What went right with Ghostbusters World?

We’ve gotta talk about the things that went right with Ghostbusters World, because it has a lot of awesome. And there are some things that games like Pokemon Go could learn from… especially with a pandemic going on. Let’s list just a few of the things that were incredible about this game, in no particular order.

The Ghosts
There were a lot of them, and they weren’t limited to any single era of the Ghostbusters mythology. There were ghosts from the all of the existing movies, both animated series, comics, magazines, other video games, and even local legends from all around the world. Plus, they had ghosts with very intricate and beautiful designs.
The Community
While there were some dark parts of the community, there were awesome members too. It took me a little while to venture into the chat, and when I joined, I saw a lot of people asking questions, and there weren’t a lot of helpful answers. There were some, but not many. I figured that I could impact the tone of the chat along with those that were already helping to provide help, and I would answer the same questions over and over again. It was then that I started working on this website, because clearly there was a need for some answers, and I thought having a place full of answers would be helpful to tons of players. This was also something I knew how to build, as I’ve built a few very popular fan communities in the past.
The Jumpsuits
You could dress up like a Ghostbuster from almost any era. Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, The Real Ghostbusters, and get their proton packs as well. The game had everything except for Extreme Ghostbusters covered here.
The Gameplay
This game had a wide variety of things to do, and was great for any gamer. If you just wanted to catch ghosts, you could do that, and build a nice collection. If your goal was to play the PVP or tackle the tower, you could do that, too. It had enough stuff that you could play how you wanted to play, and there was no wrong way to do it. You could play based on your own style of gaming.
The Remote Gate
This is something that Niantic needs to let you do in Pokemon Go. You could place your own Dimensional Door wherever you wanted (typically at home), and it counted towards your daily collection. You couldn’t collect from it as frequently as a normal door, and Ghosts wouldn’t be as attracted to it as the normal gates, but this was a fantastic tool to get more resources on a regular basis. Especially during a pandemic.
Boss Schedule
Boss battles were scheduled. This was both good and bad, but mostly positive. On the one hand, you knew when exactly you could expect a boss to appear, and on which day of the week. This was fantastic to plan around. On the other hand, it severely limited the ability of many of us to get a chance at these bosses. And it was even worse with Multiplayer bosses.
Story mode
Erik Burnham and Dapper Dan Schoening of IDW comics fame contributed a story and artwork to this game for a pretty great story mode. It was chapter 1 of what promised to be an epic story as time went on. However, this would never come to pass.
Ecto-Goggles
These are awesome, and until the Pandemic, were way way more useful than the incense in Pokemon Go. For those that don’t know how incense works over there, it attracts Pokemon to your location for 30 minutes. If you’re stationary, or walking, it would attract one every 5 minutes. If you’re moving quickly, it would be about every 2 minutes, or so I’m told. In Ghostbusters World, as long as you trapped or destabilized each ghost that showed up, as they appeared, you would always get 8 ghosts in the first 15 minutes, and 8 more in the last 15 minutes. It was predictable and useful.
The Sense of Humor
The game is based on a comedy series, and has a lot of humor throughout the descriptions of the items and ghosts. It’s fun reading through the material and stumbling into some great jokes.
The Premise is PERFECT for a game like this
Ghostbusters, with proton packs, traps, a containment unit, and ghosts to be caught, is the perfect formula for a game. That’s why Ghostbusters: The Video Game is so good. That’s also why this game is so good. There aren’t too many properties I know of that can do this sort of collecting and battling. I sometimes wonder if Pokemon wasn’t at least a little bit inspired by Ghostbusters.
The Equipment
You had the traditional proton pack and trap, but you also had a couple of upgraded traps for the harder to catch ghosts, and different weapons like the boson darts from Ghostbusters: The Video Game at your disposal. And you could upgrade your weapons to do better damage.
A Sense of Danger in the Battle
In Pokemon Go, as long as the Pokemon doesn’t flee, and you have more pokeballs, you don’t have a limit to how long you can take to catch a pokemon. The facts that they can flee at any time (after escaping a pokeball) and that you can run out of pokeballs add a bit of danger to the game, that I have felt on more than one occasion. That said, with Ghostbusters World, you have timers and a health meter, so you can run out of time or energy and the ghost will then escape. This urgency makes for a challenge almost every time you tap on a ghost.
Great boss battles
Unlike in Pokemon Go, your strategy changes when taking on bosses. You can’t trap them, only destabilize, so that you can combine the shards that you get over time, so you can add one of these ghosts to your collection.
Endless possibilities
There were so many things they could have done to keep adding more stuff to Ghostbusters World. From adding more to the story mode, to more floors on Gozer’s Tower, to more ghosts from all over. There are hundreds of ghosts that appear in The Real Ghostbusters animated series alone, like the Spectral Ghostbusters or the People Busters. Not to mention others that would have been fun additions from the movies, like Dana’s Chair, or Dana’s Bathtub.