Blair Witch & Ghostbusters Free On Epic

Who ya’ gonna call? Personally, I’ll be calling my bed for a late-night hook up. Monday, I wrote about something interesting being added to Prime Gaming. Tuesday, Taylor spoke of a wrestler taking the leading role in a game. Also I ranted about one of Sony’s leading PS5 game launches being delayed, and Mike talked about another one of those crap mid-2000s kids MMO things being revamped, again. Wednesday nearly broke me in two, and David spoke of the current and future Steam sales being leaked. Finally, on Thursday, Mike and many other Halo fans were floored when another key member left Halo Infinite.

Right, to another double-bill with only limited interest from me. Oh, I do love the Halloween events for the Epic Games Store, it just makes my day. This week, one game is horror and one is that costume everyone wore in the 80s. I’m about to get a lot of emails/tweets for this, but I’ve never fully seen Ghostbusters all the way through. I think I was shouting at kids the last time I was meant to be watching it. I honestly have no idea why I’ll watch anything else, and that has been proven by crap movie choices of late. That said I’ve not played the game either.

Nonetheless, I’ve never had that connection with The Ghostbusters franchise, so when it comes to the game and its recent remake, I’m out of the loop. I’m ok with that. I don’t need to jump into everything on the nostalgic appeal it’s built upon. That said, I’ve got a feeling I’ll be pressured into watching it now. Quick, someone get the kids so I can shout at them for throwing things about and hurting each other. I’ll put it this way, if you aren’t a Ghostbusters fan, you’ll get around to it at some point, but if you are someone angrily scrawling a tweet in your own blood right now, then you’ll likely want to get back into the world already. I might get around to actually playing it at some point, probably when I’m not busy.

The second game is another one of those films I’ve no real interest in, but this time it is because I hate horror. Blair Witch, it was that thing that kicked off the found-footage craze in horror, only to be capped off with Paranormal Activity becoming the most successful franchise by the end of the 2000s. Bloober Team’s 2019 Blair Witch does that Outlast thing of giving you a camera and expects you to understand it’s not a toy. You are right that I am trying to film Ellis Lynch’s feet, the man has enough PTSD as it is, and his dog Bullet.

I don’t know if that is meant to be a cruel joke or if that’s a gross oversight. However, I already don’t believe that anyone who deals with guns in the way a police officer or military veteran does, would indeed end up calling their dog that thing that will trigger the dark, depressing, and PTSD filled memories of something horrific. I do know I won’t be able to play the game without thinking “what kind of idiot calls their emotional support dog Bullet?” I’m qualifying this differently from realism, but being pulled into the world of immersion is key to horror. This type of thing is what pulls me right back out again. Maybe if I had the nostalgia of a moderately fine horror film from 1999, I might be able to look past that. Though I don’t.

Both 2019’s Blair Witch and the 10-year anniversary remaster of 2009’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game are available all week until the 5th of November. Maybe one day I’ll get around to them, but for now, I’m content moaning about things that have no real bearing on them as quality games. Next week, I’ll be complaining about Wargame: Red Dragon, an RTS wargame about an alternate history Cold War. One where we don’t have a shirtless former KGB agent running Russia, riding a horse, and possibly ordering the assassination of defectors; as the Warsaw pact doesn’t dissolve like a biscuit (a proper biscuit) in your coffee. In Russia, biscuit dissolves!