Review: Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime

The Ghostbusters franchise is getting dangerously close to falling into that forgotten category where awesome ideas live. In the mid to late 80′s, Ghostbusters were everywhere. Cartoons, toys, a terrible tasting cereal, whatever, the franchise was a monster. There is supposed to be a Ghostbusters 3 coming out but it still is in the “creation phase”. A decent Ghostbusters game came out last year, and now we get a top down XBLA co-op shooter to freshen up the franchise. This game should be locked up in the containment vault.

The game has a great overall idea, but lacks the polish and fun that is going to warrant you to want to sink any significant time into it. You start out as a rookie who is picking up the slack for the Core Four as they are too busy. Playing as one of the main guys would have been much better, but they probably could not get the voice talent to do so. There is no voice acting at all which is off putting. The controls are super easy. This is your traditional top down shooter with dual stick control, LS is movements and RS is beam direction. There are upgrades to grab and and powerups to use but outside of that, the game is extremely repetitive.

In the first level, you will visit the same room several times. The game is 100% on rails and you are lead into a room, the door shuts, you kill ghosts, you move on. At the end of stages are boss battles which are less strategy and more chugging away at an extended health meter. The game would be more playable if the enemies were not so cheap. Sometimes a single hit KOs your character and you must wait for another NPC or buddy to revive you. One hit KOs? People don’t like frustrating games anymore. There are way too many choices to be bogged down with cheap enemies, zero variety, and repetitive gameplay.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the lack of drop in/drop out Co-op. Forget about joining a game in progress or having a buddy pop in for a level. If you are in, you’re in. If not, the player drops, you get all AI players. You can always quit the level, but what is the point of that? Some levels are difficult and having to restart because a buddy has to take a crap is again a dated concept. The game has a promising idea bringing a classic like Smash TV into the GB story, but after 15 minutes, you are going to lose interest because the game does little to hold it.