After three strenuous days at the New York Comic Con I've returned having played the new Ghostbusters video game from Atari. I've been looking forward to getting my game on with this sucker for quite some time and it finally happened (jealous?). And while the game still has some minor kinks to work out, it's overall very impressive and is a perfect compliment to the original Ghostbuster films. This is of course due to the original cast returning to their roles as New York City's paranormal protectors. Every character sounds like just you remember them, and with the brief demo I was able to play I got quite a few laughs from lines spit by Bill Murray's Peter Venkman. The player models also visually mirror their actor counter-parts which is another nice touch even though you don't get to control any of them; instead playing as a completely new character to the Ghostbusters universe.

Speaking of graphics, this game is very pretty. The frame-rate runs smoothly with particle effects all over the place as ghosts and proton pack beams fly everywhere. The game also boasts a cool physics engine making it possible to destroy nearly everything in the environments. I had a friend ask me to shoot the pillows off a bed which I was able to do, one by one. The only thing I noticed in the brief demo that needs work is the physics for glass breaking; it just looked extremely weak in comparison to the rest of the environmental physics.

Another nice approach the developers from Atari took with Ghostbusters is organically incorporating the HUD, a tactic perfected by Dead Space. The player's health and ammo are all presented on the player's proton pack, which does a great job of sucking the player into the experience by allowing the player to focus on the action instead of a bunch of bars and numbers. It also gives the game a much more cinematic style, perfectly fitting for this Ghostbusters game.

As I continued to play the game I was approached by one of the reps for Atari who filled me in on the history of one of the game's features: the PKE detector. While playing the demo this was the only feature where the controls seemed a bit wonky and he assured me the kinks would be worked out by the game's ship date. Apparently the PKE has gone through seven different iterations before they arrived are the con's demo version, and I was told even to this day it is still being tweaked. Hopefully all the problems get worked out because it was a cool feature that adds a lot of replay value to the game. Basically it's a way to scan and gather information on each ghost in the game. It doesn't really do much (no boosting skills), but does give the player an incentive to revisit the game for the 100% completion. I'm assuming it will also award players an achievement for the 360 (trophy for PS3).

While the demo wasn't very long at all (probably five-seven minutes), it did give me a great impression and has me salivating for the final product. Being a huge Ghostbusters fan, this game is a dream come true and I hope everything gels together to make the perfect spiritual Ghostbusters 3.