Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Review (LSWSjr)
This is the Ghostbusters game I always wanted as a kid, giving me the ability to personalise my own Ghostbuster and their equipment before heading off to bust some ghosts with friends. IMO the game plays sort of like a reverse Dead By Daylight, with four Ghostbusters hunting a single ghost.
The Ghostbusters work together in an FPS-style mode, using their equipment to search for the ghost and its rifts, with rifts acting like extra lives for the ghost, before they can use their weapons and traps to expend the ghost's lives through capturing it and/or destroying rifts, with their weapons also usable against NPC ghosts that spawn from rifts and from the ghost's powers. There are other aspects to the Ghostbusting role as well, such as calming down civilians, resetting or replacing sabotaged equipment, helping slimed teammates recover and collecting spores, molds, fungi and each location's five lore entries.
The ghost gameplay has you free floating in a 3rd person perspective, with the ghost able to posses and haunt a wide variety of environment objects to scare civilians and throw ghostbusters off their trail. Additionally, each ghost has the ability to sneak up behind a Ghostbuster to temporarily disable their primary weapon and each ghost subtype has a set of three abilities that operate on a cooldown, some of which can be used to temporarily stun Ghostbusters or destroy their ghost traps. The ghost's objective is to avoid capture, prevent their rifts being destroyed (through hiding them in objects) and raising how haunted the location is by spooking people and infesting objects.
There's a lot of customisation on offer, with Ghostbuster equipment split between your weapon, its power pack, your detection tool and your trap. Each device has around 4 categories of components, with around 5 options within each component type, which all combine to determine your equipment's stats and special abilities. New components, along with additional colour customisation are earned as you use each piece of equipment during play. Meanwhile, increasing your player level will unlock half a dozen pieces of secondary equipment, of which you're restricted to using one at a time... although you can swap and restock them, along with replacing destroyed traps, mid match from a cart at the location's main entrance... starting with a grapple gun and ending with the iconic goggles.
Ghostbusters also unlock new cosmetic customisations from increasing their player level and completing challenges/contracts, including reskins for your clothing and equipment based on the two cartoons and the 2016 reboot. Customisation categories include hair, bodytype, voiceset, dozens of facial modifiers, jumpsuit, shirt, pants, boots, arm pads, knee pads, gloves, headwear and glasses.
Ghosts on the other hand, gain access to different categories of ghost from you raising your player level and furthermore, can gain additional ghost subtypes and customisation options for the various ghost categories through playing with your unlocked subtypes. For example, ghost players start with an Ectoplast ghost named Winky, playing as Winky will level the Ectoplast ghost category, unlocking more Ectoplast customisation options and access to 3 additional subtypes of Ectoplast ghost (Brainy, Pokey and Slimer); meanwhile, increasing your overall player level as a Ghostbuster and/or ghost will eventually grant access to the basic subtype of other ghost categories, like the Ghouly subtype Drake and the Basher subtype Lunk.
All in all, I've found it's an easy game to get into and has a far more casual vibe than other asymmetrical games I've played. It can also be played offline with bots whilst allowing for full progression and I honestly recommend you make use of the offline mode to level your equipment/ghosts before diving into online play, just so you're on a better footing with experienced players.
On the technical side, I never encountered any bugs or hiccups, matches load quickly and the game has a cartoonish aesthetic which will hold up better in the long term, although I have noticed some fuzziness from time to time as cutscenes refocus the POV.
Ultimately, this is the best licensed asymmetrical title I've played thus far, when compared against Friday the 13th, Evil Dead and Predator: Hunting Grounds, with tons of character, a casual family friendly vibe, the option for offline and co-op play/progression and best of all, it's available at a budget price, so I'd recommend you give it a shot.