Ghostbusters The Video Game Preview

Grab your stick! HOLDING IT!

For a franchise that has been largely dormant since 1989, the Ghostbusters certainly have a large group of fans. The past two years have been a rollercoaster of emotion for the supporters of Peter Venkman and co: after years of rumour and gossip, there was a rush of excitement when developer Zootfly revealed videos of their prototype code - followed swiftly by despair when it turned out that the entire effort was completely unlicensed. Then Bill Murray let it slip that he had been working on an official game with Terminal Reality. All seemed to be going well until Vivendi decided to abandon the project... resulting in a collective wail of "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" that could be heard from Mars.

Happily for all concerned, the game was swiftly picked up by Atari. We've been told that the project was only in limbo for a matter of a week or two, though it felt much longer to us at the time. At any rate, the Ghostbusters are now safe and in preparation for release in summer 2009. After two months of going up and down like a pogo stick, our mood has now levelled off at the stage marked 'enthusiastically expectant'. Like every other Ghostbusters fan, we want to see this project hit the shop shelves - but more than anything, we want this game to be good. Not just good, in fact, but great. After all this time, anything less would be heartbreaking.

These were the troubled thoughts running through our head as we shuffled down a hotel corridor at a recent Atari expo. Our spirits lifted a little as soon as we opened the door to the presentation, because we were immediately greeted by the one of the groovy piano-led tunes from the first film - something we've probably heard at least a hundred times since we were six. This track isn't as iconic as the legendary Ghostbusters theme (if a sound can be iconic...), but it is something you will know when you hear it. Little touches like this, and the accurate "percheewww" of your proton packs, are the benefits of having an official license; they're the details that will make you feel like you're actually experiencing a Ghostbusters story - told through the medium of a chaotic third-person shooter.

Of course, the real coup of this project is the involvement of the original cast and writers. This means we get the voices of Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis - plus a script written by the latter two. From what we've seen so far, they've managed to turf up some pretty funny stuff. One scene we watched features the gang creeping up on The Librarian - their ghostly nemesis from the start of the first film:

Heat 'em up! SMOKIN'!

"Flank her!" cries out Ray Stantz. "She's got nowhere to run!" The ghost then promptly descends through the floor. "I'm not sure how the flanking was supposed to work," comments Egon.

The setup for the new story is that you're The Kid, an unnamed intern who's joined the Ghostbusters on work experience. Your role in the outfit is to act as the guinea pig for all the team's new equipment, and to basically do all the dangerous stuff. The interns don't tend to last very long (hence the fact that no-one bothers learning your name), so expect a lot of jokes to come at your expense. It's a neat way to explain why you're doing so much of the team's legwork, as well as why you get to carry so many cool toys.

Over the course of the game's 12-hour campaign you'll use a variety of different weapons, from the classic proton pack to a variation on the slime-gun used in Ghostbusters 2. Every weapon you're carrying will be visible on your character model, so if you're fully kitted out - as was the case in the demo we were shown - your intern will be sporting more nuclear hardware than an Al Qaeda car-boot sale. In addition to looking pretty, the flashing lights and gauges on your back will serve as an indicator for your health, the type of beam you're using, and the temperature of your equipment (overheating your laser will cause problems). The attacks we saw included the ability to use your proton stream to slam a ghost against the floor, and a weird tether-slime gun that lets you join two objects with elastic ectoplasm - expect this to figure heavily in the game's puzzle-solving sections. You'll also get to use the gang's ever-awesome ghost traps, and Egon's spirit-detecting PKE meter, which switches your view to a first-person perspective.