Product Description

Ghost Hunter takes cinematic terror to a new level on your PS2. Years ago, there was a terrible massacre at a Detroit-area high-school. When responding to a call at the now-abandoned building, a rookie finds a hidden research lab, and uncovers dark experiments involving ghosts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18590 in Video Games
• Brand: Namco
• Released on: 2004-08-17
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: PlayStation2
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .30 pounds

Features

• Roam free through macabre locales like a clandestine research lab, a sunken ship and a demon-infested swamp
• Sinister and phantasmagorical landscapes create a chilling, haunting atmosphere as you stalk & capture the spirits
• Choose your weapon - A wide range of earthly and paranormal weapons are yours, from pistols and shotguns to ghost lassos and spectral goggles
• Once you capture a phantom, you'll feed off its power -- They'll give you supernatural abilities and help summon other helpful spirits
• Innovative, player-guided puzzles and tense stealth sequences extend gameplay

Customer Reviews

Looks Amazing! Stick with it
Due to some adverse publicity, I was preparing myself for Ghosthunter to be a disappointment, but after playing it, I would have to say that it is most definitely not. First of all, the game looks amazing. The first level is set in a haunted school and looks great, so I was already impressed, but things simply get better and better, as you progress through a swampland complete with a sinking ghost town, a haunted mansion with warping rooms, and a huge ship. The levels are massive, and with no loading times between areas, you seem to be roaming for miles at a time. Often, I was happy to stop and just look around at the stunning scenery like a tourist. Each level has been meticulously created by the game designers, and it really pays off. The game itself is a reworking of a standard theme: your character is an ordinary police officer who finds himself somehow appointed a ghost-hunter who has to travel through several locations and dimensions, fighting and capturing ghostly creatures. It's when you actually come to playing the game that some flaws become apparent. First of all the combat system can be incredibly frustrating. Lazarus can run around and explore areas very easily, but to fight and capture ghosts, you have to switch to aiming mode, in which his run suddenly slows to a hesitant crawl, so aiming at ghosts which are capable of flying all over the screen becomes a real chore. There's also a first person view for more accuracy, but in this you can't move at all, so you are nearly always open to taking damage as you aim at the rampaging spooks. The camera controls are similarly annoying, as although you can re-configure the camera movement to "reverse" for movement mode (by which I mean that moving the stick to the right swings the camera left, like swivelling a telescope on a pivot - my favourite), you are unable to do the same in battle mode, so unless you want wild confusion as your brain tries to juggle the two concepts at once, you are really only limited to one. This, along with the afore mentioned slowness of Lazarus in aiming mode, and the amount of weapon swapping that you will be doing during every fight, makes the battles pretty difficult, and I spent the whole first (short) level despairing and toying with getting a quick refund. However, things hotted up as soon as the action moved to the swamp, when you are able to use a sniper rifle and a shotgun. The action suddenly gets a dose of Splinter Cell type stealth, which added plenty of enjoyment for me. Further variety is added by an additional spectral character that you can play as at certain points when puzzles appear that Lazarus cannot otherwise solve.
In conclusion I would say that Ghost Hunter is a tough challenge, with plenty of puzzles to solve and a shortage of ammo and health pick ups. But not least of all, it is because you are hampered by a cumbersome method of combat, which means that any situation in which you face two or more enemies at once can be a nightmare. But keep trying and you will find that the designers have actually allowed for this by giving each situation a knack to discover such as a hiding place or a vantage point that can be found with a bit of perseverance, so by the midway point, I would guess that any player would be thoroughly addicted. Personally, once I was used to the mechanics of the game, I didn't want it to end, and there is so much to see on your journey through the game environments, including some truly bizarre imagery that just seems to be included for "freak-out" value, so I recommend it as a definite purchase.

Action-packed ghost hunting!
My first impression on playing this game was, 'Wow this is ambitious.' My second impression was 'Jeez these are some cool looking ghosts!' Not only the models, which are great, but the various translucent and glowy effects that are applied to them, truly look spectacular. The grenade's capture effect in particular is just absolutely amazing to watch - a really remarkable piece of real-time programming.

The game's hero, Lazarus just looks fantastic - certainly one of the best looking characters I've seen in a game, right up to scratch with most of the Japanese artists, and that's a very rare thing I think. (Most western built games characters still look really clunky to me.) Astral looks really good too, very tastefully designed, costumed and modelled.

The attention to detail in the environments was the next thing that really got me - the environments are so dense, with so many nice touches - the long blades of grass waving gently in the breeze, the 'angled' glow on the clouded sky, ripples in the water, and shafts of light, it just goes on and on...

I found the controls quite intuitive after a short learning period, and all the weapons are well designed and complement each other in different situations. The ghost capture grenade for example can also be used to retrieve energy, and I love the implementation of the sniper rifle even more, it's right up there with HALO for sheer feel of handling and good old fashioned sniping fun. In fact the whole combat mode and the way it switches out with the regular free roaming mode kind of feels like you're playing a first-person shooter in third person perspective.

Overall a very impressive product and very worth of inclusion in anyone's collection. It's really everything you could want from a modern story-based game. It's fun, it's challenging and it's action-packed. A very solid Five Stars.

Awesome Graphics give it 5 stars but...
Ghosthunter has amazing graphics. I give it 5 stars because it's an original. Where it's lacking is the erratic camera that you can manipulate with one of the L buttons, but which still is way off. As I said though the graphics are amazing rich detailed enviroments and characters brought to life with a decent array of voice talent! As another person mentioned I too found the controls a bit to get used to. But I couldn't get over the look of this game. The cutscenes are excellent.
If they took this game back to the drawing board with some normal folks to give them some opinions on what the game actually comes across as it would be amazing!

I hope they take this game back to the drawing board and refine the mistakes, but still it's an enjoyable game once you get used to it. If you frustate easily this isn't the game for you, but if you have the patience of a saint go for it:)