This past month two unique games were released that have similar objectives but different implementations: Neighbors from Hell and Ghost Master. Both have similar objectives - although Ghost Master has more variation in its scenarios – as you attempt to disturb the tenant(s) of a place until they become crazy or scared. But there are also differences as in Neighbors from Hell, you control one person to perform all the actions and in Ghost Master you control multiple ghosts to do the jobs. You also have to deal with numerous statistics in Ghost Master on top of the timing and camera control. These differences result in a far more complicated control system than is present in Neighbors From Hell. Now let’s hold our breath and see if we can survive this complicated process to set up and train our ghost squad.

Ghost Master implements numerous RPG elements as you have to build your ghost squad, or haunters - their official name in the game – and master their different haunting skills. Ghosts can progress up to eight different levels and the more you use a haunter, the more training he achieves. At the beginning of the game you have only few gold plasm - the official currency of the ghost master - to purchase your haunters and train them, but can, of course, earn more.

Haunters are divided into six classes: Sprites, Disturbances, Elementals, Vapours, Frighteners, and Horrors. There are up to forty-seven different types of ghosts spread across these six classes. Frighteners and Horrors cost the most plasm and are also the most difficult to train; especially in the beginning levels. There are also fifteen different types of fetters – a fetter is the only place where you can place your ghost for a haunting. For example, each ghost has a special fetter - Gremlins and Wraiths can only be placed near electric-based items like a television - so you can not place a ghost anywhere you like.

Each human also has his or her own phobia. So a Poltergeist or Sandman might work well for a child, but not for adults. To complicate matters further, each human has their own terror, belief, and madness level so haunters will have difficulties frightening a human with low belief level. You, as a Ghost Master, must build this belief level until your victim is convinced that ghosts do exist. The higher you can build the terror and madness level, the quicker your victim will flee. This is called will power and is indicated by a white portion on the bar.

So basically, instead of doing a go-straight to the things you want to do like in Neighbors From Hell, you have to manage your haunters’ squad to do the job. A team has to be chosen based on the amount of your gold plasm and you have to be careful to not choose too many expensive haunters powers that could exhaust your plasm resources. Haunters must be placed in a specific area in the mortal worlds and you also need to recognize when to reposition your ghost during the haunting experience as needed. And finally you have to make sure that you explicitly follow the objectives of the task because your mission might fail if you accidentally frighten the wrong people.

This actually brings the game to a screeching halt though as there is not a mid-scenario save game feature available. Though most scenarios can be finished in thirty-minutes, this is quite an annoyance as you have to redo everything again if the mission fails for any reason at all. This could happen when you have no more plasm or have over-extended it (you have a short period of time to rebalance the plasm before your squad is ejected from the mortal world), not met your objectives, or if an outside power, such as exorcism, banishes your haunters.

The worst part is when you have to re-position your haunters in real time. This can be very frustrating and negates a lot of the fun part of the game. To ensure that your task is successful, you need to reposition a couple haunters to keep your victim in constant fear. While it is easy to reposition one or two haunters, trying to do the same for four or five haunters definitely tests your patience as it has to be done in real time. For example, if the victim gets scared and runs to a certain room, you need to reposition the haunters to that room before your victim reaches it.

The camera control also makes it difficult to finish some of the missions. It works well during the area screening at the beginning of each missions but not during the re-positioning of your haunters in the middle of a mission. It is quite difficult to focus your camera angle while moving your haunters around at real-time. In all fairness, maybe this problem was restricted to me as I am not used to The Sims genre of games.

After all of the negative things outlined, you might be wondering if Ghost Master is worth playing. Don’t be afraid, Ghost Master still offers plenty of positive aspects. The fourteen scenarios have quite a bit variation. In one scenario titled Calamityville Horror, you must, instead of scaring the tenants away – instead help them discover hidden bodies. Another scenario requires you to convince a mob boss to believe in ghosts and another has you assisting students with their occult rites. Unfortunately, most of the scenarios are the garden-variety scare-the-tenants missions.

The other interesting things are the sub-quests in each mission. Usually it deals with releasing a captured ghost that could join your squad on the next mission. Sometime it is as easy as cutting a chain to release the ghost. But some are really complicated and require multiple steps, such as creating a tremor or clearing some bees, to free the ghosts. You need to pay careful attention to the clues that are given by the captured ghosts or other characters/items within the area.

There is a place called Ghoul Room where you can train your ghosts using your available gold plasm in between scenarios. The quicker your mission is finished, the more gold plasm you are awarded (You can also earn more plasm by scaring more people). This training room actually resembles the character builder from an RPG.

The graphics are bright and colorful but will not leave a lasting impression. On the other hand, the sounds are excellent; especially if you have a soundcard that support the EAX capability. They can actually give you the chills if you are playing alone in a dark room.

If you like Real Time Strategy games that require your ability to deal with these type of details, then Ghost Master is the perfect game for you. But if, like me, you want a no frills attached straight to the action approach, you might find Ghost Master boring after a few hours. Scaring the bejeebers out of unsuspecting people is fun for a while, but soon becomes numbingly repetitive. Having played numerous RPGs that have gazillions of character details, I still think Ghost Master is bit too cumbersome and this negates what should have been the most important part of the game – the fun factor. Ghost Master is a great concept whose implementation falls short.

Final Grade: C+

You can download a playable demo or trailer at the official Ghost Master website.

System Requirements:

• Windows XP/ME/2000/98
• PIII 500 or equivalent
• 128 MB RAM
• 4X CDROM/DVD-ROM Drive
• 700 MB Free HD space
• 16MB Direct 3D-cpable video card
• 16 bit Direct X 8.1 sound card
• Keyboard
• Mouse