Published by: Atari
Developed by: Behaviour Santiago
Release Date: March 23, 2011
Available on: PC Windows 7 / Vista / XP, PS3 (download) , XBOX (download)
INTRO: If you’ll remember, I really enjoyed the last Ghostbusters game released in 2009. I thought it captured the spirit of the series really well and it was indeed a quality product. Imagine my surprise when I saw Sanctum of Slime pop up on my Xbox dashboard! A top-down co-op shooter starring the ‘Busters? SIGN ME UP baby! Is it worth its weight in slime? Read on to find out.
The official description: Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime is a four player, ghost-busting adventure that will take players on a brand new paranormal experience. Players will suit up with their proton packs and assume the role of a rookie hired by the Ghostbusters to save New York City from a disaster of ghoulish proportions.
GAMEPLAY:
Folks, the original game this ain’t. This little game is an unabashed disappointment and I can tell you right off the bat, your decision to buy it should require some heavy thought. First of all, this game just doesn’t feel much like Ghostbusters. Sure, they play the trademark song to death and the Ghostbusters use their proton packs but you don’t even get to play as the original guys! Yes, they’re in it a little but come on- you don’t make a Batman game and have the player play as Azrael.
Anyway, you’re off to look for the trouble that has been caused in the ecto-sphere or something and the Real Ghostbusters are too tired to hack it. The story goes on and on in a comic-book style. The new team isn’t even exciting, as the new team are just stereotypical copies of the old guys. Come on man, why not a bit of originality? The humor is lame and the team is just not very creative.
In terms of the gameplay, you enter a room and a ton of ghosts start attacking you. You can’t get out until you kill them all, them you move down a narrow area to transition to the next room and travel in a circle to get to the other side of the level. The environments repeat themselves a lot (streets/hotel/sewers, etc). Luckily there’s a tiny break in the monotony as you ride in the Ecto-4WD (sigh) in the streets for some rail shooting.
The enemies are varied, but ridiculous. Very few of them are familiar and seem to be generic spook fodder, unfortunately. In terms of blasting them, the game takes a color-coded blasting approach. You have your regular beam and then you’ve eventually got control of other modes where you can shoot monsters based on their color with a special beam that matches it. The buttons match their corresponding beam color, so that’s simple enough. This color gimmick can be really hard to follow when you’re shooting a blue enemy and he’s firing tons of blue crap at you at the same time. When you’re not blasting ghosts you can of course wreck the environment and pick up collectables.
As far as your teammates, play with actual people- it’s the best way to enjoy the game for a few hours. If you leave them as AI pals, they’re okay and they’ll save you if you drop but that’s about it. They won’t watch out for you and they certainly don’t use the color-coded approach as often as they should. They can be extremely frustrating. On top of this, the enemy AI is really unbalanced. You’ll absolutely mow through 90% of the level, until you get to the boss. The bosses in this game can be SUPER hard. And when you die, you’ll be repeating some of that level before you get to that frustrating boss again. Very disappointing.
Gameplay: 4.5/10
GRAPHICS:
Graphics are okay, with nothing special standing out. The character models are somewhat stiff but functional, and the environments are okay too. The word basic really comes to mind here.
Graphics: 5/10
AUDIO:
The music in this game is decent but as I mentioned before, it repeats way too much to be suitable. The voice acting is nonexistent, which is a huge disappointment. Sound effects are alright.
Audio: 5/10
FINAL VERDICT:
I don’t think you’ll even get through this game unless you’ve got a lot of patience and friends who LOVE the franchise. The game isn’t overly exciting, has a real imbalance of difficulty and doesn’t capture the spirit of the series. Hopefully they can pull this game from stores for awhile and re-tool a few things.
Final Score: 4/10