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Ghosthunter Review - PS2

There aren't many Survival Horror games around these days. When I visualise the genre, I see the Silent Hill, Project Zero and Resident Evil series - nothing else. It's a hard genre to tackle; developers must blend a chilling mix of horror, action, mystery and adventure into one enjoyable game. Ghosthunter, developed by SCEE, is one of the latest Survival Horror releases to attempt to deliver a frightening experience. If you're expecting buckets of blood and deformed zombies from Ghosthunter, though, you'd better head somewhere else; this game only just makes it as a Survival Horror game. Strip it of its slightly supernatural theme and it'd be thrown into the Action Adventure genre with the rest of them.

During the game you play as Lazarus, a cocky Detroit policeman on his first week of patrolling the streets. When he and his partner Anna uncover the forgotten experiments of Professor Peter Richmond, chaos erupts. Lazarus accidentally unlocks a portal releasing all of Richmond's ghostly experiments into the world and Anna is kidnapped by one of them, dragged away into the unknown. It's up to Lazarus to get Anna back and restore the ghosts to their locked-up form. The game's story starts off quite slowly and feels a bit shallow, but fortunately later starts to pick up with a couple of twists here and there.

Ghosthunter plays in a similar way to the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series, though in a more action-friendly and less sluggish way. The controls - which make use of just about the whole controller - are a tad confusing at first, but soon become second nature. They're laid out well despite the fact that the weapon select system is a bit slow in times of desperate need as it's formed from a wheel system similar to that of the long lost Turok games. In an act of innovation, the developer has included the ability to fire weapons from both a third and first person view. Unfortunately, though, you can't move while in first-person mode, and this just happens to be one of those games where you need to move around and dodge enemy attacks, meaning you're going to end up preferring the third-person action except while using the sniper rifle.

The areas in Ghosthunter are varied and well contrasted which is excellent; while other Survival Horror games restricted you to strikingly similar and confined areas, as Lazarus you'll wander through a ghostly school, a sunken ship and a vast outdoor swamp to name just a few. In general the game's areas are a bit linear; you'll rarely find an alternate corridor or room. However, the fact that there are a lot of large outdoor areas breaks up this linearity, as you'll have to move around a bit more to find out where to go next.

Ghosthunter dodges the stereotypical Survival Horror puzzles and focuses on action. Sure, you've got to collect dynamite to blow up rocks blocking your path and you may (continued next page)