If you’re one of quite a large number who have never read the comics, so have no clue who Ghost Rider is, don’t worry as Nicholas Cage is currently providing a slightly lacklustre performance at your local Cineplex as the deformed trick rider Johnny Blaze, who sold his soul to the devil to save his dad, who died anyway. One minute he’s bike-riding Johnny-go-lucky, but when the blood of the innocent is spilt he turns into an angry flame-headed, chain-flinging biking badass - the hero of the recent film and now game Ghost Rider.

Luckily the game isn’t set at the same time as the film - it covers the events following it so they didn’t have to worry about capturing Cage’s ugly mug or Eva Mendes’ form (although we wouldn’t mind that). You have to take down the devil’s son, who threatens to start a new apocalypse and overthrow his dad. You’ll face off every so often with many of the villains from the comic book series, and also team up with a couple of pals too (we spotted Black vampire avenger Blade plodding around at one point).

The environments are all very eerie, run-down and cold places (except hell, which was rather hot) ranging from desert ghost towns, to underground labs and scary abandoned fairgrounds. There are nice little touches when you look around too, like when you move between areas the camera skews on its side, making things extra-melancholy. Unfortunately the gameplay isn’t as well thought-out; most missions consist of going to the end of the level to kill an ‘elemental’ who gives you his soul, which can now unlock a door you couldn’t get into right back at the start of the level. Cue lots of back-tracking…

But it’s not long before the new additions reveal flaws and the old ways start to grate. Although the enemies do look rather nasty (the clowns are like something out of a Stephen King novel), they don’t vary at all and the only increase in difficulty is when they chuck more of them at you without health pickups. The game did try something different with the combo barriers but if you’re fighting more than one, or with other normal enemies it’s so easy for you to spend a couple of minutes cracking out combos to get yourself up to ‘Spirited’ skill (they’re lettered D/C/B/A/S/V) only for one of the other enemies to slap you in the back, sending you right back to the beginning. It took me 20 minutes to get past two bat/crow things because they had barriers on them, which was about as frustrating as actually watching Ghost Rider at the cinema.

Seeing as Ghost Rider is always pictured on a motorcycle with flames burning all over it you’d expect some kind of driving sections. When I played them all I could think of was it played a lot like Parappa the Rapper: you’re always tapping O to shoot at the enemies on foot (which pose no threat at all), and you’ll have to tap X and R1, to jump and slide respectively, in sequence a lot to traverse the levels. You’ll also have to beat off some ‘devil riders’ like a half-arsed Road Rash. You never feel like you’re being challenged at any stage and the only problem comes when the on-foot enemies explode so violently that you can’t see what’s ahead of you, and the crappy bike physics stop you from avoiding a jump in time. The bike sections feel like cheap filler and are also why the main game gets too easy (I got about 6000 souls for every bike section).

Ghost Rider appeared to have built on and extended a franchise I liked a lot, but as you play further you find that all the good bits about the game are either flawed or just window-dressing. What could have been an interesting beat-em-up degenerated into another mediocre Dynasty-Warriors button bashing fest. Best we let Ghost Rider rest in peace.