It feels like there’s been a Ghostbusters game for all types over the years, except one that’s an asymmetric shooter.

Enter Spirits Unleashed, then, which pits a team of four against a ghost that spooks and horrifies a series of locations. From museums to bars and jail cells, you have to zap them, trap them and bring them home.

It’s a fun formula, actually. While you can’t unlock and play as a mass of ectoplasm right away, as the ghost you can whizz around, possessing random items, travel through walls and slime your would-be captors.

Meanwhile as the busters, you need to uncover rifts to stop the ghost from respawning, then trap them and deposit what’s left into the bank back at HQ.

The games get pretty competitive. For instance, the ghost can hide their spawning rifts to fool the busters. I actually started perching them on top of nigh on impossible to reach areas for the ultimate troll effect.

While all of this is happening, the Ghostbusters also need to try and calm down citizens who are about to flee for their lives. Before they get too stressed and enter full panic mode, you can initiate a conversation with them and in a short QTE mini-game, tap on blue or green segments to be that voice of reassurance.

But the thing that might surprise most of all about Spirits Unleashed is it has a decent story mode that literally links up from the conclusion of Ghostbusters: Afterlife where, SPOILER ALERT, you saw Winston buy back Ghostbusters HQ.

Voiced by the brilliant Ernie Hudson, Winston now has full control and has brought you in as a rookie to try and clean up the horrors plaguing the streets. It’s still a modest operation but there’s at least a scientist – Eddie – working on contraptions and a manager – Catt – ensuring everything runs smoothly.

Then right across the hallway is Ray’s spooky bookstore – which you may also remember from Afterlife – where Dan Aykroyd once again resumes his role as Stantz. He plays a great reflective Buster, always quick to tell you about the good old days and really leaning into a history lesson to ensure you’ve got the best possible initiation.

The story gradually moves along as you level up from completing missions and performing side missions, which can be as simple as reviving fallen teammates or removing the excess slime from you.

It’s a good motivator to keep dipping back in and playing the multiplayer as you need to be levelled up pretty extensively in order to open up the story and see where things go next. It’s not the best of tales, but it at least gives you a good old fashioned tale to play through and spend more time with your favourite characters.

And the best part is you don’t even need to play online if you don’t want to as the game will automatically spawn you with bots if you can’t get a match. Sadly, the bots aren’t particularly brilliant or necessarily helpful. Usually they spend time running around, zapping a ghost occasionally or randomly uncovering a rift, but you mostly have to be the one to lead by example.

I do have to hugely commend the game for being full crossplay, though, which is a great feature and means its online community shouldn’t dry up on any one platform.

The other big concern I had is that the content is a bit too slight. Once you’ve got through the story (which is roughly around 55 levels worth of development) you’re still wading through the same areas, on similar match types, with the equipment you’ve been using all throughout.

It’s the same as any other multiplayer experience of course, and the enjoyment mostly comes from the playing and experiencing it with friends, but there’s the progression path is linear and not as expansive as you may find in other multiplayer releases.

The good news is there will be post-launch content at a later date, it’s just a question of what that is and how it factors in which will determine how the game evolves and whether it has a long-term future.

For now, though, out of the box, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is an enjoyable multiplayer variant that dovetails nicely between other releases and offers just enough content to justify its pricetag.

Considering the run of Ghostbusters games we’ve had in recent years, this offers incredible fan service. I spent ages wandering around the firehouse, sliding down the pole, practicing in the alleyway and chatting to the team.

The sound is authentically Ghostbusters, the intro gives you a nice shot of adrenaline and a pang of goosebumps and it all feels incredibly satisfying to zap a ghost and suck it down into one of the iconic traps.

Verdict

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed is the best Ghostbusters release in years. The way it handles and plays, the respect it shows the source material, the way it marries up into recent canon and the gameplay asymmetric hook itself is actually quite enjoyable. While content is a bit thin on the ground and the bot AI is a bit lackluster, I’m excited to see how the game continues to grow and what else Illfonic have in the works. Get a group of friends together and dive in, it’s one of the most refreshing multiplayer takes you’ll see this year.

Pros

+ Amazing fan service with locales, characters, and interactions
+ An interesting story that follows on from Afterlife
+ Asymmetric gaming hook works really well whether you’re a ghost or a Ghostbuster
+ Crossplay multiplayer ensures servers won’t dry up