Ghostbusters: Puzzle Fighter: Review

     Ghostbusters Puzzle Fighter is grind heavy puzzle fighter has you fighting not just the familiar ghosts and ghouls of the franchise, but also the typical freemium staples- an unreasonably fast difficulty curve a handful of levels in and the ever-present and nefarious energy bar.  The energy is, of course, necessary to play matches and matches are needed to gain currencies and additional cards in order to level up characters for more puzzle battles.  There are IAPs to speed up the rate of play and increase the cards in your deck, but they aren't wholly required.

     The sound effects and music are top notch, and the art style is a decent blend of the films and cartoons.  The game comes with a completely original story featuring characters fans might recognize from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show, the films, the newer IDW comic book series, as well as a few new additions.

     Overall, the game is very similar to Marvel Puzzle Quest, and the puzzles are of the Bejeweled and Candy Crush variety- simple tile shuffle and matching.  To make the battles more interesting than simple tiles destruction, is the fact that each character card can receive bonuses based on the type of tiles destroyed, and powering up a special move for the character- allowing things such as an extra damage move, or a healing blast for the team.

     Ideally, players will want to line up and strategize a move that cascades into more tile match ups in hopes of causing a nice combo streak.  The problem is that most of the time the ghosts can get a 3 tile move that cascades into 5 more combos that wipe entire lines and rows causing massive damage, while even the best players might only get a few tiled combos at best due to the off-screen drop-in tile generation being a little too one-sided (presumably to encourage buying more card packs or energy).

     Once players finish story mode, they can unlock a PvP mode.  The only big downside to this is that the story mode might be a bit tough because the difficulty ramps up quite quickly.  Far too quickly, exacerbating the repetitive nature of the game, and I have a feeling that it will likely result in a swift loss of interest for a fair number of players before they can even make it to the multiplayer PvP mode.

     Ghostbusters Puzzle Fighter's developer Beeline has made an interesting and addictive game that fans of puzzlers, strategy games, or Ghostbusters will enjoy.  Personally, I wouldn't mind a mode of play without needing to use energy (but no rewards to make it fair) for unlimited fun play.  Just using what you've got to play for fun.