ghostbusters is iconic pop culture. Yep. I mean, it is one of those things that carries through time. I know that there's a ton of people that have probably said,

yeah, I've never seen it. It holds up. It's really, really good. So for me, hearing about a Ghostbusters game got me very excited because I was like, oh, I love the Ghostbusters. And in the pre-dive, I remember saying, man, can you imagine if you get to shoot the proton packs and you've got the beams and you're trying to wrangle the ghost and stuff. Well, turns out that's in this game. It's all in there. See, it's kind of funny because for me, I've talked a little bit about my upbringing in a religious cult and anything with ghosts was strictly prohibited.

I was not allowed to watch or do anything Ghostbusters related. I was a good kid. I didn't rebel. I didn't sneak this stuff at friends' houses or anything like that. I remember really wanting to see the movie Casper when it came out in the 90s because I was in fifth grade or something. Oh, Christina Ricci. Yep. Nope. It's got ghosts. Can't do it. So I don't think I saw Ghostbusters until I was about

20 or 21. That is the first time I saw it. I have no nostalgia for Ghostbusters. I did not like it the first time I saw it, but it did grow on me later. I think at the time, I just didn't get Bill Murray humor, and that all came later. So for me, when I heard we were doing a Ghostbusters game, it definitely did not activate any nostalgia for me. And I was curious if that came into play for you guys. Ryan, you in particular, since you got chosen, were you like, oh, I love Ghostbusters. I can't wait to get in here. I did. Not as much as maybe some other things, but the thought of, like Josh said, shooting the proton pack, throwing out the traps,

being just in that world that you've watched for so many years it's just something cool and so you always hope and pray that they do it right you know like i want to be in this world but i want to be enjoyable and fun so yeah it was uh i was definitely excited to to to get into that so before we jump into the steam description here, we would like to ask everyone out there, if you have not already, just take a moment, rate our show five stars.

If you have an iPhone, leave a written review. And also if you like what we do and want to support our show and help keep it running, you can sign up for Patreon over at MultiplayerSquad.com. Starts at five bucks a month and then you will get bonus episodes. You'll get a shout out on the show discord perks all kind of stuff and if you go legendary like morgao you could also hijack one of us to play any game of your choosing so once again you can sign up at multiplayer squad.com

all right here's the steam description for ghostbustersleashed. This is a fun... I love when the description itself calls the game fun. This is a fun multiplayer game perfect for all skill levels. Four proton-pack wielding Ghostbusters attempt to catch a ghost haunting unique locations in asymmetrical multiplayer battles. As

players progress, they will unlock cosmetics and upgrades for both Ghostbusters and Ghosts to evolve their gameplay experiences. The look and feel will deliver to fans an immersive experience in the universe, allowing them to play out their Ghostbusting fantasies. Whether hunting or haunting, the game is easy to learn and fun to master. Alright, so I think that's a pretty good description. If our listeners out there are at all familiar with Dead by Daylight or Friday the 13th, this is exactly the same basic idea. You have a team of four Ghostbusters trying to capture a ghost,

and you have someone playing as the ghost trying to haunt the map and survive all the way to the end. Is that a fair description? Yep. Yeah, pretty much. Yep, it's 4v1 is your basic premise. Yeah. So let's start to break down gameplay. I think we should start with the perspective of the Ghostbuster, because in the very beginning, you have to play as the Ghostbuster. Four out of

the five players at all times are Ghostbusters. So let's go ahead and kind of start there. You can queue for a match. You can do private matchmaking with friends. You can do ghost bounties. You have daily and weekly challenges to earn XP and level up your Ghostbuster. You get to unlock cosmetics, stuff like that. So when you are a Ghostbuster, you pop into a match. And what do you just start doing? Like, what are you doing throughout the match? You're looking, looking for the ghost, man, you're a ghost buster.

There's a ghost that needs busting. So you got to find that ghost. And how does that work? How are you going to track a ghost down? Well, now these are wily ghosts and the ghosts have abilities. And one of those abilities is to hide or haunt an object. And, um, you can, Ghosts have abilities, and one of those abilities is to hide or haunt an object.

And you can Allah seek and destroy if I'm getting the game right, because I've never played it. But people will be familiar with Call of Duty, where maybe it makes you a bucket of paint, and you have to go and you have to hide somewhere on the map, and then the other team is trying to find everybody that's hiding. That is the premise for Ghostbusters. And as the ghost, you can haunt or possess these objects. Now, I'm going to get this wrong because there's haunting and there's possession and they're different. So forgive me for using them interchangeably there, but they actually are different.

But basically, you possess these objects and then you hide within them. The Ghostbusters think you're just a wet floor sign or a bucket of paint or any number of things that you can possess in the game and kind of hide from them. And they can track you down using their PKE meter, which is a ghost hunting tool, right? Sure. And it kind of just points in the direction and says, hey, there's some energy readings this direction. And as you run that direction, the readings will get stronger. And then ultimately, you can pinpoint where the ghost is and say, oh, it must be this right here. And then you've found the ghost. You can stun it using the PKE blast and then try to grab onto it with your proton packs and hopefully guide it into one of the traps.

Yeah. So you've got a few pieces of gear, and definitely in the beginning, you're immediately pulling out your PKE meter. Ryan, do you want to maybe talk a little bit more about how the PKE meter works? Because it'll point not just to the ghost, but it can also point to rifts so i feel like when you're the ghostbuster you're primarily running around with your pke meter until you have a reason to swap to other gear yeah playing as much as i did you can tell um especially if you were the ghost what kind of uh ghostbusters you were playing against because if they're just running around with their proton packs, you're like, okay, I'm golden.

You know? But the guys that would run with their PKE meters, they were good, man. They would, you'd search around, you'd get kind of a directional arrow that would lead you to either the rifts, which allow you to respawn as the ghost, or to the ghost itself.

So, as you go, it kind of gives you a hit meter on, you know, and it'll turn red when you're closer, closer, and then it'll just kind of go full red circle with all the arrows and like, you know, go haywire. Like, hey, there's a ghost right here or there's something, you know, otherworldly. So you would use that as go around.

Like Josh said, you can use it as a stun. If it is the ghost it will be stunned but um yeah use that pk mirror to to cruise around find that artifacts or the ghost to kind of stop the haunt of the facility you're at wherever you're going now i've played as the i think we've all played as the ghost and in a game like this, when it's 4v1, a lot of people want to be the one and play as the ghost. There is nothing more terrifying than watching a Ghostbuster come into your room with the PKE meter out because you know you're caught. That's the thing. It's like, I remember hiding from you guys and you guys have no clue where I am, right? I round a corner, I possess something

and it's like, you guys go running by. And then I watch and it's like, Ryan stops, pulls out his PKE meter and you see him turning all these directions. And I'm like, no, no, don't, don't, like just keep running. And then it's like, you see him home in on you and you're like, dang it.

And now you got to pop out of this object as the ghost in front of the Ghostbusters and try to run at that point. And that's a bad place to be as the ghost because they're instantly going to whip out the proton packs and start zapping your ghost butt. So it really did add that tension and that fear when you would see somebody running around with the PKE meter. Oh, 100%. So you're running around with the PKE meter oh 100 so you're running around with the pke meter basically to find something and then once you find the actual ghost the game does have a ping system and i would say this game heavily relies on voice comms if at all possible if you're just pinging in game i

think it's going to be pretty hard to capture the ghosts. So basically, once you find the actual ghost, we would basically start screaming and saying, the ghost is over here, and you'd start pinging it, and we would all try to run and catch up. And at that point, you're going to swap out your PKE meter for your proton pack. You pull out your beam. You can hit the ghost. And with that beam, it's kind of like a tractor beam. You can pull the beam in closer or further away. You can move it left and right. And you can throw down a ghost trap that you have to manually operate. So you throw down a trap. You have to turn it on.

Try to use your beam to get the ghost over the trap. And then they'll get sucked into the trap. And now you have caught the ghost. Now, the ghost can still respawn as long as there are rifts in the game. Yeah. So it is interesting that once the group finds the ghost, you almost have to try to work out a rotation like, okay, I'm going to stun the ghost with my PKE meter. But the problem is once you activate that stun, it has a really long cool down. I don't know exactly what it is, but you can't use your PKE meter at all.

So if you activate that stun, you have to make sure that you're making good use of it because if you don't capture the ghost, you're kind of running around for like 60 seconds and you can't really do anything because without that PKE meter, you have no clue where to head or what to do. So there's definitely a lot of teamwork.

And then similarly, your proton pack only works for so long. So it's definitely a lot of teamwork. And then similarly, your proton pack only works for so long. So it's a little bit of like, okay, Josh, do you got it? I'm going to let go. And then you can grab the ghost and then I can start, you know, quote unquote, reloading in order to activate it again. So this is kind of like the gameplay loop, right? And we'll get into ghost abilities in a minute, but you are using your meter, find the ghost, work as a team, try to stun lock it, try to get it into this trap, and then you're going to do that multiple times. Now, in order to win the match, you have to catch the ghost three times, or you have to destroy all the other rifts,

and then the ghost cannot respawn. Now now i thought this was kind of a little bit of an interesting mechanic but i will say destroying those rifts takes forever it takes a long time man i was actually surprised like when you so the rifts are embedded in just normal everyday items that are in these levels and these levels are fairly large and they are crampacked with stuff. So it's good for the ghost because the ghost could be hiding in any kind of object. It's good for hiding the rifts because again, a rift could be hidden inside a cup that's sitting on the table, a cardboard box, a mop bucket. I mean, it literally could be anything. And so there is a layer of strategy there that says, hey, we can

just find the ghost and try to capture him three times, or we can have somebody that is looking for the rifts. And once you find a rift, that is taking away a respawn for the ghost. So it basically accomplishes the same thing. The problem is, I feel like it takes longer to destroy a rift than it does to capture the ghost. Totally. This thing's got a lot of hit points, man. And it just takes a while. Even with three people all blasting that rift, there definitely is... You're just sitting there just holding your beam on that thing for 30, 45 seconds at times. Now, I will say they give you a little target that kind of pops up at some point. And if you aim for that target,

you kind of get bonus damage. It's like crits. Yeah, but it still takes a while. It's a little bit like Rust with chopping trees where they're like, you know what? This is kind of boring. So let's just give you a little X to aim for. And it'll cut down the tree a little quicker.

It's exactly the same idea. The problem is I think we would always get so focused if we found a rift that we would all just bundle up together, which made it very easy for a ghost to go create havoc off on their own or to even come up and very easily do an AOE attack, which, you know, we'll get into momentarily.

Now, as the Ghostbusters, you are running up against a clock here because the ghost is going around haunting the map. You can see on the top of your screen, there's a meter for how much it's haunted. And so you're trying to capture that ghost three times before they can finish haunting the map. And at the same time, as the ghost is haunting things, people are freaking out and getting scared. They're running for the exits. Part of what you can do as a Ghostbuster is a very odd little mini game where

you can try to stop someone from sprinting and kind of like talk them off the ledge. And a little meter starts to fill and you have to try to like hit the button when it hits a little space. So it's like a timing quick time event. And if you succeed that, then you basically buy like 30 seconds where that person won't start running for the exits. And I did notice in a lot of our matches, I think if people don't really understand how the game works, we had matches where like Josh was the ghost and Ryan and I are actually trying to track him down and we have two teammates that are doing nothing but calming down citizens for the entire match and you're never gonna catch the ghost when you have teammates doing that so this

game does it does also kind of depend on like your squad makeup if you have really poor teammates sometimes you can tell right away oh we're not gonna win this match yeah the only times i would calm people was you know after that uh pke meter uh stun blast and i'm like well i can't find them i'm gonna go calm people down i'd look for the you know the orange you know people that are super freaked out and calm them down but i did i did like some of the uh the voiceover work they did for that like what they were talking oh is this your first you know ectoplasmic experience or you know something crazy oh you almost died well you won't dad today you know probably you know and just different things like that i thought it was kind of neat and funny the way they put those in but yeah there's nothing

wrong don't worry about it this is totally normal we it under control. This is my third one today. You know, it's just stuff like that. So it was funny to see how they kind of put that little bit of flair, you know, in there as far as some comedic kind of responses to calm the people down. Did it feel like a chore to you guys with the calming down of the civilians? Because I know as the ghost, if you can get the civilians to flee, that's one of the best ways that you can like up the level of the area so the ghost is legitimately really trying to to scare people but it kind of

felt like a chore to me it's almost like if i was going to make an analogy to like another game it's like washing the dishes and overcooked you know it's like this really isn't fun i get that it's necessary but i know i did not find the calming the civilians part to be enjoyable at all like i get it from a strategy like hey you're trying to calm down the situation that this ghost is causing but that was one of those mechanics that to me was like the generator in dead by Daylight, where it's just like, dude, this is not a fun gameplay mechanic at all. It just takes too long, and it's not creative enough. Out of everything in the game, I would say that's probably the weakest point. I don't know how to necessarily make it better, but it was also frustrating because sometimes you were chasing civilians,

and they're just faster. Yeah. And you can't catch them so sometimes i would be like trying to stop someone wait for me i got little legs they're leading me on a wild goose chase for 20 full seconds now they finally stop now i'm spending 15 seconds doing this mini game just to buy 30 seconds of calmness and so it didn't always really feel like it was really worth it i kind of feel like people are going to get scared and eventually you're going to kind of miss them anyway. And so for better or worse, I just kind of would ignore civilians unless I had nothing else to do. Like Ryan mentioned. Yeah. Now, one other funny element of this is that you do have to be careful with your beams because it will not just track the ghost.

It'll destroy things on the map. Yeah. So similar to like, you know, the Ghostbusters movies, you're going to be held accountable for damage you do to the place. And it does keep a running track of how much damage you've caused. And one of my favorite things about games like this, and I will give Ghostbusters a lot of credit here. I think there's nothing more fun than a match ending

and you get to see everyone's stats and it kind of breaks them down where you get to see like most damage to rifts. Most times you helped someone else, you know, track the ghost and things of that nature. And I always loved looking at how much damage was done to the map. Most damage, maybe.

Because inevitably someone's like, you know,000 to $10,000. I'm just like, what on earth are you doing in this match? I've never caused that much damage. I just started blasting, boys. Yeah. There's a little bit of that going on. Ghostbusters may or may not have a large base of younger children playing, and I would get into matches, and I'd see them just not even have their pke meter

out and they were just blasting every single thing they could and i'd just be laughing walking behind them i'm like oh man hey if you destroy everything there's nowhere the ghost can hide maybe maybe that's maybe that's the strategy big brain big brain all right well we're gonna take a short break and we'll come right back and talk about what it's like to be the ghost. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Stay two nights and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit BestWestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

What's behind the Blue Cow quality milk logo? Proud Canadian dairy farmers. Is Canadian milk produced to high standards? You bet. And what about sustainable farming practices? It's our commitment. We're behind the Blue Cow logo. Dairy farmers of Canada. All right, we are back. Let's switch and talk a little bit about the perspective of being the ghost. Now, I will fully admit, I only played as the ghost once, and that was intentional. I hate playing that side of asymmetrical games. I do not want to be the one off by myself. That's like the weirdest thing to me, man.

I know, I love it. I love it. I'm queuing ghost, I'm queuing ghost, and Paul's like, you can have it. I don't want it. No, not at all. Out of the three of us, I was the one who'm Q and ghost. I'm Q and ghost. And Paul's like, you can have it. I don't want it. No, not at all. Out of the three of us, I was the one who was the ghost first. And you guys are talking to each other and chasing me down.

I'm like, how is this fun for me? Like, I want to be part of the group, the team environment of, of, you know, busting that ghost.

I did not like playing as the ghost at all. You guys are going to be able to talk far more about it than I can. But when not like playing as the ghost at all you guys are going to be able to talk far more about it than i can but when you do play as the ghost there are several ghosts that you can choose from there's actually a lot i didn't count i think it's like 40 some somewhere right around there they all have different stats and attributes uh when you play as the ghost you do start moving around the map you have different abilities that you can use. I think you have three abilities total, but as you level up, you can swap them out because you'll unlock new abilities. To give you a couple ideas, you can do one ability where

you summon a bunch of spirit minions that just kind of immediately spawn next to you. They start creating some havoc. They really are just there to distract the ghostbusters you can possess inanimate objects like josh mentioned like that wet floor sign or a security camera or something and you also can can have like an ultimate ability which is where you like if you're slimer you can do this mass aoe where you slime everyone who's within the area of effect and basically if you get slimed it's almost as if you're like down but not out you have to like brush all the slime off you or someone else can come help you do that as well to do it quicker and then you kind of go back to playing the game like normal um you know i felt like running around as the ghost i probably just didn't do it enough

i found it to be a little bit boring i felt like with the cool downs i didn't have enough stuff to do so was i just playing it wrong or like how did you guys feel as you played it wrong you were 100 because i loved on that on that for like you said you were the first one to play and i i had been on for a little bit before you guys hopped in with me and so you were able to join my match and then that's you know lo and behold paul becomes the ghost but he hadn't done that tutorial so then i haunted a million chairs that's all i remember that's the thing that's what i have in here in my show notes with the quotes because right away paul's like there's only there's only three buttons i only have three attacks and then he's like well i haunted a bunch of chairs here you go yep and when ryan walked in that room because i didn't say that

ryan just starts laughing and he's like this room's full of haunted chairs because i'm like i don't know what else to do i'm just trying to like run away and haunt this building and i don't know which is kind of the right thing to do. Because each section of each base or level, if you will, they have a haunt meter alone from the major haunt meter. So each one, you can haunt if you're on the hospital area, the surgical room, then the lobby. So there's different areas. It's divided.

Yeah, it's divided. So the more you haunt, the better. But yeah, man, the ghost is one super op it's so overpowered compared to the ghostbusters when you know how to use it i learned that uh specifically playing with morgao and uh his buddies um i got absolutely curb stomped after i thought i was gonna be pretty dang good after like you know 10 15 hours in and then um yeah it's just it's it's one of those things that once you learn how to how to do it you learn to go and and where to move around how to move up and down throughout the facilities like it's the ghost has a lot to

offer that you don't learn right away until you kind of play it a little bit see i and this is no shade of paul either because obviously like i said he didn't like he just kind of skipped through the tutorial for the ghost you were the very first one and you just kind of went i don't get being the ghost yeah we wanted to get started and then i remember being the ghost the first time and i was like oh it's finally time and i i was like i am gonna win as the ghost. You two are not going to catch me. And then you two started whining because you're like, Josh, this is so boring. Because I'm hiding from you guys. You guys would find me.

And then I would escape. And then I would float around a corner and instantly possess an object. And then you guys would come hot on my tail and just run straight past me. And I would just kind of rinse and repeat that over and over and over again. And then you guys were like, well, this is kind of boring because we can't find you. And then I started realizing that, oh, I can attack you guys too. Like the ghost has abilities to kind of fight back. And then I made it fun to just kind of slap you both around a little bit, where it was like, I'd slime you, I'd use an ability fun to just kind of slap you both around a little bit where it was like,

I'd slime you, I'd use an ability, you can kind of almost like manually attack. And if you, the ghost can hurt the Ghostbusters. It's not, I mean, not hurt, but he can slime them to where they're kind of down for like 10 seconds and incapacitated, which then gives you time to get away. I thought playing the ghost was a lot of fun because you're playing a high-risk game of hide and seek at that point. The way that being the ghost works is you have a certain amount of energy that you can expend to either haunt things or use your ghost abilities. But as that energy drains, the only way to make it come back is to possess an object. And so you actually have to hide inside something to regenerate that energy. And that gives the Ghostbusters a chance to kind of catch up to you if they're smart using their PKE meters. And that's where I say that terror of watching Paul

or Ryan come in with the PKE meter and realize that they are going to find me. Like, when do I jump out? When can I get away? Really added a lot to that. You know, and, and so you do unlock other types of ghosts. There's nine actual ghost types. And then in each one of those, as you level up the ghost,

you kind of just get a different skin for it. So I think there's actually like 27 different like skins for ghosts, but there are nine ghosts that you can actually level up. And they have different abilities. Some of them haunt faster. Some of them do more damage to the Ghostbusters, stuff like that. But yeah, for me, I thought being the ghost was a lot of fun, unless you came up against people that absolutely knew what they were doing, like Ryan did. Because then it's like, wait a minute, now I get to see what happens when there's a coordinated team. And it really doesn't change things coordinated team. That was the problem with your first game as a ghost, Josh, Ryan and I were so bored because

we had two teammates who literally were doing nothing. Yeah. And Ryan and I were like, we, we can't keep you enough to trap you and you would just slime us and then run away. And Ryan and I are pinging stuff and our teammates aren't helping at all. And so you absolutely won. I don't think we even trapped you a single time. And then the very next game, you were the ghost again. But Ryan and I had good teammates. And I think we busted you.

I swear, I think it was like 120 seconds and the game was over. So it is weird that you can have some matches that are really competitive. But I felt like so many of our matches were pretty lopsided and i'm guessing that's just that happens more as you're new and i think ideally if you can play with a lot of people of the same skill level but there's not like an mmr system there's just not enough people who play it but if a lot of people did i think having like an mmr system would make this game play a lot better yeah yeah it's it wasn't fun to and that is very true to defend y'all's honor the match where i just was the ghost and just crushed you guys you had two people that

had zero clue what they were doing so it literally was just paul and ryan which is half a team and i could we didn't know what we you guys when I wanted to. So it really does matter in that regard. But I would say that if you have a coordinated team of Ghostbusters with a ghost that knows what they're doing, that is where the height of the game really shines at that point. Because you are doing strategy versus strategy at that point because you are doing like strategy versus strategy at that point. Yeah. Now, another big part of the gameplay kind of swinging back to the Ghostbusters side of things. You do have a gadget that you get to equip and take with you on a mission.

And there are four different gadgets in total. You start out with a grappling hook. So a lot of these levels, you know, they're vertical. You can pull out a grapple hook. It works relatively slow, but it saves you time so you don't have to go run to the stairs. So if the ghost is floating up to the second floor, you can kind of catch up relatively quickly. Later, you can unlock and equip a radar pack, which has like a small radius, but it'll highlight if any ghosts go through it. There are ionizer pods, which release gas that slow down ghosts. It only has three charges,

but you can recharge them at the little, what do you call it? Like at the gear cart. Yeah, at the very beginning. And then finally you can unlock ecto goggles, which are kind of like green night vision, but they let you see ghosts and rifts through walls now for me i only played enough to unlock the radar pack i didn't get to unlock the latter

two but i was kind of curious to hear from you guys how'd you feel about this i liked it um i didn't use it as much as i probably should have but mainly because i was always trying to be the ghost but the radar one was my favorite. You could put that in those corridors, and then it'll just be kind of eyes on scene when you're not there. And it'll just, you know, if you're the ghost and you go through that and it pings you, you're spotted. And then everyone knows, okay, the ghost is in this section. So that was the one big thing, too, as far as, like, the grappling hook as well.

Like, you're the Ghostbuster. You've got to run up the stairs you got to circle around this corridor and to get over just to that one spot where somebody had just pinged the ghost the ghost can just fly up or fly down go to another section just like that so having that little bit of extra time to get up there is always also a good advantage. But again, man, that Ghost is OP, top tier. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I like any kind of game where you get gear upgrades and attachments and things like that. And this game does have that.

The more you play, you're going to unlock new gear that's going to help you and make you better. You're also going to unlock attachments and modifiers for your proton pack and your PKE meter and things like that too. It's like, you get longer arms on the PKE meter or you get a stronger blast, but you don't have as much range and things like that. So I really like that in the gear system, it allows you to customize how you want to play because then, and we did not get to the higher levels on this, but I mean, I can see with like more gallon,

his buddies getting to a place where it's like, okay, I am the ghost buster. If I get my proton beam on this ghost, I'm going to land them in the trap. You know, Paul is the guy that can help find the ghost. You know,

Ryan is the guy that can chase him down ghost. You know, Ryan is the guy that can chase him down and make sure he doesn't get away or something like, like I could see actually utilizing the different gear for different strategies and things like that. And I always like options. Okay. Let's talk about that for a little bit. So for gear customization, that's where you get to swap out like almost as if they were attachments to your gear. So there's four different pieces of gear that you can use. You have your particle thrower, your proton pack, your PKE meter, and your ghost trap. So when you start in the beginning, everyone has the same basic gear,

but then as you play more and more, you're going to be able to customize it the way you like to play. So one of the things I really like about this system is that in order to unlock certain options, you have to complete research contracts. And so you can see on a list, okay, if I want to unlock the ability to swap that part of my proton pack, I'm going to have to complete these objectives. And it might be something like stun 16 ghosts with your PKE meter and do 2000 damage to rifts. So it gives you like a little bit of incentive to maybe play a certain way. So that way you get to unlock a piece of gear. It kind of helps break up a little bit of the monotony. And then of course, once you unlock that, you can go ahead and activate it. Now

you're going to take on another research contract and start working on the next one. I actually thought that that was a pretty fun system. The only thing I would say against it is it's a little bit like in Fortnite where you get your missions of the match. And now it's like, well, am I focusing so much on my missions that I'm putting myself at a disadvantage of winning the match? So I don't want someone to ignore us trying to capture a ghost because they want to go do 2000 damage to a rift but at the same time i do like that it provides that extra you know flavor of the match of whatever you're trying to accomplish provides progression and that way it's

not just a 4v1 okay this ghost is terrible the ghostbusters won handily or vice versa at least you're there's something that you can kind of play towards and feel like you're making improvements to your guy and stuff like that it's funny you mentioned that i would i may or may not have been playing fortnight yesterday with my son and then i'd tell him hey hey jack come hold on i gotta get in this suv i gotta drive 200 200 meters in this suv yeah and he's like what right it's like hold on i gotta do this so that's funny you mentioned that but yeah i i yeah i love all the um the different kind of attachments to different gear customizations i think that is what made a lot of cool features within the game because that showed heavily when i played morgao and his

friends because i was you know after you guys played for a while, I, you know, did my due diligence and I kept playing and I was feeling real good about myself as a ghost. So I get on with them and you can upgrade your trap so it has a longer battery, a better ghost. Or remote detonation. Remote detonation, ghost suction. Your PKE meter is a better stun your

your uh plasma blaster can hold on to the ghost better all of these crazy things i could get out of anything i could go anywhere i was you know because when you get caught in the tractor plasma cannon beam thing uh you can tap a button and you can break free as the ghost i could do that no problem with anyone else i got on with them they're all max leveled all tricked out and i was just in an instant boom they'd get me just throw me and they're like get this trash out of here so yeah it was it was very humbling and it also shows how much like when you have a coordinated team like you guys said earlier and then they upgraded gear what that can can do, though, to the gameplay. So here you were beating up on the little league baseball team,

and now all of a sudden you're going against major league pitchers. It's a lot harder. I felt real good about myself. It'll humble you quick. Yeah. I think that's part of the fun of this kind of game, and it's also part of the frustration, though, too, is the problem. Because we played all together. I think the three of us,

we probably played 10 matches together, if not a little bit more. And Ryan, I know you dove in a lot more than Paul and I did with you. But even in that small sample set, we had terrible teammates as the Ghostbusters, where you couldn't do anything. And the Ghost basically just got to run around willy-nilly and do whatever the heck the Ghost wanted and eventually haunt the place. And there was nothing you could do. We had Ghosts that were really good and we couldn't ever find. And so we spent 15 minutes of the match just running around going, where is this stupid ghost? Like, why can't we find him kind of thing?

And that's not fun either. But then we would get good teammates and a good ghost. And it's like, oh, okay, this is the way this game is supposed to work. But then we'd get the crazy people that would like just show up out of the blue where we're playing one round and there's a ghost that is just open mic talking the entire time and it was the most odd surreal gaming experience that i have had in a long time you know what i mean and it's like the fact that we got a story like that out of this game just is bananas man like all we can hear is this talking and apparently the ghost can open mic talk to the ghostbusters so we're just hearing this non-stop prattle

of a guy talking in the background with some like four-year-old kids singing into the microphone and just making noises and we're like what is what is that? Like, what's going on? I think they were playing like next to a TV or something because they had like Fox News or something in the background. Like you could tell from the cadence, like you couldn't necessarily make out all the words, but it was some kind of TV program. But then you hear like parents talking over it

and it was just a hot mic the whole time. And you and I were i were i mean all three of us were like what is going on in this match and we did curb stomp that kid that was a pretty quick match away by open by talking we could hear the direction that he was all the time yeah but then we started just listening and being like what is like what is happening in this kid's world right now that's not an exclusive event either i can say i put in probably uh maybe 20 ish almost 20 showers on my account and then my son played as well so i was playing with him and then i'd hop over to the playstation and play there so in probably another

10 or 15 it's very common with younger kids hot mic man and you just got every background noise parents yelling uh yelling at the dogs yelling at the kids it's just open mic season on on this game for sure oh i hate that if i'm in pub g and someone's got an open mic i just immediately quit or mute yeah yeah i i don't put up with it all right the game does have some character customization. We don't have to spend very much time on it. It's pretty rudimentary, but you can swap out like hairstyle, hair color, a mustache, sideburns, you know, it's of its time. I will say I really loved my guy's flowing green hair. It was enormous. I just wanted to make myself look a little different. That way we knew like what Ghostbuster was who. So I felt like my giant wavy green hair kind of gave that away um but other than that i didn't feel much need to

like swap out much on my character no it was kind of whatever i had a pretty sweet there well i had a pretty sweet flowing mullet but uh yeah next time i got on my son loved this feature because he would just every time i'd get on the game my character looked different and i'm like dude what'd you do so he very much enjoyed the customization probably why he likes like you know fortnite and different things like that you can kind of different skins but yeah it was something that was cool to have but it's not like a main feature i wouldn't think yeah all right let's go and take our last break and then we'll come back and kind of summarize our thoughts on the game all right i guess there is one last thing that i should mention here the game does have a story mode the problem with this is that we all started playing at the same time and everyone just constantly talks you so there was a zero percent chance any of us were going to be able to follow

this story even when you guys were kind of mentioning the ghost tutorial everyone's talking and at the time we also hopped on with ace of shame for a bit and so i was trying to pay attention to the story at first and finally i just started skipping all the cut scenes there are a total of five acts there is voice act work from ernie hudson and dan akroyd so they did get the big guns however i don't know what this story is about at some point like ernie hudson's possessed by something and he's tied to a chair and i i have no clue what's going on i just saw little snippets but if you're into the storytelling there is a little bit of a campaign that you play through and then once the story part is done then you just keep playing matches from that point on.

All right. So to just summarize our thoughts overall, did you guys have fun? Was it just meh? Did you think it was a bad game? What are your overall thoughts? I, this one's tough because I can see there being fun in this game.

And when we played, I did have fun. But it feels like a game that just never quite caught on. And it's tough because I can see if you have five friends that are willing to pick it up and all play together. I think you're going to have a good time. And I think that's what Morgal kind of experienced with his friend group, playing it with randoms and just trying to dive into this game, either as a solo player or even just, you know, with the three of us, I think it lends itself more to the awkward times and the poor matchmaking and the little kids that don't understand.

And it's like any team-based game where you have to rely on other people, if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, it really detracts from that experience. And so I think we experienced the highs of this game and the lows of this game. And while the highs were really fun fun and I really enjoyed being the ghost and going up against like you two. And I remember, I still remember the match where you two had like really good teammates

and I thought I was going to whoop y'all as the ghost. And then I didn't. And then like, you know, probably towards the last three quarters of that match, you guys got your act together and just wrecked me after that. And so I think for me, it's just kind of meh, not because of the game itself, because I think there's a lot to enjoy on the game,

but just the, you don't know what kind of experience you're going to encounter. And that's the problem because you're either going to have a really terrible time with this game, or you're going to have a really good match that kind of says, Hey, this is what this game or you're going to have a really good match that kind of says hey this is what this game could be but that's few and far between unless you're bringing your own friend group so for me i think i found it kind of meh overall what about you ryan that's fair no i i totally understand that i know that some of the most fun i had was in the beginning when we all played together and we were just laughing look at all paul's chairs you know floating in the air and stuff so i i get that it's definitely it doesn't hit the same when it's just randoms and you're just playing with people you're not you don't know um i i i will say i did

i put a lot of time into this game and i did enjoy myself a lot of the time it was it was kind of uh 50 50 shot whether i'd have hot mics with little kids or a decent team i loved being the ghost so i would always just try to be the ghost but you know either way you you would you would get thrown into the middle of matches a lot too so oh yeah you know you would you would get i just don't think there's a backfill yeah big enough of a player base for people to back out and stuff, so you just get thrown into the middle of a match. But it also kind of made a challenging aspect for me. So, okay, I only got two guys worth a dang.

Let's capture this ghost. These other kids just running in circles, shooting everything. I'm going to still capture this ghost and win, and then I have a little victory to myself. So I did enjoy it i thought there was a lot of really neat aspects to it i thought the map kind of depth was was cool um the prison the the library or the museum and you know all these different areas i thought had a lot of cool little features throughout them so overall i thought it was a really good game not great but it was it was

very good game and i could see how somebody with the right player base and a group of friends could just grow to absolutely love this if they kind of all play it together yeah so when we recorded the pre-dive i had mentioned that i don't like asymmetrical games in general. I've played Dead by Daylight. I tried Friday the 13th. I mean, I do enjoy Keep Talking and Everyone Explodes and Among Us, but those are almost like a different, that's more like a party game than an asymmetrical game. So I was kind of curious to see if this one would grab me because none of the other ones did.

I will say that this game, there was a lot that impressed me. I had zero bugs and glitches. It ran very smoothly. It was a little deeper than I thought it would be with the contracts and the gear customization and the leveling up. There was a little bit more to it than I thought there would be. And I thought that all that stuff ran really great. So I don't think it's the game's fault. I kind of had overall a meh experience, but I think that's just more that this is just not my genre. This is not a game made for me. So I don't know that there's an asymmetrical game out there that I would like, because out of all the ones I've tried, it's just not my jam. And I don't think that's Ghostbusters fault. It's just my personal preference. Now on the pre dive, which I did listen to before we recorded this, Josh, you explicitly said, now, Ryan, if Paul and I play

a few matches and we go cool, but have fun, Ryan, you're the one that has to play this and that's kind of exactly what happened josh and i we played a lot but we did kind of bail on ryan after those whatever you know 10 to 15 matches it was kind of all right ryan go with god have fun tell us tell us your final thoughts that is that is definitely what happened i did also just literally a few days ago, I was messing around with some stuff, and I'm like, hey, Paul, I'm on this one guy. Do you want to help me beat him? And he goes, eh, not really.

It's definitely enough for me, dog. That was exactly. I'm good. Yeah, totally lukewarm. I would not say I disliked this game. It just doesn't really provide what i'm looking for in multiplayer experiences there there were some high highs like josh mentioned and some low lows on the whole i don't think this is a game that i would pop back into even if you guys were both like hey we got two of us on do you want to join i'd

probably be like only if i was really bored legitimately i in this bear is mentioning again because i don't think there's anything wrong with the game itself in this case like like the game does everything kind of right man it's you know it's fun it's got progression it's got customization it can provide laughs and things like that. I think part of the problem is kind of like what happened with Titanfall. This is a multiplayer game with no player base. And the problem with that is like, I'm looking right now, there are 12 people playing this game on Steam right now. I mean, you need people to be playing an asymmetrical multiplayer game to have good matches and

things like that. So I almost wonder if this game just didn't... It's kind of like DOA at this point. And that's a little sad because there is a decent game to be had, but I just don't see anybody picking this game up right now on a whim and then finding themselves having like a great experience with it. Again, if you have five people that are willing to pick it up and commit to it, I think there's a lot of fun to be had there because it's not the game's fault. It's just that it relies on having a certain number of players and it doesn't have that. So it's either going to fill it with bots or it's going to fill it with small children whose parents bought in this game, not understanding what it is. And now you're in like an open mic situation or something like that. And again, the game itself is fine. It's just

that it has no player base and that detracts from other aspects of it, unfortunately. A little bit like how much we loved the original iteration of the cycle, but because there were only 21 of us on at any given moment, it's going to be tough long-term. Maybe these asymmetrical games, you just have to play at release. When everyone's at the same level

and leveling up together, that's probably the best way to experience a game like this. Trying to hop in now is maybe just a little bit too late, even though the game's not been out very long, but just the fact that the player base is kind of small, that's just where you get those,

you know, really good or really bad matches. All right. Now we also made some predictions about where this would go on our leaderboards. I don't know if both of you guys want to put it on your leaderboard or not. I kind of feel like I probably didn't play it enough, but I'll still kind of tell you like what my inkling is at this point. Josh, you said, and I thought this was very funny because even in the moment, you said, I'm being optimistic. I'm probably going to eat my words, but you thought that

you would have this above among us at number 63 on your leaderboard. So if our listeners don't know, you can go to videogamerspod.com. Did I say that? 63? Yeah, you said 63. Really? Wow, okay. So at videogamerspod.com, we each have a leaderboard of every game that we've done a deep dive on.

And it's kind of like, you know, where do we rank this game against all the others? So Josh, you were thinking you might have it around the likes of among us, rim world, high on life, killing floor two. Did that end up being the case or would you end up having it above or below that?

I will just say this. I'm with you, Paul, where I did not play enough of this. I mean, we played honestly 10 to 15 matches total. And then you and I both bailed out. And I will say that while I can appreciate what the game is,

I don't think I played enough to officially rank this game. Yeah. Because, again, I don't want to slander it and then say, hey, this game's not fun. And then it's like, well, you never really got to experience it in its heyday or at the height of things or when you get this gear, it really opens things up and stuff like that. I will say that I don't want to officially rank it, but if I had to, it's probably going to be in the mid nineties for me. Like at that point, it's just too wide of a

swing with getting good teammates or getting bad teammates or getting bots. And it affects both sides. If you're the ghost and you don't have good Ghostbusters, it is a long 20-minute match of sheer boredom with people that don't know what they're doing. And it's the exact same thing with the Ghostbusters. If you don't have a good team and you have a ghost that knows what they're doing, on the flip side, with the kid that had the open mic, that wasn't fun either. It a seven minute match and all we did was just chase him down and then just trap him and so i i there's just too much variance there and and it tends to lead towards the not fun side of things more often than it leads towards the fun side for me whoa whoa whoa you're gonna put it below humanity um i was actually using left for dead too as my

reference point and i will play left 4 Dead 2 over this game. That one was for Paul. That one was for Paul. Yeah. I don't know how Ryan turned so hard against humanity. I feel like now Ryan is using it as the baseline for worst game ever made. That's good. You need that.

It's such a good game. Who picked that one? That was Madness, right? Didn't Madness pick that for his legendary? Yeah, I think that was Marvel Madness, maybe. Oh, poor humanity. I love humanity. Yeah. Similarly, I actually predicted higher than Josh. I thought I would have it near Killing Floor 2 around 56. I would definitely have it a bit lower. I would not go nearly as

low as Josh. I've always kind of said, once you hit the 80s for me, that's when I say I actively dislike playing this game. I did not feel that way about Ghostbusters. I would probably have it somewhere in the early 70s, kind of like below Deathloop, It Takes Two, and I would have it pretty close to like Knockout City, The Cave, 12 Minutes. I'd have it in that range. I had fun with it at times, but just nothing all that special, you know, kind of like a 6 to 6.5 out of 10. You know, not bad, but nothing to write home about. Ryan, you're the one that gets to officially place this.

Your leaderboard is a little bit shorter because you joined our show, you know, less than a year ago. You've got 34 games on your leaderboard. You thought it would end up close to Subnautica or Halo Infinite at 20 or 21. where are you going to officially place ghost busters dang i'm pretty spot on with that um where i'm gonna go because i i did with the amount of hours i put in and once i finally kind of got what the game was about and you look past the other little things that we talked about um i did really enjoy this game so i'm gonna put it at 20 so just below deep rock i thought deep

rock was just a little bit better it um i i enjoyed it just a little bit more but i i did really enjoy this ghostbusters game thank you morg Morgau, for the pick. It's a game I never, ever would have played on my own, but it was a cool experience and it was cool to play with my son. I know you mentioned that's part of the reason that you picked it. I had a blast overall. I, unlike these guys, if somebody

like even Morgau, if they hit me up, hey, you want to play again, I'd booted up. So it was, it was something cool. It was something different. I'm not a big asymmetrical guy, but,

um, it was a lot, there's a lot of fun to be had if you have it in the kind of the right kind of setup. Yeah. I think you have to have the right friend group that's committed to playing with you and you're going to have a much better time. I think that's totally fair. All right. Any closing thoughts, anything else to say about the game? yep and you're going to have a much better time i think that's totally fair all right any closing

thoughts anything else to say about the game i think we did a pretty good job hitting all the major mechanics and whatnot yeah um ryan i noticed you have subnautica 22 do you want to move that up any like that sounds ghostbusters that sounds about right i'm just curious it'll just it'll probably just keep sinking like my ship dang it just like the atlas is that what it was called i don't know whatever it was it's a crime the cyclops cyclops yeah yeah oh who would have thought you have to bring more batteries i was going to say something similar josh does that hurt your heart a little bit really no shade to ghostbusters spirits unleash but to have that game above seeing it above Subnautica? No shade to Ghostbusters, Spirits Unleashed, but to have that game above Hollow Knight and Subnautica,

to me, it really does plunge a cursed dagger into my soul. Listen, I'm a multiplayer guy. You know that. You are. You are. That's true. I love it. All right.

Well, we want to say thank you once again to Morgau for going legendary. We love having you in our server. You know, we really appreciate all the support you've shown the show. We want to say thank you to all of our listeners for checking out this episode. As a reminder, please take a moment to rate our show five stars. Leave a written review in Apple podcast swing by multiplayer squad dot com. Sign up for Patreon with those bonus episodes and And make sure to hit the follow button.

That way, none of our episodes pass you by. I think that covers everything here for today. So thank you so much to everyone. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya! I've been slimed! See ya, everybody.