Ghost Master

Just finished Neighbour from hell and needed another dose. I thought I'd find my deal with this game but it's not as good. They throw everything at you from the beginning so I didn't get to appreciate every ghosts but just put them in ''scare'' mode then watch people flee. It's not very fun to me.

The story is rather linear and puzzles are without multiple means of solving in most cases. It makes the game seem heavily directed by design. Re-playability is also very limited in that you generally need to do the same thing every time, the only benefit of replay is to build up a relatively tiny amount of gold to teach your ghosts new powers to play with. It seems a very artificial way to extend game play. Replay doesn't allow you to bring ghosts earned in later level back into the early levels which further reduces the value of replaying. That said, the concept is very creative and well implemented. The ghosts are fun and each an individual character complete with background. The mortals too have their own individual fears and backgrounds to prey upon. There is an abundance of character and story references to movies of the horror genre, usually in the form of puns, which make this game light hearted and fun. So to summarize, it's fun and unique, more of a puzzle game than a strategy, but lacks replay value. Overall a fun game, but not a great value since it can be beaten in under 4 hours. Although for 6 bucks, I can't complain.

Play as an evil spirit who has the power to recruit and command ghosts. As you haunt people out of their homes and out of their minds, you gain experience which can be used to improve your ghost. It's like the sims, only you haunt them!

I can't believe I hadn't even heard about this game before. It's awesome!

Ghost Master is an OK game with a reasonable interface. But accomplishing some of the missions is a real pain, partly due to bugs, and partly due to how difficult it is to really do things your own way. The bug that really stands out for me is on a ship level - half the time, you do everything right and the cutscene plays, but you don't get your reward. Very annoying, and there's nothing to do except restart and write off 20 minutes. When you're given a mission, you have to choose a team - but you have to choose that team BEFORE you see the layout, the characters, or the objectives! So you go in completely blind. Sometimes you'll just NEED to have an electrical storm, and you don't have that ghost anywhere. There's really nothing to do except write off 30 minutes of playtime and restart with a different team, which is very frustrating. How, exactly, to achieve something is also difficult to figure out. Sometimes you just need a mortal to walk in, and chasing/attracting that mortal there can be very difficult. So you spend your time hoping it'll happen, but without any direct way to make it happen. Ghost Master is an interesting game. But it can also be a frustrating time-sink. I'm not unhappy that I picked it up (I got it on special), and I think that any horror genre aficionado will enjoy the movie references.