Home » Reviews » Review: Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime
Reviews

Review: Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime

“What? A Ghostbusters arcade-style game I can play online with friends? This is amazing! I can’t wait!”

If this is how you felt upon first hearing about Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, then stop reading now. Wrap yourself in a blanket of your own warm, fuzzy optimism, and stay far, far away from the actual game.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime is the Katherine Heigl of videogames: distractingly beautiful at first, but after about three minutes the obnoxious tedium of its personality shines through, overshadowing—and eventually eclipsing entirely—any goodwill earned by its glamorous first appearance.

The gameplay idea is solid enough: a batch of rookies are recruited by the original team of Ghostbusters to help combat the influx of paranormal activity. You play as one of the four rookies, while your friends (or the computer, if you don’t have any friends, which may well be the case if you are Katherine Heigl) control the other three in a fight against the undead.

I remember when this game was called Left 4 Dead, and it wasn’t garbage.


Being an arcade game, there is no elaborate cut scene to set the story. Instead, the story is told in a series of comic book panels: gorgeously drawn, excitingly coloured, tediously overwritten comic book panels. I couldn’t even finish the story, it took so long. It’s been six days since I first fired up the game, and in a Sliding Doors style parallel universe I’m pretty sure I’m still sitting there, reading that endless prologue, bored out of my brain and probably in desperate need of the toilet.

At least the comic strips are skippable, and then you can get on with it (though, there is an achievement if you watch them – Steve)! Gameplay! Hooray? Nay. Dismay.


The movement controls are thick and syrupy, and the weapon aiming controls are even thicker and syrupier. Sometimes the energy blast from your gun auto-aims at enemies, and sometimes it just flails wildly about the place. And what happened to the myth of “crossing the streams”? In Ghostbusters: Boredom of Slime there are streams flying everywhere between the four players. I’m not a die-hard Ghostbusters fan, and even I found myself wincing at this apparent abandonment of the original story canon.

As you play through the game, you get different weapon types to play with. But don’t worry about any actual variety creeping in (boo!), the controls stay exactly the same. The only thing that actually changes is the colour of the goop coming out of your weapon. With different coloured weapon goop comes different coloured ghosts, and you need to match goop colour to ghost colour to effectively kill everything in your path. This has the added bonus of being both tedious and patronising, which is fun, isn’t it?

I’m not going to lie; I didn’t finish Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime. What I did get through was a pain in the ass to play and pretty uninspiring to listen to. It may have been gorgeous to look at, but pretty, colourful boredom is still boredom.

Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime gets 1 out of 5 marshmallows. Not monster-sized marshmallow men, just marshmallows: soft, spongy and lacking in substance.


This article may contain affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you click-through and make a purchase. Stevivor is an independent outlet and our journalism is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.

About the author

Stevivor.com Staff Writers