For a while, Ghostbusters wasn't just a hit film and a misfire of a sequel; it was more, surely, than a series of increasingly abstracted cartoon iterations and a line of cheaply manufactured toys. Some compound of innocence and awe made Ghostbusters rise from its unassuming roots to represent something greater than its predictably enfranchised parts; if only for a brief moment in time a quarter of a century ago, it became a true cultural touchstone.

Adults and children of that era alike will remember the Ghostbusters fondly. Most of us, I'm sure, can reel off the names of at least three of the four brave New York souls who took down the diabolical Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And like poor Peter Venkman, we'll never forget Slimer, that icky, ectoplasmic mass who became as iconic as the bold no-ghosts motif that adorns the Ecto-1. But with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Ghostbusters' game-changing first outing on the big screen upon us - and so soon - these are distant memories, made vague by the years and now near-hopelessly abstracted from the actuality of our experiences. What are we to make of Ghostbusters in the Twenty-First Century? It cannot be to us now as it was so long ago - it stands, surely, a better chance of sullying all that we loved about it - but perhaps this so-called relaunch can capture something of the spirit of the original; perhaps it can do justice to the unforgettable characters, to the world that the Ghostbusters inhabited so effortlessly. God knows, if it could, it could be something very special - but we've been made fools of so often before. The videogame tie-in is not, you might say, a genre known for its perfectionist streak, and given the quick turn-around on the development of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, pitched only after the deliberate leak of a hopeful third party's Ghostbusters game drew a surprising clamour of fans from the message-board woodwork, you'd be smart to be wary.

On the other hand, the odds weren't all so stacked against Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Nearly all of the acting talent who brought the films to life in the first place return to voice their characters in developer Terminal Reality's almost official second sequel - Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver are gone, but with the core cast intact, easily enough forgotten - and though the shameless claim that Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis once again "wrote" the whole of its story was quickly discredited, the franchise's original creators have certainly assisted in its genesis, if in no more of a capacity than as script-doctors with an unmatched knowledge of the universe. None of which is to mention the hype; the finely tuned rhetoric, the previews, the interviews, the day-and-date release of the films on Blu-ray. All this has made frenzied Ghostbusters fans of polite admirers who hadn't thought of Ray, Peter, Egon and Winston in dog-years.

The good news is that Ghostbusters: The Video Game does not, in any significant way, disappoint. It's no Ghostbusters 3 - if the strangely pitched puff pieces have you believing it is then a step back and a little less F5 could do you the world of good - but neither does it squander the goodwill that most players will approach the six to eight hour experience with. A worthwhile Ghostbusters game might have been a long time coming, but given its hurried development cycle and the limited quantity of quality assets a studio can produce on such a limited timescale, Terminal Reality are wise not to have Ghostbusters: The Video Game overstay its welcome. It represents a few nostalgic evenings well spent; a few hearty laughs and a rollicking ride is all you could ask of such a thing, and it is thankfully without the grandiose delusions that its publicity would entreat you to indulge in. The single most impressive feat of Ghostbusters: The Video Game is that it never attempts to reinvent the wheel. Its narrative, to begin with, picks up just two years after the events of the Ghostbusters II; the dead space between then and now, in which the fearsome foursome were so far from the cultural consciousness, is done away with. It's 1991 all over again and Manhattan's new mayor, elected in part because of his support of the Ghostbusters, has hired an overseer to be sure that his charges do not tax the insurance companies any more than is absolutely necessary - but just as the team are coming to grips with this restrictive new arrangement, a mushroom-cloud of paranormal energy blossoms over their great city, threatening to upset everything, not least their tidy civil-service pensions. Luckily, the Ghostbusters have lately taken on an apprentice and, from the outset, your predictably mute player character is involved in every hijinx and hunt; ostensibly to play the guinea-pig during the onsite testing of a variety of new proton-powered equipment, the rookie is largely an observer, smartly leaving the practiced cut scene acts to the professional players - who reprise their roles faithfully, if not particularly enthusiastically - but his presence during the gameplay, in the actual thick of it, is absolutely crucial.

Either it's poor partner AI or the intervening years have not been kind to the Ghostbusters, but you'll find their aim obscenely off and their occasional hits so powerless that, were it not for their regular comedic asides, you'd be better off going it alone against Gozer and the vile spirits that threaten to take New York for themselves. For all intents and purposes, you see, Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a third person shooter. Terminal Reality have described it as Gears of War-lite in the past, and their assertions, hopeful though you might think them, are not so far from the mark - you can revive teammates, Roadie Run™ and everything! An obviously inspired control scheme sees you stalking through the sparse, fan-serving selection of environments with ease, whipping out your PK meter from time to time to scan your surroundings in a neat, Metroid-esque hunt for haunted collectables and tongue-in-cheek entries to add to Tobin's Spirit Guide (a bestiary with a sense of humour). Most of your time with Ghostbusters: The Video Game, however, will be spent doing just what it says there on the tin. With your experimental proton pack, the experience of busting ghosts can be broken down into three interlinked mechanics; as Ray explains in the Firehouse tutorial, before any spectres of note can be truly defeated, you have to "sap 'em, cap 'em and trap 'em," which is to say, you have to aim your reticule appropriately and fire a stream of lovingly rendered energy their way before throwing out a trap and wrangling your ethereal target into its confines like an unwilling animal into its cage. The mechanic works and it's just as well, because you are rarely tasked with anything more complex; there are no puzzles to solve and no sandbox environments to navigate through, no RPG accoutrements to keep you occupied. Sometimes you have to hold your proton stream over a ghost longer than usual and sometimes you have to dodge when a ghost makes like it might attack the safe spot you've been standing in for the last few moments, but sometimes you start to wish there was a little more to ghostbusting than Ghostbusters: The Video Game lets on.

Still, the experience is in large part a satisfying one, and with such a short lifespan, all the sweeter for its diminutiveness. The familiar environments are a joy to romp around - the Hotel Sedgwick, the Natural History Museum, an inter-dimensional Central Park - and their destructible environments are ripe for wrecking or respecting, as you prefer. An otherwise inexplicable little tally on the HUD keeps count of how much damage you've been responsible for in your brief career but on the PS3, trophies reward you regardless of which tack you've taken. Some arrangement of the team is with you through almost the entirety of the game, bantering away during exploratory follow-the-leader sequences or standing stiff as boards, waiting for you to trigger their next chitchat. Much to the surprise of some, Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a mostly pleasant experience, positively dripping in nostalgia and packed with neat, rewarding little nods to long time fans, but it's marred, sadly, by enough technical hitches to leave a bittersweet taste in your mouth after the last of the escaped ghosts have been returned to the routinely unreliable containment unit in the Firehouse basement. The frame rate is not what it could be and an encounter with everyone's favourite Marshmallow Man left me reminiscing fondly over the humble-but-reliable performance of videotape. A spook prowling the lower floors of the New York public library, who announced her arrival with a particularly flashy bloom of mist, repeatedly halted the drawing capabilities of Terminal Reality's graphics engine, as well as my own progress with it. As for the Ghostbusters themselves, from time to time you'll find them so stuck in their idiotic idling routines that you'll very likely have to reload your last checkpoint just to get on with things. The difficulty curve, too, proves incredibly unbalanced; run-ins with some of the least significant enemies can be tough enough that the extraordinarily long load screens between quick-fire deaths really start to grate, while fights with a few key ghosts are uninspired pushovers by comparison.

Aesthetically, Ghostbusters: The Video Game is at least sufficient. There's been a whole lot of fuss made over the PS3 version's comparatively low native resolution as opposed to the full 720p supported by the Xbox 360 port that Sony has kindly held up over here in the UK, but the graphics are perfectly serviceable in either case. Colourful and fun, the look of Ghostbusters: The Video Game on PlayStation 3 is contiguous enough with the universe that a few flat textures are of no real consequence. The sound is equally authentic and while the performances aren't exactly pitch-perfect - some of the fun that made the franchise so appealing seems to have been lost in translation, along with all of its innocence - the script is witty enough to keep things ticking over, and the voice actors make what they can of it. The technology in turn and considering its limitations does respectably in replicating the beats of the original film's classic comedy. The familiar strains of Ray Parker Junior's iconic theme are present and correct, and the game makes fair use, too, of the remainder of Ghostbusters' original score.

If you have any sort of enthusiasm for Ghostbusters: The Video Game then you can be sure that Terminal Reality have done nothing so wrong that you should be in the least discouraged from checking it out. It looks good enough, it sounds very fine indeed, and for its short lifespan it plays through in entertaining fashion. There are problems and technical shortcomings, but the overall experience is satisfying enough that it will not likely disappoint. As the famous music winds up and the bold red-and-white motif fades to black, all that's left to ask yourself is the obvious. Who you gonna call?

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).