Watching or playing, Ghostbusters the video game is cool

There were plenty of copies of Ghostbusters when I walked into Blockbuster. I was just returning Prototype when I remembered that Jonathan reminded me that this game was coming out. In it's early development I didn't care too much, but when it began taking shape with the help of Dan Akyroyd, Bill Murray, and the other who were apart of the Ghostbusters movies and it would essentially be Ghostbusters III, I immedietely knew it was only a question of how good this game would be.
You play as the nameless rookie who's joined the Ghostbusters team. The only reason they've hired you in the first place is to have a guniea pig to test out Egon's new experimental (and potentially explosive) gear. From then on, we have the perfect way to convey the game as the movie, Ghostbusters III, while still partaking in the story like Ghostbusters the video game. A new ghostly menace rears it's ugly head into New York City, starting with some familiar ghosts like Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, working it's way up into the culmination of a new enemy worthy of Gozer's fame.

The Good

• The story is top notch, the writing is like watching the original Ghostbusters, and the humor is exactly as you'd expect coming from Dan Akyroyd and Harold Ramis. I rented this as a game, but it's more like enjoying Ghostbusters III with you sharing an integral part of the story.
• On that note, everything retains their look and feel from the movies. The ghosts are hilarious caricatures of their human lives, the Stay Puft Man is still hilariously large, and the cast still whip out quotes like a blockbuster movie.
• This game can also be genuinely creepy on your first play through. This game is not a horror game, but walking down a dark hallway as the surroundings begin to reflect the sinister nature of the specter I'm tracking down, with her figure darting in and out in the distance. Ghostbusters was always more of a comedy/action movie to me, but this game has it's creepy moments too.
• Everything is destructible. Nearly everything can be blasted by your trusted proton stream or slime blaster and everything has a certain weight of physics. It feels so natural for this to be in place since the Ghostbusters were always accused of wanton destruction of public property, so just letting her rip for the saking of being a public nuisance if hilarious.
  

The Bad

• It feels like a bunch of things important to a game took a smal backseat ride to the narrative. They don't ruin the game entirely, but they're certainly annoying to the game overall.
• The game is a third person perspective "shooter". I put quotations on it because when I think of shooters, I think of squeezing off some bullets into a target and putting them down while I move on. It's different here though. You're not shooting a gun, but essentially a laser, and the the laser wears down the ghost's health until you can capture them. In a normal shooter, you put your crosshairs over and shoot. In here, you need to hold the crosshairs over the target and blast it with the proton stream, but it doesn't necessarily phase the ghost. It's kind of annoying as the ghost darts around the room while you try to hold your beam over them to weaken them.
• You'll sometimes get lost in the maps, even though they're usually linear, but you don't have a map to help getyour bearings.

Now it's certainly not the perfect game, but but as a sequel to Ghostbusters II, it's absolutely satisfying. The story might feel a little like a linear game story, but the voice acting and writing of the original Ghostbusters crew really puts the shine on this game.