Namco brings over Ghosthunter to the United States. In a rather surprising move, Sony CEA seemingly decided not to bring over Sony CEE (Computer Entertainment Europe)’s Ghosthunter to North America. Thankfully, Namco did so because the game is a solid action title.
In the game, you control Lazarus Jones. Jones is a cop who is assigned to check out a supposedly haunted school. When he gets there, he stars hearing noises, finds strange items and unleashes spirits. Jones then sets out to get things back under control and rescue his partner who was captured by one of the ghosts.
A vast majority of the missions in the game simply have you defeating a certain amount of enemies while making sure you pick up certain items as you work your way through the level. You’ll travel to a variety of strange locations ranging from a prison to a haunted ghost ship, but you’ll usually keep doing the aforementioned activities. In certain missions, you’ll find Astral points which let you play as a young lady by the name of Astral’s spirit. These missions, like the others, are pretty linear and you’ll rarely if ever get lost for too long.
To break up the action, Sony CEE added a variety of puzzles. For the most part, these puzzles are pretty simple and won’t stump you for more than a short while. Astral’s bits also feature puzzles which allow her to showcase her abilities like possessing enemies. Admittedly, that is quite cool.
Much more appealing than the puzzles is the combat. Once you find a ghost, you’ll need to enter combat mode, which is done with the press of a button. While in combat mode, you’ll need to throw a grenade at said ghost which allows you to weaken it into a state where they can be trapped by the grenade. There are times when you’ll need to face multiple enemies, which becomes a tad difficult because you can only throw a grenade to one and although you can attack others, there is really no point. There are a few enemies, particularly bosses that require rather creative methods to dispose of.
Of course, shooting things is never fun with boring weapons so Ghosthunter features the standards like a shotgun or the ever-trusty pistol but also specific weapons like a specially-energized rifle to let you capture the ghosts.
A large part behind why Ghosthunter works is the excellent graphics engine. Sony CEE made a wonderful engine that surely pushes the PS2 to its limits. The game’s main characters are wonderfully modeled and feature much detail. The same can be said for the game’s enemies and environments. The latter two feature just enough scariness to scare you at times but never enough to mimic survival horror games like the Silent Hill series. This appropriate amount of scariness is what really brings Ghosthunter to life as it is enticing to see what comes next. Otherwise, in technicalities the game performs very well with a solid frame rate.
The audio is just as strong. The background music is made up of original tunes made for the game. These tunes react to the on-screen action dynamically, adding an appropriate score when needed. The sound effects are made up of great-sounding ghost grunts and weapon effects. The game is voiced by Rob Paulsen (who has voiced many characters like Doom 3’s Larry Bullman and The Twin Snakes’ Ninja) and Joe Morton (more famously known as Chauncey Eskridge in Ali), among others.
Ghosthunter isn’t a new entry in the survival horror genre. Nonetheless, it features just the right amount of scariness to keep a balance. In addition, the presentation is top-notch, which adds to the game’s atmosphere and overall enjoy. That said, the ten hour campaign and relatively repetitive gameplay keep it from being a true gem.
