It’s sad because it could be so much more. The story takes the team through a large range of environments, that could offer the variety the game needed in its twists and opponents, but (bar a few boss characters) enemies in each setting are the same and the layout never progresses beyond corridor, kill room, repeat.

 

 

Occasionally areas bring something a little new, but it is only ever a cosmetic change. People in need of help switch from customers to patients, and obstacles that the ghosts throw or use to block the path ahead alter from hotel luggage to insane asylum beds. But with no real affect on play obstacles in the strangely sterile world of GB: SoS quickly abstracted in my mind to little more than Lego blocks. Even when it tries to mix things up with areas on the back of cars it still just feels repetitive thanks to the dull weapons system.

 

To try and add a little zest to this the in the corridors sections the team go through their banter, but it is lacking the back and forth the series is known for, partly because its all written in tiny print on the screen and also, because the cast of four are all young and just meeting each other (as are we) there is no sense of connection between them, or for me watching.

 

 

Perhaps the only novel element of GB: SoS over the slew of other twin stick shooters on the market is that it is designed to be played by four people at once. As part of this dynamic rather than lives a revival system has been implemented, with each character able to revive fallen comrades by tapping the ‘A’ button while stood over them. It works well for the most part but finds issues when playing without a ‘real’ full four-person team. The problem is due to the fact there is no scaling difficulty, so to keep the levels fair if all the characters inhabited by players the AI takes over. These computer control characters work okay for a while, and are extremely necessary in single player, but invariably on boss fights end up dying, going on to be very tempting bait in the boss’s line of fire as you continues single handily slowly whittling away at their energy.

 

 

This is all made even harder by only having (at best) four hits before death. It is not an unreasonable number, but with little or no vibration from the controller I regularly find it hard to know I had been hit (often multiple times at once) so I had to keep an eye on my health constantly. Eventually this all comes to ahead with a difficulty spike that simply makes the game no fun, with enemies that can kill in two hits giving no chance to revive others, or to survive long yourself.

 

 

"Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime" does try to capture the underling fiction; the weapons, the story, and the humour (if you have good eyesight) were all clearly in the minds of the development team at Atari. Unfortunately without the talent of those involved in the movies the franchise elements fall flat. This along with the with dull repetitive gameplay that is done better in so many other titles there is nothing to recommend GB: SoS, even to hardcore series fans like myself. 

 

 

 

 

+ Great intro music