Developers Illfonic have the perfect template for Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed—the original movie, Ghostbusters. They were tasked with building a multiplayer, cooperative game based on Ghostbusters and its various movie and TV follow-ups, and the 1984 movie is a surprisingly good guide for a modern multiplayer game. A four-person team that works together to hunt down and trap Ghosts couldn’t be a better fit for a co-op game, and the fire station is the perfect hub to customize your tech, learn some lore, and gather for missions. 

So, when Illfonic put out a call for new Ghostbusters to join them, we zipped up a jumpsuit and strapped on a Proton Pack for today’s launch. 

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed begins with the song and a short video where the firehouse is restored to its former glory. You’ll get chills watching this, and there isn’t even a full-scale psychomagnotheric event going on yet. With hauntings on the rise, Winston Zedmore pumps his new fortune into rebooting the team. Hence, you and up to three others joining the team and filling the fire station. The HQ has various stations, letting you customize your character and jumpsuit; there’s a tech station that unlocks upgrades to the Particle Thrower and Proton Packs; and you can even collect spores, molds, and fungus to boost your XP. But those are all for experienced Ghostbusters with a few hauntings under their belt. 

The specifics of Ghostbusting have been expanded for the game. A haunting takes place when a single Ghost is trying to take over a building and force everyone out. The Ghost can prowl the levels, scaring civilians and attacking the team. To stop them, you have to work out where they’re spawning from, wipe the spawns out, and then track the Ghost. 

Each level has three rifts where the Ghost will spawn from. They present as glowing holes in space, but to start with, they’re hidden within artifacts, objects that sit in the clutter of the level. The P.K.E. meter is attuned to hunting down Rifts. The little device responds to Ghost activity, leading you to the rough area of the Rift. Like all things Ghostbusting, pointing and shooting with the Proton Packs is the beginning of the end for the Rifts. 

Ghosts will strive to protect the Rifts (they can physically move them, or detonate them to vastly increase their haunting score), which is where the fun kicks off. The free-floating vapors take a lot of coordination to pull down into a trap. The first person to zap and tether the Ghost is in control of the direction, while any additional blasts from the other Ghostbusters simply increases the power of the tether. The battle isn’t just against the Ghost’s movement and attacks, but balancing the Proton Pack’s heat, which quickly builds up and needs to vent, breaking the tether. It’s also tough just setting a trap in the right location, as they tend to scoot along the floor at length—one trick the team had was to surround the Ghost with as many traps as they had, multiplying the potential to grab the thing, sucking it down into a trap.  

That’s how it should all work, but as in the movies, there are times when the team splits up. Ghostbusting has some busy work, cunningly crafted to spread the team apart: finding Rifts, calming civilians, and hunting fungus all take time, and can grab the attention away from the undead floaters. Even playing alongside the developers, a tight-knit squad of experts, the team was always a little bit disjointed. We’d be hunting Rifts only to hear the chaos of a battle erupting from the other side of the level, as someone was left Slimed like Venkman in a back corridor of a haunted hotel or brewery. It was made all the worse knowing it was one of our own that did the Sliming. 

That’s right. The busters can become the… bustees? Thanks to Tobin’s Spirit Guide and the lax workspace practices of Ray Stanz, players can enter the Spirit Realm and play as a Ghost, creating an asymmetrical battle between teams. Four-on-one is tough odds, but Ghosts have plenty of fun tricks to even things out a little. 

They can go anywhere, floating from the ground to the rafters or warping across levels through spirit pathways, moving with a level of freedom that the Ghostbusters can only dream about. They can also go in almost anything, possessing objects to hide from being hunted and restore energy, and to scare people. Being chased by a bucket and mop will definitely increase the haunting score. 

There’s a fun, secondary element to possession—bigger items, like vending machines, can be taken over. Hopping into one, moving it in the middle of a corridor, then leaping out is enough to buy a few seconds more escape time when being pursued by a Slime-coated Ghostbuster out for revenge. 

More aggressive Ghosts can take direct action against the Ghostbusters. Each spirit has a number of attacks. While playing as an Ectoplast, a first-cousin to the classic Slimer, we had three direct, Slime-themed attacks. A simple Sliming will leave humans sticky and slow, and sometimes pinned down until they can scoop themselves clean. There are little Slimer minions that can be spawned to draw fire. And there’s a Slimenado, which covers everything nearby with, well, Slime. There are also subtle little tricks, like sabotaging the Proton Packs, or stealing a deployed trap. 

It’s a bit like playing an aggressive game of hide-and-seek. You’ll never not get spotted because the wonderful tracking toys mean you’re constantly being hunted, but they also have a number of jobs to do. There’s nothing quite like splatting a Ghostbuster who’s attempting to calm down a jittery civvie. 

Any activity causes a depletion of energy, which you have to manage and hope you’re not caught short. It’s controlled chaos, where an escape is often hard-fought—being tethered and slowly dragged down into a trap feels like the end is nigh, but if you have any of your abilities charged, the Ghostbusters could also be dragging you down into the perfect position to splat them. Busting the ‘busters is one of the surprising treats of Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed. Who knows? You might have grown up wanting to be a Ghostbuster, but realize you were meant to be a Slimer all along. 

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is available now on the Epic Games Store.