One day my brother came home from doing whatever people his age did during the 1980s (compare shoulder pads and listen to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, then) with a can of what I thought was a soft drink, only to then notice it had a strange logo on the front and a warning that it contained a trapped ghost. A bit of annoying younger-brother questioning later I had discovered Ghostbusters, and much fun was to be had with both movies.

Some twenty years later it came time for me to fire up the Ghostbusters game, yet despite the gap between then and now the sense of childish optimism and general geeky happiness had not faded a jot. As someone said in the ‘Making Of’ feature of the disc, this is one game that people desperately wanted to be good, and fortunately for the most part it satisfies those feelings very nicely indeed.

Quite a lot of this is to do with how involved the original crew were with the thing, with the four original Ghostbusters taking their roles amongst other original cast members and Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd writing the script. The result is that you end up with pretty much as close to a third Ghostbusters film as we are going to get right now (although there’s a new one in the works… hmm), packed with fantastic little moments of comedy (doughnuts hanging on utensil hooks, thank you cards from kids whose parties the Ghostbusters have been hired for) in between some great dialogue and film references. Anyone worried that the game would in any way infringe on what the films gave us need stop worrying right now.

Of course, all this would be lessened greatly if the game then went on to dramatically shoot itself in the foot by being crap. Luckily there’s no reason to worry here either, as although the game is nothing totally outstanding or groundbreaking, it takes the whole ‘thirty seconds of fun’ thing and does a great job at keeping you entertained throughout. It’s pretty much what you’d expect and want to do in a Ghostbusters game.

You start off as a new recruit, hired to help the team test out new technology on the fly. All sorts of suspicious happenings then start emanating from a museum display of ancient artefacts, leading to you hopping in the Ecto-1 and driving off to start your adventures. Oh, and Slimer makes an early appearance too in all his fat green glory, basically acting as a tutorial section to give you the basics in what you’ll need to be doing.

The general gist of this is that you run round in a third-person over-the-shoulder view, blasting ghosts and solving a couple of simple puzzles along the way. Your proton pack eventually gains four different settings to use, from the standard beam that zaps ghosts and can pull them into the traps to the slime gun that cleans up black slime and acts as a tether so you can open closed gates, stick enemies to things etc. Each can be upgraded as you earn cash for ghostbusting too, which gives a nice incentive as you progress.

Along the way you are equipped with a PKE meter, which basically acts as a homing device for all things paranormal. Generally this points you toward where you should be heading, but it also picks up little haunted artefacts that you can collects to decorate your fire station and use to purchase further upgrades. As with the general theme of the game these are rather tongue-in-cheek, so expect to find various bits of Ghostbusters merchandise littered around.

Hence, it’s basically a game that plays to the fans by allowing them to finally get an inkling of what being a Ghostbuster would be like, and as it turns out it is pretty damned awesome indeed. Pelting around confined spaces sending all sorts of scenery flying around as you and the crew try to drag another ghost into your traps is brilliant stuff, with the aiming, shooting and the wrangling parts of the game easy to pick up and good fun to put into practice. Given that you spend the vast quantity of the game doing this that’s most certainly a good thing.

Not everything can be classed as ‘a good thing’, mind; your team mates’ AI occasionally leaves you confused as Egon, Ray etc walk around and stand in the middle of your beam, get stuck on scenery and take an inordinately long time to come and revive you should you be downed (of which you can return the favour, obviously). I also once managed to break the game by having a ghost fly out of the environment and never come back, meaning I couldn’t complete the section and activate a door.

Another issue is the lack of longevity the game offers. Weighing in at around eight hours or so, the game pretty much whizzed by like a fun-filled blur and then left. I suppose you could level that being in the Ghostbusters environment is so enjoyable that it was always going to make the game seem a little on the small side, but a few additional hours would not have hurt. There is a multiplayer mode (although no campaign co-op, sadly) that mixes different standard multiplayer types (such as survivor, deathmatch etc) though, and each mode provides decent enough fun to suggest that the online portion will support the offline part quite nicely.

As said, it’s not perfect and yeah, it does have issues. Even taking that into account, though, you can’t help but look back on it with a smile and a warm fuzzy feeling; getting the original cast to help out has given it a really slick, ‘proper’ Ghostbusters feel, and while it lasts the story mode is enjoyable and challenging. Add in some pretty decent visuals and a familiar soundtrack and you’re left with a game that not only will appease fans, but hopefully teach younger players what all the fuss was about a couple of decades ago.