Ghost Squad Impressions

[Howard_Casto]

The game is nearly arcade perfect, the zapper works well with it, there's an added ninja mode and "paradise" mode.  Ok review done... nothing more to see here.



Seriously go....





Sorry, just a bit of fun on my part, I thought it might be cute to have the length of my review match the length of the game, but more on that later. 

If you've played the ghost squad game in the arcades then you've played this game.  It is, for the most part a 1 to 1 conversion.  This is the ports greatest strength and also it's greatest weakness.  The game, visually speaking is identical, with the wii being more than capable of displaying the graphics of the now aging arcade game.  All the levels are here and completely in-tact.  The only gameplay difference I noticed is that on the arcade game there was a button you had to hold down in order to "lock on" and then you coudl aim and shoot normally.  What this actually did was re-calibrate the gun (which in the arcades was also ir camera based) when you moved around, so that the aiming accuracy was always pretty near spot on.  Probably technical limitations and/or sheer laziness in the programmers hands is why this option was omitted on the wii.  Thankfully, it doesn't hurt accuracy THAT much by losing it. 

Since that is what everybody is curious about, I'll just get right to it.  Yes, the zapper works fantastically in this game.  Yes you are going to want to calibrate it every time you turn on the game.  No, it's not pixel perfect accruacy, but I can say in good conscience that it's ~4 pixel perfect accuracy and since I've never known a lightgun shooter to need absolute pixel perfect accuracy that is certainly good enough.  Something you'll notice if you are like me and didn't bother to read the instructions or go into the options is that when playing the game in zapper mode the contol layout is horrible.  That is, until you actually read the manual and go into the options to dscover that there is a special "zapper" layout and all is well.  The trigger shoots, the nunchuck trigger does special actions including zoom ins for sniping and action attacks (think the press a button at the right moment deal on re4), and to reload you give the nunchuck a good shake (which can be in any direction).  You can change guns via the analog stick on the nunchuck.  The game allows you to play with or without a crosshair, but you get a higher score if you play without it.  To those who have complained about the zapper, particularly in this game, I ask have they ever even played a lightgun game before? 

The complaints I often hear floating around are:

"It's harder to play with the zapper."

Well, duh!  It is supposed to be harder.  It reminds me of the old dos days when the digital leisure games were first ported.  People noticed how much easier the games were.  Well of course, because with a mouse you don't have to frikkin aim!  I'm sorry but that's cheating!  It's the same deal here, the only thing harder about it is that you are playing the game how it was designed to be played.  The game even goes so far as to put a "sniper dot" on the screen in those very rare instances in which pixel perfect accuracy is needed, so you don't have any excuse. 

"Shaking the zapper to reload messes up your aim."

Yes and....?  It's supposed to!  I dunno, call me crazy, but shooting off-screen or pressing a pedal, which totally moves the camera, to reload messes up your aim as well. Again, I think these people complaining have never played a real arcade gun game before.  The shake to reload deal is acutally quite natural and far more realistic than the old-school alternatives.  I personally didn't have any problems with it. 


"It's hard to do special actions with the zapper."

Well there aren't that many actions in this game,  (I'll get into that when I go over RE: UC) but I can honestly say that you can do them quite effortlessly.  A action sequence involves aiming at a point on the enemies body and pressing the action button in time.  I actually prefer the zapper to do it the wiimote way because it is far easier to steady your aim with two hands and since you should be holding the zapper with your other hand gripping the nunchuck, it isn't hard to pull off this sequence at all.  When using the wiimote, you have to use A as the action button and anyone with a wii knows that aiming the wiimote and pressing A at the same time often feels akward. 


With all of that out of the way I suppose it is time to get to the bad stuff.  The game is only three levels long.  Unfortunately, they are some of the shortest stages in lightgun history, bringing in the total gameplay time to finish the game at around an hour.  The extra modes you can unlock certainly add a bit of replay value but damn, with an hour total gameplay time they better!  Unlocking the extra modes is also way too easy. To unlock ninja mode you simply "beat" the game.  And by beat, I mean play through all three levels.  You can fail the boss part of each level and still unlock ninja mode.  So basically to unlock ninja mode you have to play the game.  I'll be the first to admit, that while it's nothing more than a crude hack, ninja mode is frikkin sweet!  You and all of the characters in the game are now ninjas.  While the enemies behave pretty much exactly as they did before, you now have the bonus of not having any ammo limit, nor do you have to reload as you now throw ninja stars.  The draw-back of course, being that rapid fire is now obsolete.  Many of the textures and set props in the game have been replaced with ninja-themed ones, the most impressive being the total replacement of the boss characters.  The bosses play exactly the same, but the models have been fully replaced to match the ninja theme. 

Unfortunately ninja mode can only be accessed when playing "party mode."  Party mode is essentially the same as the main game except that extra players can join in or leave at any time and the crosshairs are always on (no option to turn them off I'm afraid.)  If you "beat" party mode while playing with ninja mode on, you unlock paradise mode.  Paradise mode sucks, there's no way around it.  I suppose if you were 12 and were REALLY hard up for some soft core porn  (And by soft-core, I mean terribly polygonated women in nintendo approved bikinis.) you might get a kick out of it, but otherwise it isn't that great.  This time the poly/texture swaps are a lot more scarce, with the exception that every drone enemy in the game has been replaced with a woman in a swimsuit.  Instead of a gun, you now get a really lame squirt gun.  Not super soaker style, but lame, dollar store style.  It handles like a cheap suirt gun as well, with the water only shooting about 20 feet and arcing instead of making a straight shot.  So now you can enjoy the "fun" of pre-super-soaker watergun fights, only virtually! 

(Just a little side note... you know the infamous "shark gun" attachment for the wii?  I think it was inspired from this game as the squirt gun you use is a very similar looking dolphin gun.)


Now there is more to do in the game once all that is over.  There are multiple routes to play to get 100% completion on each stage.  I haven't done them yet because this game is so short that once I get all the routes I won't want to pick it up again for ages.  There isn't that much replay in them though, it's just something else to do.  It might take another hour tops, but I doubt it. It's more like a half hour or less.


So basically weather or not you'll want to pick this up depends upon how much you like lightgun games and if you think a 1 hour game is worth 30 bucks.  I'm a lightgun freak, so for me it was a no-brainer, but your mileage will vary.  I will say this though, this game pretty much proves that lightgun games are not only possible, but a viable genre on the wii.  Thus far, it is THE standard we should go by. 

[patrickl]

I felt this game was a bit of a let down. It's nowhere near resident evil quality and I even liked the new "resident evil on rails" game a lot more.

I guess it's more arcade yes. You constantly get told what to do and everything is exactly the same every time you play it. it's just a movie where you get to aim and press the right buttons at the right time.