Reviews

20 years on from the last Ghostbusters film, the (occasionally) fearless foursome have been successfully brought back from the dead by Atari. Take control of the new recruit as he's shown the ropes by Ray, Egon, Winston and Peter and watch as they test some dangerous new equipment on you.

As Steven Spielberg no doubt found with Indy 4, it's near impossible to overcome years of fan expectation, no matter how great the end product actually is. There will inevitably be some hard-nosed gamers disappointed by this game, but for many people it'll be their highlight of the year.

Referring to the GB theme tune as "the 118 song" is now punishable by death.

Weapon-wise, there are a variety of proton pack accessories that complement the standard proton stream, such as stasis beams, exploding boson darts and a slime blower a lot like the one from Ghostbusters II except this time it's green and used to corrode black slime. The Ghostbusters are recreated in digital form (it's 1991, so they're still in their prime) and all the main cast reunite to voice their characters.

Campaign mode begins with the mute recruit wandering around GB HQ when a paranormal explosion rocks the city. Slimer escapes and your equipment tutorial revolves around catching him in the basement. Ray or Egon talk you through technical things during missions, leaving Venkman to chat up suspicious Gozer exhibition creator Dr. Ilyssa Selwyn (Alyssa Milano) and Winston to bring up the rear in Ecto-1.

I collect spores, moulds and fungus.

The proton pack works beautifully - check out that bass rumble when it fires - and the idea is for you to gradually wear down a ghost with your stream until it's vulnerable enough to trap. Once you've slammed the ghost against the ground a couple of times to stun it all you need do is wrangle it down into your trap. This is easy at first but later Class V ghosts put up more of a fight.

Your first mission sees you returning to the Sedgewick Hotel. A number of dead bellhops and pirate ghosts have turned the place into a waterlogged mess, complete with barnacles and floating furniture (use your wand to lift and throw items out of your way). Equipping your PKE meter automatically switches your view to night vision goggles so you can scan the hotel. You'll need to get up close to scan the former for Tobin's Spirit Guide, which tells you the history of each ghost and their weakness (slime, boson darts etc).

To think, there was a time when we were satisfied with moving a GB logo around a map...

Soon you'll be fighting flaming gargoyles in the street and trying to stop Stay Puft again. The graphics on the PS3 version look their best during night scenes, when lights bounce off glass and you can see each Ghostbuster's shadow on the wall, but during day scenes they can look a little bit PS2. What does work well, and what got Terminal Reality the gig, is the way objects realistically fall, smash, burn and explode on screen. If you're knocked down by a plasma blast, you tumble like a tossed doll.