Ghosthunter Review (PS2)

What a difference a twenty years makes. When Ghosthunter released in 2004 for PS2 it was met with poor sales and mixed reviews from the critics of the time. Generally, reviewers thought it looked great, but it was too linear and at a mere ten hours or so in length it was far too brief. Today, Ghosthunter looks like a bag of hammers, but we really appreciate how the game just gets to the damn point, doesn't throw 100 meaningless side-quests at us, and isn't 40 hours long.

Ghosthunter tells the story of the ludicrously named Lazarus Jones, a detective on his first day on the job who is investigating an abandoned high school and discovers that there's something supernatural afoot. Within 20 minutes we're introduced to Lazarus and his partner, ghosts escape a confinement facility within the school, and a big bad ghoul voiced by Michael 'Dumbledore' Gambon starts throwing his weight around.

Lazarus' quest, as given to him by an AI face on a television screen in the school's basement — just go with it — is to hunt down the ghosts using magic ghost weapons, stop Dumbleghost, and rescue his partner who of course gets kidnapped by a ghost. Lazarus bumbles his way from location to location capturing powerful ghosts as he goes, uncovering mysteries, and meeting strange people both friend and foe. It's PS2 storytelling and we love it.

Battling ghosts is somewhat clumsily implemented but it's also pretty easy so it rarely frustrates. As you're running around the world in standard third-person view, tapping the Triangle button switches you into shooting mode which brings up crosshairs and slows Lazarus to a walk. We shoot at ghosts with R1 and tapping R2 throws out a grenade which functions in basically the same way as a trap from the movie Ghostbusters, sucking the spirit in, and confining it as long as you've weakened it with gunfire.

And so fighting ghosts basically boils down to shooting them a bit and then throwing a grenade at them and then they're trapped. Later, there are exceptions to this rule, as some ghosts can only be seen using special goggles, while others can't be damaged at all conventionally and you'll need to get creative. Switching from running mode to shooting mode feels archaic because it is, and none of the weapons are particularly exciting to use, but the general gameplay loop of shooting and grenade chucking works because battles are usually brief.

The game moves at quite a brisk pace and that works in its favour as well. We live in an age of single player games crammed with unwarranted side-quests, errands, skill trees, crafting, multiple currencies, expansions, and whatever else devs can think of to pad the game out. In Ghosthunter we visit a place, capture a bunch of ghosts, solve a few puzzles. and then move on to another place and do it again. According to the PS5 stats it took us eleven hours to reach the end of the game but we got stuck on a puzzle for a while because we're stupid so you can probably do it quicker if you're not.

Some of the puzzles involve the use of a ghost friend who can learn various skills throughout the game to help Lazarus reach new areas previously blocked. These sections are clearly marked by a glyph on the ground, and so when you see one you know you're going to have to use your ghost pal to proceed. We found these moments to be the most challenging parts of the game, and also the least enjoyable.

For example, when controlling the ghost lady you can use a skill that makes her heavy, allowing her to walk on the ground and interact with switches, but you can only interact with some switches, and using her weight to move objects only works on some objects. Later you unlock more skills, like the ability to charm some ghosts and get them to do your bidding. The ghost puzzles slow the pace of the game considerably, and we often found we didn't know what we could interact with to proceed leading to trial and error.

The camera in the game also feels a little wonky, particularly in enclosed spaces. A dodgy camera is to be expected when playing a game from 2004, but that doesn't alter the fact that playing Ghosthunter today can be an exercise in frustration. Fortunately, the aforementioned amiable difficulty of the game means that the camera quirks probably won't result in a death or lost progress, and if they do you can always use the ability to rewind your gameplay that comes with all PS2 games on PS5.

What Ghosthunter really nails is tone and atmosphere. It's not scary or tense like a traditional survival horror. It's pulpy, and camp. The ghosts designs are cool. They're fun scary rather than scary scary. The music sounds like something you'd hear at a fun house. The ghosts make creepy noises that raise a smile rather than disturb. Even when the level design falters, the atmosphere that Ghosthunter conjures is strong enough to keep the locations interesting.