Disturbance Ground Zero

Disturbance Ground Zero is the opening mission in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and it has a bigger job than just teaching the controls. It introduces the team, turns the Natural History Museum into the first major case, and starts laying down the Shandor and Gozerian threads that keep paying off later.

Quick guide links

• Realistic / HD Campaign / Walkthrough for the full mission map on this branch.
• Realistic / HD Version Guide if you want the bigger branch overview.
• Level 1 transcript if you want the dialogue and cutscene order for this chapter.
• Tools of the Trade and Tips for Rookie Ghostbusters if a gadget gate, boss, or combat stretch is slowing you down.
• Next chapter: Welcome to the Sedgewick Hotel

Playable walkthrough

The Firehouse opener is brief, but it is still teaching the rhythm the rest of the realistic campaign expects: stay with the team, keep moving while you fire, and switch cleanly from damage to wrangling when a ghost is ready to trap.

Before you start

• Stay close to Ray once the basement chase begins. If you drift into side corners, you are usually just delaying the next trigger.
• Use this mission to get comfortable venting the pack. Later chapters punish overheating much harder than this one does.

Step-by-step walkthrough

1. Go upstairs to the lab and let the story kick the case open. Start in the garage, head up to Egon, Ray, and Peter, and stay through the museum pulse scene until Slimer gets loose and the containment trouble starts.
2. Follow the team back downstairs instead of exploring the Firehouse. Janine’s desk, the front hall, and the basement route all unfold in a straight line once Ray takes charge, so shadow him and keep the pace up.
3. Chase Slimer through the lower level and fire whenever he pauses in front of you. You do not need a perfect angle. Just keep moving and keep pressure on him so his spit and jukes do not catch you flat-footed.
4. Switch focus to the Sloth Ghost when Slimer bails out. Give yourself a few steps of room in the larger basement chamber and read the two attacks he repeats: sidestep the straight-line vomit shot and move hard off his lane when he commits to a rush.
5. When his health drops, change jobs immediately. Stop overfiring the moment the ghost is ready. Throw the trap into open floor, lock on with the Capture Stream, and pull him across the trap in as straight a line as you can manage.
6. Let the wrap-up scene carry you out. Once the first bust is done, head back upstairs with the team and roll into the Ecto-1 departure that sends you to the Sedgewick.

What usually trips players up

• New players often keep blasting once the ghost is ready for capture. The real handoff is part of the fight.
• This mission is easy, but it quietly teaches the habit that matters most later: never stand still just because you have a shot.

Opening the campaign

On the surface, the museum disturbance looks like a straightforward first call. Something strange is moving through the building, security is rattled, and the Ghostbusters get pulled in. Underneath that, though, the mission is doing setup work for almost everything that comes later.

It gives us:

• the new hire’s first field outing
• the team’s working dynamic
• a first real sense that old supernatural history is waking back up
• the museum as the launch point for a much bigger city-wide problem

The museum as first case

The Natural History Museum is a strong first location because it feels like a place Ghostbusters trouble would thrive. Statues, exhibits, relics, dark halls, security panic, cursed history, all of that fits. It also gives the game a chance to start with atmosphere instead of trying to open on pure spectacle.

It teaches the basics, yes, but it also eases players into the tone. The game wants the museum to feel like the first step into an investigation that is about to get much uglier.

What the opener establishes

• how the game introduces scanning and observation alongside combat
• how quickly the museum trouble starts feeling tied to older Ghostbusters history
• how the team talks around the new hire instead of freezing the story for tutorials
• how the mission frames the larger supernatural surge that hits the city

What echoes later

Some first missions are disposable. This one is not. Disturbance Ground Zero is where the campaign plants the idea that this is more than a random burst of hauntings. Something is building, and the museum incident is the first clean sign that old trouble is finding its way back to the surface.

That is why it holds up better than a lot of intro levels. It teaches the basics, but it also sets a mood and points the story somewhere bigger.

The opener’s real job

Treat this mission as only a tutorial and half the point disappears. Disturbance Ground Zero is the campaign’s opening alarm bell. The museum is where the city starts tipping, and once it does, nothing stays contained for long.