Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime Review

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime is a new iteration in the popular Ghostbusters franchise. The game is a top-down co operative shooter set in the city of New York. It’s a downloadable title released on XBL, PSN, and PC rather than a full-fledged follow up.

The originals are over worked due to high demand for their services and find themselves four new recruits to give them some time off from a busy schedule. You will be playing as one of these random recruits hired as back up by the originals.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime presents the story in comic book style that explains the background and how you come together as a Ghostbuster. But these cut scenes become irritating at times considering it takes 5 – 7 minutes just to get through the first cut scene and there is actually an achievement for not skipping them.

You will mostly be fighting red, yellow and blue ghosts with corresponding beams of energy which your weapon emits. Upgrades to your weapons will be installed automatically by the original ghostbusters as you progress through the 14 levels of the game.

I wondered why the developer didn’t provide more options for upgrading your weapons scattered about the game for installing in your emitter. This would have made the gameplay more engaging and is something that felt missing in the game. You will find some handy pick-ups like Invincibility, health packs, and bonus cash though.

Gameplay is a bit of miss. Though, the difficulty levels increase as you progress, the gameplay elements remain the same throughout and feel repetitive. It’s hard to ignore that it always follows this formula:

You enter a building, a door opens, you enter the room, and the door closes. You kill all the ghosts in the room, and move on. Sometimes the game focuses on a specific ghost, you kill it in an instant, then to find out many of the same types have re-spawned. Repeat!

The game’s AI is incredibly supportive, when you die you are instantly revived by any of the AI players. It’s almost like you are too important for them to revive first even when they are surrounded by several ghosts. So sometime it results in game over. The ghosts mostly will be focusing on you, leaving AI alone to wander.

The game becomes difficult in the later levels and that is where the AI comes in handy. They are quick to revive you so maybe that’s not that bad either.

The gameplay mechanics should play fine in Co Op, but sometimes it becomes frustrating when you die just because your co op partner was reluctant to switch to the corresponding color of the energy beam.

The PC version doesn’t support Online play, and neither does it support local co op between computers. You can only play co op with the help of the joypads with your friends and family. Though consoles do support the online play.

Overall, the game is OK thanks to its co-op multiplayer, and it can be fun playing with your friends who are more intelligent than the AI. Ultimately, the game could have been better with some added complexity and depth.

Gameplay: 6
Presentation: 7
Overall: 6.5