Ghost Master
Ages: Teen - Violence

This one is clever, really fun and perfect for Halloween. You are the Ghost Master and have under your control a wide variety of haunters - ghosts, spirits, frighteners - each with their own specialty. Pick the best team to scare the begeezes out of sorority girls, teach frat boys not to toy with the unknown and invade Gravenville house to reveal hidden corpses. The graphics are great, the views easy to manipulate, the technique of handling theses haunters pretty intuitive. Finer points of haunting and weather control will take some work. The settings and the characters are very Sims-like, only instead of trying to please your Sims - you do you best to terrorize them. There are 14 different scenarios and more than 40 spirit types to keep you busy way past Halloween. There is some problem with the sound breaking up but turning off the sound accelerator fixed it.

Reviewed by: Editor - 10/03

I give this game one thumb up. But an extremely slow thumb. This game is amazing, but because it's amazing, on an ordinary computer, it is uber slow. It takes about 4 seconds for the pictures to load after you even move the mouse. And you have to click things over and over again, because you just keep on clicking the wrong thing. The graphics were very good. The whole point of the game is to scare the pants off of people. The simulations are incredibly lifelike. You and your team of ghosts can scare sorority girls, make people go crazy, and such. As I said, you can have all sorts of things, but, I hate to say, I don't think it's worth it.

After two tries, I tanked the game. It was too annoying! It wouldn't follow commands or anything, because it was so slow, and I'm probably going to uninstall it, because it is making my whole computer slow. My advice is, leave it on your shelf, and take it down in 2012, when computers are advanced enough to take it. One thing that is notable is that as soon as I opened the C.D. case, it broke into 2 pieces. So be careful opening your new C.D.! Now to go into the plot a little more. The point is, that there is really no big main plot. There is a goal, to become the greatest ghost master, and that's it. But to keep it from boring you, there are little sub plots throughout a scenario. In the beginning scenario, a sub plot is that there is a weather ghost stuck inside a vacuum cleaner, and you have to get her out. Or you may have to do special things, like go into a mental institute and make people go crazier then they already are. Also, you have a little side bar of all the mortals you have in the building, with a little useful bio, like, " Chelsea is afraid of spiders more then anything else.", or "Jonathan is a down to earth guy who thinks ghosts are figments of imagination. You may have to use the heavy artillery with him." Your teams of ghosts have their own personalities to. For example, in the first scenario, the Cogjammer, a small, monkey like ghost that messes with electric devices, almost always makes the TV spark, even though he can do other things also. Your ghosts are on another sidebar, with an epitaph, which is kind of like a bio. There are certain types of ghosts you can recruit. There are spooks, more parlor tricks then anything really scary, to monsters, which can make a mortal freak out at one trick. But all of this depends on your plasm. Plasm is the stuff mortals generate when frightened, and a ghost's staple life, or afterlife, force. If you run out of plasm, then you have to bench expensive ghosts quickly, or you'll lose. You can order ghosts to do things, and train them. It's very fun. I'd love this game, if it weren't for the lag it puts on my computer. Have fun!

Reviewed by: Brigit B. Age 12 - 10/03