3rd May 2011 - Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime is a new arcade title developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Atari, it is an Action-Adventure game in which you take the role of 1 of 4 playable Rookie Ghostbusters characters (unfortunately not the originals like Peter Vankman, Egon, Stantz etc etc) in a comic strip style adventure. It was released on the 23rd of March 2011.
GAMEPLAY
The game takes setting about 10 years after Ghostbusters 2, where you basically take the role of 1 of 4 Rookie Ghostbusters, taking over from the original Ghostbusters who are apparently "too exhausted" to do a particular mission so they send in you (the rookies) to go to work. The story is told similar to a graphic novel so it doesn't contain any voice acting but does contain some fairly cool comic strips. I'm not sure if it's my sense of humour or not but a lot of the jokes said in the comic book strips I didn't actually find funny at all. The original characters from the movies look nothing like the comic book strip characters, so you may question "who is that Ghostbuster?" quite a lot of times (this might be a letdown for some Ghostbusters fans).
The controls seem to be similar to Black Ops Dead Ops Arcade where you use your right thumbstick and your Ghostbusting laser beams will start firing in whichever direction you're aiming. You use your left bumper and right bumper to change the type of beam you're firing which depends on what ghosts you're fighting be they red, blue or yellow. This game has no difficulty setting and it seems it's solely based for Coop because the AI seem to be very flawed in fighting different varieties of ghosts and particularly bosses. During boss fights you'll find the AI very intolerable and frustrating because the boss will have certain abilities that down you in 1 hit and the AI will basically stay very close to the boss even when this is happening.
Some of the boss fights are interesting but the game seems very linear and repetitive, there's a lot of going to the same place over and over, fighting the same ghosts over and over. Just really no uniqueness to the gameplay. It can also be very hard if you have no Coop partners to play with the fights going up to boss fights can actually be tougher than the boss fights themselves. When you manage to beat a boss you also have to do a mini game with the ghost trapper where you have to A, X, Y and B in different combinations fairly quickly so the boss becomes trapped, if not the boss gets released with not very much health but you have to rinse and repeat until you trap it.
MULTIPLAYER
The game has multiplayer but it's actually Coop, you can team up online and do missions together with people around the world. The multiplayer I've found was really laggy and slightly unplayable from the 2-3 games I tried, so local hosting may work out a lot better for people willing to play Coop on this game.
GRAPHICS
The Graphics for Ghostbusters: SoS was actually fairly good for an arcade title. The graphics could be compared to Alien Swarm on Steam on the PC; it's basically a top down view game where you move area to area fighting Ghosts and bosses in each new area. The textures and modelling seem very well done as well so I have no complaints about the graphics. Each area also has many destructible environments, they don't add to the gameplay just add to the amount of points you get towards leaderboard rankings. There aren't any loading times in the game (except between levels of course), and it has a fairly nifty autosave feature between each particular area you step into.
SOUND
There is no voiceover acting but the music score is very similar to the Ghostbusters movie, it also contains the Ghostbusters theme song in numerous parts of the game. For a PG game some of the music can actually be rather creepy and eerie, but props to the developers for making the music score really enjoyable throughout the game.
VALUE
I would say for the amount of game time this game has around 4-5 hours total (not including getting all achievements), it would definitely be worth the 800 Microsoft Points that it costs to purchase. But I believe the gameplay itself being very boring and repetitive I'd estimate that it should cost around 400 Microsoft Points; it basically has no playability once you're finished you won't want to keep playing even if you want to go for achievements. That being said you might find it more enjoyable playing with friends than solo.
CONCLUSION
Well I basically didn't really enjoy this game, I found it boring and repetitive, it offered no real uniqueness to anything Ghostbusters related. The graphics and music score seemed to be the only great thing this game has going for itself, I really enjoyed the music and the scenery the game provided. It also has a good autosave feature in each level because each level is around 5-20 mins long each area you enter is an autosave but it doesn't save to hard drive so you aren't able to access the save if you wish to redo the level again. People who are diehard fans of the Ghostbusters Franchise may enjoy this game but it was a big letdown for me.
AAG SCORE: 4.5/10
Pros:
+ Great Music Score\par
+ Great graphics for an Arcade Title\par
+ Good Autosave feature inside levels\par
+ Cool Graphic Novel driven storyline\par
Cons:
- Boring and repetitive levels\par
- You revisit the same area at least twice\par
- Boss fights are less challenging than the fights leading up to the boss fight
- Tapping LB and RB to change your lasers to fight certain enemies can be very frustrating
- No voiceover acting
Reviewed and Written By James Gott