As Sarah wagged away a few feet from me, playing Ghostbusters for the Wii (which actually looked kind of awesome), I jumped in to the next-gen version on the Xbox 360 while being run through the events by one of the game’s creators, Glenn Gamble. After I had finished played I was pulled aside, away from the booth, and asked for my 100% true and honest opinion about my experience.

At first, there was a little bit of a head rush at finally getting my hands on Ghostbusters. It’s freaking Ghostbusters! Its playable, I’m playing it, and it’s going to come out. The initial worries after Activision’s foolishness were thrown away and all that was left was is nerdy fantasies. The game threw me into a battle with corporeal enemies, who jump out of portals to the netherworld and attack. Shooting them with the proton stream doesn’t do anything, but they take alternative attack to destroy. It’s a little strange to not begin whipping ghosts with a red and blue laser right away, but it gave me a good idea of how the basic controls worked. 

I worked my way towards the roof, but not before the wall was ripped apart by an old friend: The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. A few beams to the face and he was gone, my heart was pumping, and I started to remember the earlier screenshots of rappelling busters fighting the behemoth on the side of a building. Glenn pointed at the screen and mentioned that, in the final build, there would be a cut scene in the hallway. Instead of long, Metal Gear Solid cinematic, ten to fifteen second dialogues will fill the game, keeping a constant sense of comedy and story without overwhelming the player with footage.

I finally found the rooftop and had an encounter with incorporeal ghosts – workmen, who could take over objects and fling them through the air. After grabbing them with the proton beam, I found it easy to smash them against the walls, the ground, and stun them for easy trappings. Later enemies, I was told, would not fold as easily, but these went down easy enough, and the mechanic was extremely fun. I tried crossing the beam, which was actually much harder than it would seem to be. “We originally didn’t put it in the game,” Gamble explained, “it’s a detriment, and it hurts you. But the fans complained, so we put it in.”  I asked what it did, and he laughed. “It does a lot of damage to you.” Once the builders died and I messed around with crossing the streams the building started shaking and I made my way towards the rest of the Ghostbusters, who were looking over the edge.

…and the screen faded to black. The vertical combat sequence had to wait, and my geek fantasies had come to an end. Glenn pulled me away from the booth and asked me for my 100% true and honest opinion about the experience. He wanted me to be truthful, and tell him what bothered me about the game. He asked if there was anything I wanted them to change. He asked me if there was anything wrong.

“No,” I said to him, “just make it come out soon.”

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