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The view from 110th Street: Call it Ghostbusters 3. Terminal Reality's game brings together six key members of the original movie's cast for a story that picks up two years later. Read on to get the skinny on what you'll find when stepping into the shoes of a noob newly recruited to work with Egon and Venkman.

1. They're (almost) all back. Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis declined to participate, but the core group is back. Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script and also appear with Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and William Atherton as the irritating Walter Peck. Even better, the latter is now in hock to the mayor of NYC, and has to foot the bill for the Ghostbusters' damages.

2. You'll spend a lot of time following the trail of various supernatural fiends. Consequently, the PKE Meter is your friend. That's the two-pronged gizmo Egon used to find the librarian spook in the original film, and you'll use it to track down the same ghost (and others) for a new in-game confrontation. While hanging from your belt, the PKE Meter subs as part of the game's HUD, indicating when there's ectoplasmic residue to investigate. Used in conjunction with special goggles, it powers a viewing mode in which supernatural forces become visible.

3. One of the best sequences in the original film involved a couple of unlicensed nuclear accelerators and a fancy hotel ballroom. The latter was soon reduced to twigs, but hey, the ghost was captured! And once again, you have a license to break stuff. The environments are fantastically dense with detail, and most can be torched at the brush of a proton stream. The beams can even be used to grab objects (and ghosts), the better to slam them on walls and ceiling. A handy readout even shows how much damage has been incurred in any one area.

4. There will be plenty of proton packs for all. While the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions (the latter being called the platform of choice) have spiffy graphics, they'll focus primarily on the single-player game in which the classic characters act as support for the player's newbie ghostbuster. A multiplayer mode will let you get into the shoes of Venkman, et al, but for real co-op play you'll have to go to the Wii or PlayStation 2. The trade-off? Those versions will feature more cartoonish graphics.

5. Unfortunately, the Ghostbusters are homeless. Not in any narrative, "booted from the fire station" sort of way. No, Activision, in a move of infinite corporate wisdom, has passed on distributing the game. Consequently the game is without a publisher, though Sierra stresses the game is not canceled. Don't expect that to last long; having Bill Murray on board should be good enough for anyone. Anyone but Activision, that is. Maybe if these Ghostbusters played Guitar Hero...

The Crispy Forecast: Overcast. The cast is in place, but it's too early to know if the dialogue and pacing are, you know, funny. If the comedy is strong enough to make the linear mission construction palatable (to us and to a publisher) then we could have a title to eclipse the lame Ghostbusters II.