Ghostbusters: The Video Game Preview

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At the end, there's a mini-boss encounter with the librarian ghost familiar from the film, and an eyeful of the parallel dimension previously only glimpsed in Sigourney Weaver's fridge. Terminal Reality clearly isn't going to miss any opportunities to evoke the films - the first one in particular, naturally.

We're promised more varied interactions, puzzles and environmental business across the sweep of the game; we wouldn't expect any of it to be any more or less standard, middle-of-the-road action-adventure fodder than the combat we see. But that's okay. Ghostbusters doesn't need to be a mechanically revolutionary videogame; it needs to be Ghostbusters.

It's all about the periphery, the storytelling, the touches, and as we've said, some are note-perfect - but some fall flat. The bland player-character, for one, sits uncomfortably with this famed gallery of eccentrics. Retaining the original cast to voice the game is a big plus, but the banter, in-game instructions and cut-scenes we saw were halting, lumpy and not at all reassuring.

You might just get away with Harold Ramis' monotone performance on character grounds - especially with Dan Aykroyd enthusiastically covering for him - but Murray's voice work has, worryingly, yet to be heard. At least Terminal Reality knows and admits that the facial animations, sound mix and pacing need attention (they really do), and that's what it's spending most of the Atari extension working on.

We're shown the Wii version of the game separately - it's being made by Mushroom Men developer Red Fly, and ported to PS2 to flesh out a full-frontal format attack. Although it shares the script, story and voice work of the lead version, it's a fairly different game, with clean, attractive cartoon graphics (thankfully a little more faithful than the Real Ghostbusters - Egon isn't blonde) that are arguably easier on the eye than the extremely hard detail of the 360, PS3 and PC game. There certainly aren't any trips into the uncanny valley for these toons, anyway.

It's either supernatural combat or a time-lapse photo taken at a rave.

It's still a third-person action romp with AI squad mates, but the level and enemy designs have been re-drawn around the Wii's capabilities. With an over-the-shoulder view, the pointer is used to move the camera, aim and lock, and flicks of the remote to slam ghosts around in the streamer battles; a natural fit, and the Slimer encounter we see looks spectacular and seems to work well. Throwing traps with a toss of the nunchuk is a bit more of a needless novelty, but overall, this is just as solid a prospect as its big brother.

In fact, in one respect it's better; a split-screen co-op option covering the entire campaign is offered on this version, but not on Terminal Reality's game. In its place is a currently mysterious co-operative/competitive multiplayer mode that will consist of short scenarios and play out, Terminal Reality says, something like the montages in the film. Finally, a DS game with the resource-management aspects of the original 8-bit spin-off is also mentioned, but we don't get to see it.

There's nothing to suggest that Ghostbusters will be bad videogame in any of its forms, even if there's nothing to suggest that it will be a particularly distinguished one, either. But the only thing that matters - not just to Atari and Terminal Reality and the fans, but quite possibly to the chances of that third movie getting made, since you can be sure that Columbia will be watching this game like a hawk - is whether or not it's good Ghostbusters. On that, we're not quite convinced - yet.