From the first introductory movie to the first time you pull off a successful house clearance, it is easy to see that Ghost Master is a game that is unlike most games you’ve played before. A Sims-style house is laid out before you, and your task is to take your ragtag team of ghouls and command them to scare the occupants of the building so much that they flee, leaving the house in your possession. Once complete, you move on to another, bigger house with more occupants. Repeat as desired.
And it could have been so much fun. With comedy ghosts and setpieces in place, The Gravenville Chronicles could well have been laugh a minute stuff, but as it stands, there just isn’t enough to stop you from slipping into pure boredom within minutes of completing the two long and overly drawn out training levels. There are different ghost classes that are available to help you complete your task, such as ‘Attract’ ghosts (who draw mortals towards them) and ‘Tamper’ ghosts (who tamper with objects in the room, poltergeist style) ‘ and they must be used tactically to complete each mission, since when facing the amateur witches that come into play, it can be very easy to become over confident and end up losing your ghosts within a few short minutes.
But the addition of some very basic tactics to what is already a very shaky mix doesn’t seem to do a great deal for the game as a whole. In fact, although Ghost Master looks fairly solid, a cruel reviewer could say that the game is incredibly repetitive, to the point of boredom. Some folks will get a kick out of the cool CGI sequences (which are genuinely funny at times) and others will find the toilet humour of the ‘attract’ ghosts providing some entertainment, but when you’re asking for players to invest in tactics, the challenges laid out in front of the player really need to provide some sort of…well, challenge, I guess. Using a standard ghost to repeatedly scare an AI opponent until they leave the room just isn’t that fun when you can be tearing up the track in Juiced, beating an opponent down in Fight Night 2004 or, dare I say it, micro-managing your little family in The Sims. Even when those aforementioned enemy witches come into play, all they seem to be capable of is the odd counter-attack, which can be beaten by attacking with one ghost, then attacking with another whilst the witch goes through her attack animations.
The control system has been modified sufficiently from the PC version of the game to allow console players to have easy accessibility every required command. Your triggers bring up the ‘carousel’ – which is a fancy name for a menu in this case, not anything to do with those scary fairground horses ‘ and then you can navigate your way through the menus and sub-menus with your d-pad and selection buttons. I don’t think more could have been done with this control system, although it is kind of the proof that’s in the pudding when you see that each ghost can only scare, move or be put into or out of play at any time. Sure, each ghost has a couple of scare attacks, but when you’ve effectively only got three commands at your disposal for each ghost, how deep can the game and its tactical challenge really be’
In short, the answer to that question is quite simply ‘not deep enough.’ Ghost Master provides some genuinely funny cutscenes, a few comedic (albeit stereotyped) ghosts and gives you the chance to scare the wits out of the annoying occupants. The only problem with this is that once you’ve done it once, you’ll probably be wanting the game to give you something else to tackle. It never does, and the whole thing feels like too much of a chore and that isn’t what you want when you’ve paid out your hard-earned for a game. Ghost Master: The Gravenville Chronicles could have been so much better, but a lack of innovation means that average would be an improvement.
