Lazarus Jones at your service!
You play as Lazarus Jones, a rookie cop assigned to investigate a mass murder inside a haunted school. Joining him is his partner Anna Steele, who only appears during cut scenes. The two split up to investigate for suspicious activities. Officer Jones starts hearing strange voices inside a machine and opens its up, releasing countless spirits into the world. Coincidentally, Anna Steele gets kidnapped by a man name Hawksmoor, who keeps referring Anna as his savoir. A talking spook through a tube who gives him objectives and a portal to alternate realms, allowing him to recapture each ghost and save his partner from evil.
Ghosthunter is a third-person shooter. You'll acquire various fire-arms as you progress the game. Unfortunately, most of the firearms you acquire don't feel very satisfying. The grenade launcher does not blow up an enemy, the shotgun does not decapitate, and there are no bombs to throw or health packs to carry. You'll kill some ghost by fire-arms, others by capturing with a boomerang-like grenade that'll stun them. In the end, you'll basically be doing the same thing to every ghost you encounter, and it gets repetitive really quick. It doesn't help that the ghost you'll encounter aren't particularly scary or nightmarish. Adding the fact that they talk like normal humans with southern and British accents, it feels out of place and redundant.
The controls can take awhile to get used to, primarily due to Lazarus sluggish speed, and the poor camera control. Lazarus needs to enter Hunting mode, which the camera will loosen up and you'll need to maneuver the camera, move Lazarus, manage the cross-eye, and control your inventory all at once. Its not intuitive and it constantly reminds you that your holding a piece of plastic. Lazarus can switch into first-person mode to battle, but it leaves him immobilized (who wants to be a sitting duck?).
Adding some stealth to the game play is the ability to hug the wall. However do to the stage design and the enemy AI, staying in the shadows is completely useless. Ghosthunter will throw hordes of enemies at you at once, and they'll sniff you out before you know it. It also doesn't help that you can't fire with your back to the wall, and there aren't many areas where you can use the environments to your advantage.
Outside the combat lies the linear exploration and uninspiring puzzles. Most of the puzzles involves fetching a key item for a door, or turning a valve. There also some "hide and seek" events early in the game where you follow a grave watcher and stay out of its sights. The grave watcher is your only ticket out the locked doors and it feels extremely slow paced and doesn't make any sense. Sure you'll follow the little critter and he'll unlock doors, look past both shoulders, and make a right. His ultimate destination:? Digging his own grave and sleep, whatever. The developers decided to mix up the fetching quest by making players detonate bombs to blocked areas. It's a lot worst than you think, you'll need to acquire 8 dynamite sticks scattered throughout the repetitive box looking rooms to blow a hole in the wall (a games' got to have explosions to be good eh?) In addition to the fetch quest, you can summon Astral, she's a spirit who can aid you by blasting debris, go through vents, swim, places where Lazarus can't reach. Thanks to her basic survival abilities to swim and push crates (with exceptions to flying, possessing the dead, and going through gooey green stuff?), I feel less appalled to play as our naïve hero.
Dorky dialogs aside, the voice acting and sounds in the game are top notch. Even if it doesn't scare you, the sound does well to keep players on their feet as new areas are being explored. The visuals are average at best. Character models look great, and the ghost look convincingly real with a transparent and blur effect. Some monsters like the Teddy bear and Revenant are dark and creepy, all the others don't quite live up.
The environments are huge and looks appealing at first, however there is no reason to explore as most doors are only for decorations, and environmental interaction is nonexistent. There are also some strange clipping issues in game, and occasionally the camera will show the interior of your character (that's true horror!).
Ghosthunter is just another third-person shooter with a flashy title. There's really no horror to speak of, and its hard to like the dorky characters. The game can be enjoyable, but Lazarus limited abilities and the heavily reliance on Astral quickly sucks out any fun to be had. I don't recommend this title to horror fans or fans of shooter, there are better titles out there.