Ghostbusters: The Board Game is a 4-player cooperative game based on the movies. You play Peter, Egon, Winston and Ray cruising in Ecto-1 hunting ghosts and closing gates. Each player gets two actions, one of which can be driving Ecto-1 up to 6 squares (which is useful to move your group quickly and it has the ghost containment unit). Getting in and out of Ecto-1 is a free action. Moving is 2 squares, though can be diagonal unlike Ecto-1. Dropping ghosts in Ecto-1 is an action. Wiping off slime is an action. Shooting a ghost is an action.

Roll a d6 to shoot a ghost (up to 3 squares away). If you hit you get a stream on it and tougher ghosts require more streams. If you hit the ghost does something and if you miss the ghost does something more. Each time you're slimed you lose an action and it takes a turn to de-slime yourself by a level. Nabbing ghosts is XP and each character has their own special powers as they level up.

We played two scenarios and in both the objective was to close all the gates. At the end of the turn there is random roll to see if ghosts come out a gate, or if it lands chaos then nearby ghosts move. If you run out of ghosts to place on the map (there is a set reserve which gets replenished when you put ghosts in Ecto-1) then you lose the game.

We might have been playing it wrong. In both scenarios it's quickly apparent that you have plenty of time to close the games (and if in a hurry can avoid ghosts and make for each gate). In the second scenario we took it slowly and nabbed all the ghosts, getting lots of XP. There is a balance issue there but I'm sure it can be house rules to be more challenging.

Components are pretty good with lots of plastic miniatures and sturdy geomorphic tiles, PC and ghost cards. There is possibly a good game here but not one OOTB. (I was thinking maybe this is for younger players but the recommended is age 15+).

[ BoardGameGeek: Ghostbusters the Board Game ]