Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime Review

There’s something to be said for giving the benefit of the doubt to a product that’s not yet finished. That said, when I first saw the pre-release videos and screenshots of Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime I wasn’t exactly filled with confidence.

Conceptually, there’s promise here. Take the twin-stick shooter formula made popular by the likes of Smash TV and Geometry Wars and apply the Ghostbusters license to it. The result wouldn’t have been immersive or groundbreaking but it could have at least provided some straightforward fun.
 

The artificially lengthy on-the-rails driving sections is little else than a stripped down version of the on-foot gameplay

To give Sanctum of Slime its due, the basic game play is at least competent. Up to four players take the role of a new group of rookie Ghostbusters going from place to place zapping spooks. You’ve got the trusty proton pack at your disposal though you’ll be have to utilise a yellow shotgun-like blast and a blue missile-like weapon to dispatch spectres of the corresponding colours.

Every once in a while you’ll partake in on-the-rails driving sections where you’re confined to the back of the moving Ecto-4WD vehicle or engage in some straightforward boss encounters.  It’s not going to win any awards but the core game play is okay. Where the experience starts to fall apart is the chronic lack of variety and a highly repetitive structure, both of which can probably be attributed to the game’s extremely poor production values.



Expect plenty of reused assets cropping up time and again (some even seem to be borrowed from its pseudo-predecessor Ghostbusters: The Video Game) with little effort made to hide the fact. The music will have become all too familiar after the first few hours of play, though the fact you revisit nearly every level in the second half of game is maybe its single most heinous offence.

This reused and filler content is at its most ridiculous during the driving sections. In the story you’re supposed to be racing back to the Ghostbusters’ headquarters as fast as possible. However, the game artificially stretches out the level by taking you on a completely illogical route that has you driving down almost every road. The wafer-thin story is expressly written with this recycling in mind, conveniently diverting our protagonists back to old locations and artificially delaying plot resolution.
 

When the only highlights are sound bites from the source material, you know there's something wrong...

Not that the story is anything worth noting. Apparently, someone is trying to resurrect an ancient demon that’ll bring about the end of the world. I don’t know about you but I’ve never heard that story in a Ghostbusters product before.

The narrative is primarily comprised of comic strips and in-game text windows without a single word of dialogue being acted out. This begs the question of why the original Ghostbusters characters barely feature in the game. Initially I assumed that they were sidelined for this original group of rookies because Atari didn’t pay for the original actors’ voices or likenesses. However, without any spoken dialogue in the game and brief appearances from the characters at several points in the story I don’t see a reason why we can’t play as the classic Ghostbusters.

Still, playing as these new characters wouldn’t have been so bad had they been the least bit interesting but they barely leave any impression. For one thing they aren’t well-written with their only personality traits being their tendencies to constantly spout unfunny quips. The two that do standout only do so because of their clichés – Bridget is the token girl and Gabriel is the tech-savvy Egon stand-in.

Outside of the music, Sanctum of Slime’s presentation is disappointing almost across the board. From the blandly designed rookies, low resolution textures and an unpolished finish this would look underwhelming on a last generation console, let alone a modern high definition system. It does at least feature the classic sound effects from the movies (as well as Ray Parker Jr.’s famous theme song) but in this day and age that’s an expected feature for a movie licensed game.

Things become unreasonably cruel later on, so much so that I wasn’t able to reach the last two levels. Later rooms become unfeasibly difficult gauntlets, throwing wave upon wave of enemies at you. If your whole team is knocked out (a high possibility if you’re playing solo and only backed up with the game’s incompetent A.I.) you’ll have to start right back at the beginning of the encounter.
 

I wanted to fill this review with Ghostbuster quotes, but this game doesn't deserve any further association with the franchise

I hate to use the term “cash-in” but there really isn’t any other description for Sanctum of Slime. The developers took a well-worn game play template and applied the Ghostbusters license to it with the bare minimum of effort. The result is a slipshod, passionless product that can be added to the pile of lame, quick-buck titles relying purely on big name licenses to sell copies.

Atari’s previous Ghostbusters game was far from perfect but it had ambition and a reverence for the source material. With Sanctum of Slime they couldn’t even create a cover with a Ghostbuster holding the proton pack’s signature particle thrower the right way up. Shameful.