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Times have been hard for the Ghostbusters. Instead of being treated like heroes after saving New York from the evil of Zuul, they were forced to take the blame for the battle-damaged city, and had to disband. Now, four years later, they're called out of retirement by a painting of an ancient Euro-psycho named Vigo in the NY Museum of Modern Art, the presence of something supernatural under the streets of the city, and Dana Barrett's baby, Oscar.

Activision's game of the film features three sub-games inspired by scenes from the movie. In the first stage, you have to lower Ray Stantz down a 120m deep airshaft on a cable to get a sample from what is, in fact, a river a slime running along the Van Horne underground railroad. As Stantz descends you have to zap attacking spectres, ghostly hands and cable-cutting ghosts, while swinging him left and right to collect three bits of a goop scoop, as well as extra weapon supplies and courage elixir from ledges on the side of the shaft. The prospect of getting a man on a swinging rope to shoot ghosts coming at him from six directions while collecting extra weapons might sound like a nightmare, but in fact the clever joystick control makes it surprisingly easy. So easy, in fact, that it's not going to be long before you're loading up the next section.

Having analysed the slime, the Ghostbusters have found it sensitive to emotional energy, so they decide the only way to rid the streets of spooks is to use positively-charged slime to animate the Statue of Liberty, then rally a crowd of happy New Yorkers behind them and draw power from their positive vibes. This part of the game takes the form of an unusual sideways-scrolling shoot-'em-up with Miss Liberty leading some dinky citizen-sprites on the left of the screen, and swarms of slimers and spooks flying on from the right. The statue's torch draws on a supply of good slime to produce joystick-controlled fireballs which you can use to shoot down the encroaching swarms of phantoms. Blasted phantoms drop slime to the streets, which a group of your folks have to dash you and pick up to top up the slime tank. The graphics on this bit are superb - tiny but incredibly detailed ghost sprites which look just like the spooks in the movie. The shoot-'em-up action is a little monotonous but it's basically good, undemanding fun, and the occasional sight of having one of your fellahs picked up by a slimer then dropped to his doom is a right laff.

Finish this stage and you enter the final confrontation. To return to Earth and rule it, Vigo's ghost has to enter the body of a baby, and the baby he happens to have chosen is Oscar Barrett. He is drawing power from Oscar who has been placed before his painting by the zombified artist, Janosz Poha. You have to abseil the 'busters into the gallery one at a time, then select one of them to grab the baby and hide it, another to do over Janosz, and then another two to zap Vigo when he finally emerges. I won't go into any further detail, because the way this section plays is almost identical to the scene from the film. Anyone who's seen it will know exactly what to do.

Don't worry if you haven't seen the film though, as the game loads plot details, digitised pics and speech before each sub-game.

I was quite surprised to find the Ghostbusters II was one of the very few games of the film which actually matches the quality of the film. In fact, I was a bit disappointed with the film so I'd go event further than that and say that it is even more enjoyable than watching the movie!

The graphics are excellent throughout, the action is accompanied by three neat renditions of the film's soundtracks and all three games are good fun to play. What else matters?

A great licence which puts the movie's action sequences to very good use in three varied and playable levels.