Bustin, Ray Parker, Jr. once observed, makes me feel good. Mr. Parker made that declaration in song for the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. Had he instead been tasked with recording a tune for the 2012 iOS game Ghostbusters Paranormal Blast, hed be less likely to feel enthusiastically toward busting, be it ghosts or otherwise.
Its not that the $2 iPhone and iPad offering from XMG Studio is poorly put together or hastily conceived. Its clear that a lot of effort went into producing the game, and it has the clever idea of folding your iOS devices location-awareness and gyroscope features into the gameplay. In practice, though, things fall flat. Ghostbusters Paranormal Blast simply isnt as fun to play as it should be.
In Ghostbusters Paranormal Blast, you don the flight suit and protons pack made famous by Venkman, Stantz, Spengler, and Zeddmore so that you can do battle with assorted spooks and specters. XMG Studio comes up with a clever way to that: It incorporates augmented reality and your iOS devices rear-facing camera so that virtual ghosts appear overlayed on the background of real-life surroundings. Ghosts zip around, so youve got to pan, tilt, and turn yourself in circles to keep track of them. When a ghost is in the sights of your neutrona wand, tap the screen to blast them. (Hold your finger down too long, though, and you run the risk of an overheated proton pack, leaving you vulnerable to ghost counter-attacks.) If you can drain their energy before they manage to slime you too many times, you can tilt the weakened ghost into the waiting beam of your ghost trap. You collect coins and bucks for capturing ghosts, which you can then use to upgrade your equipment.
Using augmented reality puts a new spin on the battle game genre. It also ups the hardware requirements for Ghostsbusters Paranormal Blast: Youll need an iPhone 4 or 4S, a fourth-generation iPod touch, or an iPad 2 or third-generation iPad to play the game. (XMG lists those requirements at the top of the App Store page for Ghostbusters; annoyingly, the Requirements section lower down on the page lists completely differentand apparently incompatiblehardware.)
Augmented reality isnt the only trick up this games sleeve. Ghostbusters is also aware of your location, so that it displays reports of paranormal activity at real spots in your neighborhood. From my office, I can go bust ghosts at a nearby restaurant, a hotel, and other local landmarks. (The game also features an offline mode for those times you cant get a network connection or if youre not keen on sharing your location.) The location-awareness features are a little more than eye candy at this point: I dont have to physically walk three blocks for a 40-second battle with a ghost that only I can see if I dont want to, which is both a relief to me and passersby. But it is pretty neat to take on a ghost with an iconic sight like the Bay Bridge in the background. And real world locations do give the game a nice You are there feel.
As welcome as augmented reality and location-aware features might be to a game, they cant mask the fact that battles in Ghostbusters are kind of dull. Part of the problem is with the gameplay itself. Your iOS device is many things, but it certainly isnt shaped like a neutrona wand, which makes tracking down ghosts, aiming at them, and accurately firing a more awkward task than it should be. It might feel less clumsy if you could hold your device in landscape modethat would at least approximate the sight on a weaponbut Ghostbusters restricts you to portrait mode. Spinning, panning, and shooting works all right on an iPhone or iPod touch; on the larger iPad, its kind of excruciating and not something youd want to play for prolonged periods.
In that sense, its fortunate that the battles are briefaround a minute at mostand not very complicated. You fire blasts at the ghosts, and they attack you, with no way to dodge or parry their attacks. Theres one basic strategy: Blast anything that comes into view. After a few battles, the thrill of that approach quickly wears off.
I like that XMG tried something different with Ghostbusters Paranormal Blast. Whatever else you can say about the game, its certainly not a me-too offering. But in its present format, its also not a game that keeps you coming back for more.
Philip Michaels is managing editor of TechHive Media.
