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Incredible game if it runs well on your system

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 26 / 27
Date: August 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

In Ghost Master, you get to control a group of ghosts and try to frighten out sorority sisters, rescue trapped ghosts and much more!

We bought this on the recommendation of a friend, and I have to admit that the idea was an amazingly neat one. It is very much like Dungeon Keeper but with ghosts. You get a well detailed house to work with, with multiple rooms and multiple floors.

The graphics are great, and you can move easily between the floors, examining the items in each room, zooming in and out, turning around.

You attach each of your ghosts to an item in the house and give them a set of instructions. Some ghosts create spiders, other shake objects, others cause electrical items to go haywire. Each level has its own objectives - scare out all the humans, help a ghost go free, lure police to a certain area to discover a corpse. It's a riddle to figure out which best combination of ghosts and ghouls will achieve your objectives.

The spooky music is neat, the way the well-designed characters move around is quite neat. You can follow a given person around and learn about their fears, you can watch as they become more and more terrified. It's sort of like the Sims meets the Amityville Horror.

However, we encountered a BIG downside that we simply could not resolve. Despite having a rather high end system that plays all other current games without any issue, we hit problems with both the video and sound on this one. The video was only randomly annoying, with the beds turning into tie-die neons swirls, for example. We could live with that. But the sound was INCREDIBLY annoying with constant stuttering and loud machine-gun-like noises. We tried many different solutions to fix this but the issue remained. We could only play the game with all sound turned off and subtitles turned on. It took away a lot from the gameplay.

If you can get this to run on your system configuration, I'd recommend it highly to any fan of sim-like and dungeon keeper-like games. But be prepared to return it (or give it away to a friend) if your system seems to act as if a poltergeist is inside it when you run the game.

Unique Idea - Great Fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: December 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I just started playing this game recently - I bought it because the idea seemed so unique and fun compared to most other games I've been playing lately!

Some other people have mentioned bugs, but I have yet to have a problem with the game. It installed clean and has played extremely well.

The basic idea of the game is that you are "master" to a group of ghosts and other ethereal monsters. You take your spooks to a house and use all sorts of neato powers to scare the people living in the house. Also in the houses there are usually restless spirits that you can rescue and they will become part of your team!

The graphics are pretty cool and the "scares" are great! I love watching my spook make items fly around the room and scare the mortals. Your spooks get all sorts of powers, from poltergeist stuff (items flying around) to making storms outside to causing tremors to more violent stuff like ripping their own head in half and making blood spurt out. Because of that, the game might not be appropriate for young kids!

I highly recommend the game - I've had a great time playing it and it's refreshing to play something really different once in awhile. :)

Great fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: August 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Ghost Master is an excellent game where you build up a team of ghosts to scare humans away from their locations!
You must perform your hauntings in a variety of locations including a large spooky house, a hospital/lunatic asylum, a boat (where humans will have to jump overboard!) and many more.
The game is separated in to missions.
There are just under 50 haunters in total, ranging from regular spooks to witches, and gremlins to swarms of spiders!

There are so many good things about Ghost Master. The graphics are excellent - each location is totally 3D and you can zoom in and out and rotate 360 degrees to see it from all angles.
The detail is also really good. Each mission is based loosly on a horror movie, and each character has a name from that movie.
You can find out about how each ghost died, and you can read bios for each character so you know how to scare them best!

If you're in to ghosts and horror movies, or you want a fun game for all ages, buy Ghost Master!

One Of The Best I've Played For A Long While

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: October 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Ghostmaster is one of the most fun games to come along for quite awhile. The idea is fantastic - and the 3 years they spent implementing it was well spent. The basic premise is this: You have been promoted to Ghost Master, and have been sent by the counsel to descend upon the town of Gravenville and complete a series of missions to aid the glory of the dead or something. You start with a small selection of different sorts of spirits (elementals, sprites, poltergeists etc) with some powers - but with each mission you can complete "quests" and more ghosts will be under your command. Whenever you complete missions, you get scored on how much you scared people, how many spirits you rescued, the time used etc. This goes on the high score table - from which you can revisit past missions and beat your scores and times. As you can imagine, this gives the game TREMENDOUS replay value.
The points you earnb (not quite sure of the system) in turn gives you PLASMA, the only source of energy in the game. Plasma allows you to use different powers within the mortal realm, and also allows you to train your ghosts to learn new powers in the spirit realm. In attempting to pin down the genre of this game, I came to the following conlusions: It is similar to THE SIMS with the way the people talk, look, and the meter bars used to measure the three key aspects of a mortal: belief, terror, and madness. Different powers will raise different things. But it alsot involves deep strategy more often found in RTS type games. It has roleplaying akin to the final fantasy skill system in the way you distribute plasma to advance your ghosts and the manner in which they become better trained the more you use them. Also you can go inside your ghosts (or the people) and view everything that goes on - rpg/sim thing going on. And the high score table and point system gives it a sense of an old arcade game. Im sure it could be squeezed into more categories, such as adventure, but you get the point.
It has a low learning curve (say 3 minutes to be able to play), but has enough depth and micromanagment as you get into harder missions to make it quite challenging. It is not neccessarily challenging to complete the mission, but sometimes it takes quite a bit of strategy and good managment to complete all the quests and get pumpkins by your time (four levels of pumpkins 0-4 depending on how good your time was). The higher pumpkin levels are very difficult to achieve, especially in the later missions.
And its not just scaring people. Sometimes you have to drive them mad, or feed on one persons particular personal fear, or solve puzzles and figure out which powers to use in certain quest situations. It is not especially violent - more cartoonish and funny.
On a technical note, I did have a few problems with my mouse and the moving buttons but I installed the patch and it seemd to go a bit better. I have a little better than average computer: gforce II graphics card, 512 ram, amd xp2600+ etc. I havent had any major problems other than the mouse thing. And if you do have problems....well if you machine is a dinosaur, dont expect it to run this. Also, try installing the patch people.

Your Personal Poltergeist Construction Set

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: January 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Vivendi/Universal has done a really good job of pumping out new and interesting ideas in their games without losing sight of fun being the overriding necessity. Ghost Master continues the tradition by combining both action and strategy in a simple premise - scare the heck out of everyone!

You start off with a fairly well made tutorial that explains the basics, including how to move around, zoom in and out, and set up your different ghosts for haunting in a classic "scare the sorority girls" setting. You also learn certain individuals are more prone to being frightened by certain ghosts than others. For instance, some may be scared of spiders, while others have a fear of fire. The scares are more cartoonish than violent and most kids should be able to play without nightmares, but young kids might be disturbed.

As you progress in the game, you have a certain amount of "scare factor" known as plasm to use to scare people with. As people become more and more frightened, your plasm level goes up, allowing you to increase the number of powers your ghost can conjure up. In short, the more scared the people get, the scarier the effects you can subject them to. Once their terror level peaks they run screaming from the house. The sooner you complete your mission, the more points you rack up, allowing to "upgrade" your ghosts with additional powers for later missions.

The game isn't just about scaring people, though. Some strategy is involved in figuring out secondary objectives such as luring or leading people to a certain area of the house or releasing ghosts so they can be used in later missions. Some of these puzzles are challenging, but most missions can be wrapped up in about half an hour.

My system is due for an upgrade, but the game itself ran fine at 1024x768 on a 1Ghz Athlon and a Geforce 2. The movie clips are a different story and regardless of what I did, I could not prevent choppiness and stuttering. It's also annoying not knowing your mission objectives upfront. The game would have been a lot easier to play by simply explaining the mission, then allowing us to choose which ghosts we want to use. Instead, we pick ghosts basically at random and find we may have to start the mission over if we're missing something vital. Finally, the voice acting is pretty bad. If you're lucky (or unlucky) enough to complete two or more objectives at the same time, you'll hear both announcements at once, which sounds like complete gibberish.

Aside from these annoyances, Ghost Master is a fun game. The music is cheerfully campy, providing the atmospheric creepiness typical of B-movies, and the graphics are bright and vibrant, with more than a passing resemblence to the movie Ghostbusters. If you're looking to create your own haunted house, filled with things that go bump in the night, then this is the game for you.

Hope the review helped.

ghost master is awesome!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a very fun and unique game,you control ghosts to scare the heck out of mortals.You get many different ghost to use for different hauntings and you have the ability to recruit more ghosts into your ranks.I have always looked for ghost,haunted house,halloween type games and they are way too few, i highly recommended this game.The game has nice graphics it is easy to learn and you can spend hours playing this and not get bored at all.I would love to see an expansion for this game. Get it you wont be sorry.

Ghost Master - best game for all

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: July 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was asked if this game is appropriate for my little cousin. After playing it all the way through - I can say with that this is most addicting, appropriate, engaging game for all ages. I would highly endorse this game(this is coming from a person who doesn't endorse many things). I would say that this game is one of least violent games of its genre. Believe me or not, but try it - you will love it.

RPG that changed my view of gaming.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: March 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Believe it or not, this is the first RPG that I have ever played. I know, I was missing out(Fallout, Arcanum, Neverwinter Nights, etc.)for a while. I only recently started playing RPGs but Ghost Master was truly one hell of a game. I am not a RPG expert but once I started playing, I got into it so bad that I had to finish before the sun rised up. I started playing it on a saturday morning about 7 am until the next morning. Possibly, that was the best day of my life. That game got me hooked so bad that all I did that day was eat, pee, and play the game. This game is very worth your money and I ran it fine on my medium grade pc with Geforce 2 MX. The graphics are great, sounds are nice but sometimes annoying. The idea was fantastic and the execution was better. This is not a normal RPG where you just hack and slash, you have to scare the living hell out of the humans. You have to use your creatures' powers to scare the humans. And if you are a newb, you can press recommend in the selecting screen and you will get a tutorial. This game changed my life. It made me realize that RPG is one of the most breathtaking genre that gamers enjoy alot. After playing this game, I started searching for games like Diablo, Fallout, and other RPGs that you know of. I knew all of those RPGs but didn't care to play them until Ghost Master came and made me start playing RPGs, one of the most controversial genres in our gaming society. Thanx to Ghost Master, now I'm playing very addictive games like Arcanum, Baldurs Gate, Temple of Elemental Evil , and so much more. All I know is that now one of my favorite genre of gaming is RPG and I hope my review helped you realize that Ghost Master is a great game and RPG is a great genre.

A Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is probably one of the best games that I've played in a long time, as it combines the most addictive and fun aspects of a number of genres into a unique gestalt that is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. The concept of the game, as mentioned in other reviews, puts you in the role of a ghost master in control of a team of spooks and sent to teach the people of Gravenville proper respect for the supernatural, typically by scaring them senseless. Throughout the game, various aspects of assorted genres are apparent: there is some of the resource management and unit placement of real-time strategy games, there is some of the character development of role-playing games, there is some of the simulation of The Sims and related titles, and there is some of the collector's mentality that is found in Pokemon and similar games. All of these aspects, when combined, give the game an undeniably addictive quality. Added to this is the fact that almost every mission in the game is a spoof of, or tribute to, some pop culture movie icon and an irreverent sense of humor in dialogue, character names, and concepts. When combined, these elements make this game seem irresistable, and that it is. As a note: having bought the US retail version and installed it on a 1.5 year old Gateway laptop, it's running fine with no stalls, crashes, install errors, music difficulties, or anything else. That, and it looks wonderful!

Fun premise, delivers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: October 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a fun, interesting, and unusual game. It didn't spew forth from the demand-controlled market model that, in the west, rules our video game and movie choics... so give it a try. It even has low system requirements, so it should play fine even if you have fabled hardware such as the imaginary AMD 9600 video card and Pentium 3 2.5ghz CPU. Great game!

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