Ghost Hunters

Copyright : Codemasters | Reviewed by : Patrick Furlong

An unusual game to come from Codemasters and the keyboard of The Oliver Twins. Ghosthunters sees you going into a haunted house to try and find your brother but trying to stop you are vampires, bats, werewolves, strange hands, spiders and many, many more. What makes this game unusual is that not only do you control the character in the normal way, but when you press the fire button and move around, you move a gun crosshairs which you use to temporarly disable all the monsters. An intresting thing about the game is that you don?t actually kill the monsters. You can pick up objects to increase your health or activate lifts.

Graphics

MODE 1 graphics are used here and they are incredibily detailed. Everything is well done. When collecting one of the afore mentioned items, sometimes a nice animated ghost will come out of the Ghosthunters logo for a moment before going back into the logo. When firing the weapon, you get a nice stream of red stars of various sizes. All the monsters are very nice and the hero, while not being one of the best in the world is still a nice looking sprite.

Sound

A nice creepy music track plays on the title screen. At parts of the game - the start of the game and parts where you collect certain items, you get a digitized voice saying "Ghost Hunters!" On firing weapons, you get a series of bangs which isn?t bad. You also get creaks of coffins which is a nice touch.

Gameplay

The way the game plays is original, I can?t say I?ve seen a game which has you controlling a human character on screen one moment and when you want to destroy monsters, you use a crosshairs. An intresting touch to this is you can actually shoot yourself and lose energy. You also get a message telling you not to shoot yourself. It can take a few goes of the game to get used to the control system and gamestyle but it?s worth it in the end. This game is difficult - I?ve not been able to complete it. But in conclusion, this is a nice original game idea with original ideas in-game and I?d recommend it.