Ghost Squad Hands On

Light gun shooters haven't always been popular at home, and not just because pointing the gun off-screen to reload sometimes incurs collateral damage ("why is my plant pot in the fire"). Instead it's the old dichotomy of arcade and home - what's brilliantly brief in amongst the slots is bewilderingly insubstantial when your receipt says 39.99.

Making your arcade game work in the home is difficult to do, as SEGA will grimly attest - but SEGA's also one of the best examples of a publisher figuring it out, having delivered OutRun 2006 to universal acclaim. That game offered isolated, untouched arcade versions alongside modified and expanded adaptations that built on what we liked about the coin-op originals without betraying their memory.

Doing the same for a light gun game might seem harder, but Ghost Squad's set-up suggests it could succeed - and the game's Wiimote controls are a surprisingly splendid substitute for the massive assault rifle weaponry hooked up to the game down the pier.

In it, you take control of a member of the Global Humanitarian-Operation and Special Tactics Squad (a backronym that's only outdone by our own sadly non-fictional Serious Organised Crime Agency), and it's up to you and up to three comrades to take down some of those pesky terrorists you hear about on the news. These ones are a bit more successful than ours though, and have managed to do things like smuggle about 48 of themselves onto Air Force One.

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