Something strange is coming to your neighborhood this fall when Ghostbusters launches in October on nearly every platform in existence. During Sierra's Gamer’s Day, we had the opportunity to experience this surprisingly solid adaptation of the supernatural comedy series. Picking up right after the events of the second film, Ghostbusters promises to build on the series' characteristic humor while bringing a new level of interactivity. Not everything was perfect, but the two-level demonstration certainly hinted at enormous potential—and hey, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray are on board lending their voice talent—so what’s not to like?

The game, written by Akroyd, who considers it the third part of the story, brings you on as the fifth member of the team, hired to help quell the surge of paranormal activity in New York City. Additionally, you're stuck with the lovely task of testing out all of the experimental equipment developed by Egon. After all, you are the new guy. You come equipped with a standard pack and stock of traps, but you'll also come into exotic new weapons including a dark matter beam, slime shot, and neutron accelerator. The slime shot, for example, enables you to fire globules of green goo that poison enemies.

The New York City Public Library proved a veritable playground for these unique weapons and a showcase for the game's impressive physics engine. Bookshelves, tables, and chairs could be flung about and even destroyed using the various weapons. Zap a bookshelf with your trusty proton beam and you can expect the books to explode into a flurry of pages. Shoot a chair at the right angle with a special slime tether and you can stick it on the ceiling or against a wall. Every object behaves realistically, whether it breaks apart due to the force of a proton blast or swaying from the ceiling hanging off a slime tether.

Perhaps the most impressive demonstration of this came in the form of a boss battle against a book golem. Deep in the library's flooded basement, a makeshift ghoul was conjured from several hundred books stacked amid the dirty waters (no human being could stack books like this). Blasting it with a proton beam caused books to slough off one-by-one, plopping into the water and amazingly enough, the books realistically floated on the surface, tossed about as the water splashed around from the golem's stomping. There was not a single hitch in the framerate through the entire fight despite there being hundreds of objects being physically simulated in the middle of an action sequence. With the game performing this well in advance of its release, it bodes extremely well for the level of quality in the final release.

A second level showcased how the game's physics come into play against the legions of ghosts you'll encounter through the course of the single player campaign. Walking carefully through an office high rise in Manhattan, mini-marshmallow goblins scurried about the floors. Well-aimed proton beams blasts cooked the miniature puffs; in fact, you could make out where the proton beam had made contact with the puffs by the charred exterior—just like toasting a marshmallow over a campfire. The small size of these ghosts also meant the force of the proton beam knocked them back a bit. Not all enemies are affected by weapons in this way, as it's a physical reaction based on the force of the weapon and the enemy's mass.

Making it to the building's rooftop, more mini-marshmallow puffs continued to assault the team joined by the unsettled remains of construction workers who died building the skyscraper. Zapping the ethereal construction workers with the proton beam weakened them, at which point it was possible to throw out a trap. On the PS3, using Sixaxis motion-controls, you can wrangle ghosts using the proton beam and force them into a trap. You're free to voluntarily throw one out at will, although your teammates will often support you by setting one out for you. Ghosts will get sucked down into a trap, but only after you've forced them within close range of it.

Ghosts, such as the aforementioned construction workers, have the ability to possess objects. On the rooftop, the ghouls were able to possess construction equipment and fly about the environment. Get hit with these objects and you take damage, so exorcising ghosts from possession is necessary to avoid being killed; moreover, you can't trap a ghost when it possesses an item. Destroying the object does the trick, which is done easily enough with your proton beam. Once exorcised, tangle it up in a beam and prepare a trap to finish the fight.