I might not be the biggest arcade shooter fan on the planet, granted, but you know what? I’ve actually ended up quite liking Ghost Squad. As much as I tried to convince myself that on-rails zapper shooting games don’t float my boat and as much as the grating, silly dialogue and over-the-top music tried to seriously piss me off, the game kept me pointing and shooting for so long that after a while I almost forgot that life wouldn’t automatically walk me around my flat on rails too.

It’s classic arcade shooter fodder, with you commanding one (or two in multiplayer) members of a crack team who infiltrate a selection of tricky-yet-oh-so-corny situations to try to save the day. During said events you’ll be raiding a hotel and shooting at a helicopter with a missile launcher, sneaking through Air Force One to save the President from something or other and zooming along on a hovercraft firing grenades at barricades. Yup, certainly got the action box firmly ticked on that one then.

Problem is, there are only three levels in which you traipse around popping enemies, which leaves the whole thing feeling a tad lacking when it comes to variety. Granted, each level has a number of different paths which can be chosen on the fly and these are unlocked gradually through repeated plays of each of the three at ever-increasing difficulty levels, but you can’t help but feel that even with a chum on board the Arcade mode runs out of puff quicker than an asthmatic marathon runner.

It’s not that you unlock different paths through levels of course; as you go through Arcade you are gifted new weapons and clothing as well. Whilst the clothing might not make too much difference (despite an… interesting bikini mode and a ninja mode, although both are for party play) the guns actually do offer you a bit of difference when it comes to how you pop and cap your way around.

The game also does throw the occasional event at you that give you a bit of a break from simply spraying bullets at people, such as hand-to-hand combat where you have to hit little targets as they pop up to complete the scuffle and one occasion where you have to cut the wires of a time bomb in order to avoid it going off. Neither are particularly difficult, granted, but they are reasonable enough fun and break the action pretty well.

Other than arcade mode you also have the aforementioned Party Mode in which you complete the same levels as Arcade, with four players being allowed and no unlockables being on offer, and the practice efforts which actually turn out to be pretty damn fun in multiplayer too. A particular favourite is the mode in which the game removes your on-screen crosshair and has you shooting at targets based on your instinct, with five different rounds adding scores to a final total. Pro tip: playing with your eyes closed and with the controller behind your back greatly adds to the sense of fun if things get a bit competitive.

You can’t help but enjoy it, despite its brevity. The completely silly over-the-top enemies who yell ‘I’m over here!’, the crazy helicopter shooting section, the bits where you are ducking behind tables with fruit and plates smashing and exploding everywhere as you exchange fire with your enemies… it’s classic arcade shooting stuff. The Wii controls act as well as you’d expect, with the aiming being both rapid and precise enough to allow you to perform head shots and the like without too much fuss or bother.

Still, as much fun as you do have, you are still aware that as a full-priced game you should be getting more than what the game offers. It’s better to have a good game that ends quickly than a terrible on that drags on toward infinity, sure, but with only three scenarios to work through you could feasibly see everything Ghost Squad has to offer within a few hours of playing it for the first time. If you can find it for around a tenner or perhaps a few quid more then it’s ideal fodder, but at full whack it’s a bit of a stretch to consider it getting even close to being good value for money.