Ghostbusters Day#9 – We Came, We Saw, We Kicked its @$$

This session closes Ghostbusters. The game ends on a pretty good note. The conclusion doesn’t drop off the way games often do, and the narrative ties off in a nice way. I’m happy that the brutal scene in the last session didn’t stop me from getting to this quite nice finale. Spoilers within.

It costs me another ten or so Mission Fails, but we beat the Stone Angels. Pain in my ass, but it’s done. Whew. The Ecto-1 drives about five feet before it’s blocked by another gate. There’s a little tether trick where we tether the next gate  to the car to pull the gate down. When we drive through, we enter a courtyard with (go on, guess — I bet you’ll get it) yet another gate. I’m asked to do the tether trick again, but this time a mystic effect from the giant gate shorts the car. Cue cultist ghosts and big fight.

Overall, the fight is good. I Mission Fail five or so times, but it’s fair. It’s a hard last-minion battle, as it should be. And it is a last minion battle: I’m pretty sure I fought the kitchen sink here. There’s a puzzle to open the next gate which involves find more broken statue keys in the battle remnants and capture beaming them to the “keyhole” glowing things. The solution here is not at all explained, but lo and behold, the keys crackle with the same color and style of energy as the keyholes. Is that VISUAL FEEDBACK I see?!? I guess it’s never too late to count a man as out.

Opening the gate is heading to the final battle and the narrative resolution. Turns out Peck is a pawn too — the Mayor was possessed by Shandor (the evil architect from the first movie) and used him as a pawn to screw with the Ghostbusters and release the containment grid. Shandor was summoning Gozer before, but Gozer couldn’t get the job done and now Shandor’s just going to become a God himself. Points here to the writers for tying up all the loose ends with a decent twist. Shandor-as-mayor shows up to cackle, we slime him (in a cutscene, not sure why) to release Shandor and then it’s on to the final boss battle though.

Boss battle in two parts. The first is in the real world, where we have to break through Shandor’s shield. It’s powered by these crystal pillar things around him that open when he recharges; you have to blast them when they’re open to destroy them. Again, no one tells you this, but it’s not that hard to figure out, since the crystals grow brightly when they’re charging the shield. It’s a reasonably tough battle, but acceptable for a boss fight, and I don’t Mission Fail.

When the shield goes down, there’s a quick cutscene, and we’re sucked into the ghost world to fight Shandor-as-giant-demon. Hit Shandor a while, Shandor goes into the middle of the screen to be healed by magical towers that appear, destroy towers while Shandor’s in the middle to prevent him from healing, repeat. Minions appear as the battle goes on. It’s a nice revisiting of some of the old bosses in a new form, and I Mission Fail a reasonable number of times (four) given that it’s the finale.

You beat the boss, decent joking between Egon and Ray, Ilyssa rescued, Peck humilitatingly rescued (he threatens revenge), we leave as a group. Egon and Ray explan to the mayor that he’s been possessed, very much like the conversation with Louis at the end of the first movie. Peter kisses Ilyssa, but then Slimer shows up and slimes her (hey, that’s a pun!) when Venkman dodges, and we end with Ilyssa screaming at Venkman and transition to credits. Interestingly, that’s not the end of the narrative. Over the credits, we hear the Ghostbusters talking about how they will likely have a lot less work now that Shandor has been taken care of. They imply they might have to fire me, but instead offer me a francise in another city. Well-played, Ghostbusters. Nice job tying off my story. It’s on to online play for me if I want more, but I think it’s actually time for my next game for now.