When I first heard the title Ghost Master, images of the Ghostbusters movie popped into my head. Seeing the cover art on the disc only reinforced these images. So I was a little surprised, but not at all disappointed, to discover that rather than busting the ghosts, in Ghost Master you are encouraging the ghosts to haunt. Rearranging my thinking a bit, I realized what an awesome concept this game has for kids (and adults for that matter) who enjoy a bit of perverse humor every now and then. Admit it, there's a little boy in you that still thinks it is cool to make a girly-girl go screaming away from spiders (whatever your actual gender is). This game gives you the opportunity to do just that without it having to be your younger sister that you sent screaming.As a note, this game comes as part of the Family Fun Pack 2. Also in the pack are Rayman 3, Worms 3D and the Children's Encyclopedia Britannica 2004 Edition. Each of the other two games has been a big hit with my family, and you can find full reviews of them here on Gamersinfo.net as well. The encyclopedia is a nice added tool for kids, both to have fun learning with and to use for reference in school projects. I look at the Family Fun Pack 2 as an "all this fun and they can learn too" sort of bonus. Even if after reading this review you think that Ghost Master itself might not be for your kids, the Family Fun Pack 2 is well worth it. And you'll find that Ghost Master is a game you want to play yourself, even if your kids don't.
A word of caution before I go on: this game is rated "T" for teen with good reason. Parents need to be aware of a few things before deciding if it is right for their children. The first is that the tutorial scenario is set in a sorority house, complete with towel-clad collegiate females. While nothing I saw while playing the game would cause me to think that a "partial nudity" warning should be stuck on the game, there are a lot of bare legs and bare shoulders running around. Especially after you set up a spider trap in the bathroom. (Forgive the wicked grin there, I just couldn't resist.) The other thing to note is that this game is about making ghosts scare people. So if your children are at all squeamish about ghosts and other "supernatural" phenomena, steer clear of this game. The opening sequence is really well done, but it is of repeated scenes of people being frightened from their homes by various beasties. So if your kids are at all the type to think everything that goes bump in the night is something evil and out to get them, don't install this game on their Mac unless you want to be up nights comforting them. I won't let my ten year old play it for just that very reason, for example. Maybe in a few years, when he's better at separating fiction from reality, but for right now this is one of those games that only mommy and daddy get to play.
OK, cautionary advice over. Now for the good parts of this game. As I said, you are the master of the ghosts and your goal is to scare everyone in the area enough to either drive them crazy, or send them screaming away. This is a game that definitely puts a different twist on the typical simulation type game. It isn't as deep and complex as simulation games often are, but it doesn't need to be. Think of Ghost Master as a fun romp into the darker side of sims games. You will definitely want to play the tutorial. There, you'll learn the basics of the game. You will have four "haunts" from the arsenal of ghostly ghoulish types. I went with the four suggested by the tutorial, but you could form your own team if you wanted. The tutorial walks you through everything from moving around in the game to how to release a captured weather witch. You'll learn how to manage plasma, which is how you power your ghost's powers. Each ghost, ghoul and creepy crawly has multiple powers that take higher amounts of plasma to power the higher level the power is. You earn more plasma by scaring people. The bigger the scare, the more plasma is recharged. In fact, if you drive someone insane or send them running, your plasma maximum raises for the rest of the scenario. The people you are trying to scare are as varied as your ghosts are. Each person has a terror, madness and belief rating. Terror is how much they are scared, and how much it takes to scare them enough to make them get outta the house. Madness is how crazy the person is, quite simply. Some people react to ghosts by getting scared, others are more likely to go insane. Generally either one counts toward winning when you are on the haunting side of the world, which in Ghost Master you are. Belief is the rating of how likely a person is to believe that what they just saw is caused by other-worldly entities, rather than "just a fluke." The more someone believes, the easier they are to scare. But some people take a bit of convincing, so your ghosts will have to use higher, and thus more obvious, powers to get through to them.
After you complete each scenario - and the game comes with 15 of them - you'll go to a "High Scare" table. (Yes, that is "scare," not score. Bad puns are required.) There you see how well you did on the scenario, looking at how long it took to finish the scenario and how many scares, shocks, screams, faints, paranoia, and super paranoia moments you caused in your humans. And of course, how many people you caused to flee or drove insane. There is definitely strategy to this game as well as just fun. Not every scenario is about scaring people as quickly as you can into fleeing the scene. And not all spooks are created equal when it comes to each person's particular weaknesses, so building your team is as much a part of the strategy as deploying it correctly. You have to be aware of what scares who and how those humans tend to move around the scenario, so that you don't waste plasma. You also have to be aware of what each spook can haunt, called their "fetter" in game. Some will bind to an area, others wreck havoc with weather, and still others can possess humans directly or move objects. Despite having "just" 15 scenarios, the game has replayability because you can go back and try to do what you did better, faster, or with different spooks. And thankfully you can cancel a haunt at any time to restart if you've assembled the wrong team. I sneak in to play while the kids are at school, and can easily lose hours at a time making my way through the same scenarios again.
My personal favorite scenario is the insane asylum, but you'll have to play the game yourself to discover why. I will say one of the best challenges of this game is that you can set your team up in such a way that you've no option but to quit haunting and reform the team. Of course, you can just go with the suggested team of haunts as well, but some of the challenge is figuring out for yourself what will be best in each scenario. And of course, you have to figure out how to best spend your "gold plasma." This is used to buy new powers for your ghosts and ghouls. You'll have to rescue bound spirits, who then add themselves to your potential crew of haunters, which adds another level of strategy to the game … And another level of fun, for that matter, because each one has its own little clever "back-story" for how they got to where they are.
The one bit of technical advice I will give, is that the game was very dark on my monitor. By adjusting the gamma in game and on my monitor, however, it was much easier to see what was going on and manage what I needed to. The controls are obviously designed for someone with the sort of one-button mouse that most Macs ship with, but supports a three-button mouse as well. It only took moments for me to figure out the interface itself, and I didn't even want to try to customize it (something I often do because I'm a lefty). Really, once I'd run through the tutorial, the only thing I had to learn was strategy for the game, which is really why I was playing the game in the first place.
Ghost Master is a fun romp of a game that combines the strategy of a simulation game with the enjoyment of a game designed to entertain more than challenge. My caution in recommending it to elementary aged kids is with the concept of the game and the adult nature of some of the scenarios. I think kids even as young as mine would both enjoy it and be able to play it, but whether it is appropriate for them or not is something you'll have to judge for yourself. I have really enjoyed playing the game, so it gets my high recommendation.
I’ve played computer games since college, addicted first to story type games like Might and Magic. I have 3 children who also love computer games. My oldest son is a typical kid who loves the challenge of pressing the right combination of buttons and levers on a joystick in just the right way to make something happens, and frequently gets frustrated with mom’s slow fingers. ;) We use computers for both education and entertainment, and sometimes even bribery for good behavior.
The “glory days” of computer gaming for me were when games like Spectre Supreme, Pirate’s Gold, the Might and Magic series, the original Prince of Persia… those sorts of games were coming out on a regular basis. Back then I owned a Macintosh and was a die hard Mac fan. I was one of the first in my area to buy an iMac and on it learned the joy of playing games on the internet like daily crossword puzzle and “mind bender” type puzzles. My first online RPG was given to me for Christmas the year EQ was released, and I was hooked from day one. I played EQ for about a year. I started playing DaoC during late alpha testing, and was hooked on it.. well, to be honest I still am. I’ve tried pretty much every MMORPG I can get my hands on, from big names like EQ, to more obscure ones such as Underlight. I’ve been writing for IMGS since the first DaoC guide, and find I love the challenge of learning a game and presenting what I’ve learned (and sometimes my opinions), to other players.
I’m not a very strong player as far as learning PvE or quick reaction times, so I tend to stay away from games where I’m pitted against someone else in a way that requires physical (rather than mental) response. I still enjoy story and puzzle games, and in a way that’s how I still approach online games. I would much rather spend hours working through a quest than 5 minutes in combat against another player. I still get lost in simulation type games, obsessing over them until I’ve gotten them beaten. And I like being able to sit down at the computer when I’ve got less than half an hour and playing through a few levels of a puzzle game. I tend not to like first-person shooter type games, or anything with person to person violence, so I steer away from them unless they are fantasy based settings. All in all, I enjoy computer gaming so much that my life feels incomplete somehow when my computer is down.
