You do it. I do it. Hell, at some point or another, we all do it.
We're standing around at some big electronics superstore, or aimlessly wandering the mall, and we've got cash to burn. Not a State of California amount, mind you, just enough to do something stupid with. You walk into a game store, aisle, or what have you...and you do it.
The impulse purchase.
You should know better...but you give in...making rationalizations to yourself..."I heard some vague good things about it..." "The first game in the series was good." "How bad can a game with art like this be?"
Then you take it home, fire it up, and within and hour you're wondering how the hell the video game industry gets away with not letting you return your product within 30 days.
This friends, is a story of an impulse purchase not too unlike the ones we've all made...
The Package
So the rationalization I made to mayself for buying Ninja Assault, despite knowing how bad the game was playing it in arcades was that, first off, I could finally beat the game. Secondly, it came with a GunCon 2...for $40. Since Time Crisis 3 just went gold, (My favorite Time Crisis yet.) I figured I could use the GunCon for that, too, and that bundle would probably cost a lot more.
The GunCon 2's a bit different than the original GunCon. On the plus side, they added a D-Pad to the back of the controller. Instead of having to shoot at the screen, you can just choose to navigate through the menus, which is really nice if you're trying to oh, say, recalibrate the GunCon.
On the bad side, the A and B buttons that used to be located on the front of the controller, are now directly above the trigger. Really, really awkward, if you have to use them in the actual "heat of battle". I'd have to say that it's a wash with the previous GunCon, which is kind of a bummer, because if they just had the buttons on the front, like the last version, the fact that it's USB, and has incorporated the rear D-Pad, I would have called it the best light gun ever.
We Come In Peace, Shoot To Kill...
What's a good light gun shooter without a great story? Well...every light gun shooter ever, I guess. This time the reason for you shooting everything in sight is that the Princess Koto has been kidnapped and is about to be used in a big sacrifice to resurrect some old guy. Guarding her is some guy that really, really wants to be able to do the Darth Vader voice.
In any case, Guren and Gunjo find this stone block that has two angular wooden pistols in it and they use them to go save the Princess.
Some people dis this game because they think ninjas aren't as cool with guns. That's a bunch of garbage. Can you imagine a ninja holding a katana in one hand and holding a 9 homey-style? Are you imaging how cool that would look?! Good, because I wouldn't be able to draw it to save my life.
So, we've established with absolute metaphysical certaintude that ninjas with guns could be capable of ruling the entire Universe. That's not the issue. The fact is, you could give the two main characters from this game 40s in paper bags, phat gold chains, a tricked out ride, big foam hats that said "I'm #1", and leather jackets and they still wouldn't even be as cool as Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell...the New Class. Certain exceptionally cool pirates MIGHT be cooler than THESE ninjas. Come on Namco...where's the creative flair you put into your Tekken characters? I'd be surprised if anyone could name 2 characters from any of the Namco light gun shooters ever made without looking them up.
Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!
Light gun shooters generally break down into two types. You have your hyper-accurate games, like Virtua Cop, and Silent Scope. Then you have all the Namco shooters. All the Namco shooters generally involve you pulling the trigger as many times as you can, because the enemies take multiple hits to kill. I don't like this as much, because obviously, as you get down to the later levels...your hand starts getting tired. You die, and you have to shell out an extra monetary amount to continue.
I'm a much bigger fan of the 1-shot, 1-kill type shooters. They feel more rewarding because when you react and pop a guy, you feel good knowing he's down. You're not spastically fanning the trigger and hoping to hit whatever comes out of wherever 3-4 times before you're outta bullets. On top of that, there's this counter up at the top which makes you think accuracy is somehow important, keeping track of multiple hits. Seeing as how you don't really know if a guy's totally dead or not (The health bar on their head doesn't stay up, it just pops up once you shoot them.) you'll either find that the combo counter is useless, or that trying to keep the hit combo going only leads to you getting killed repeatedly. This is the only shooting game I know where shooting with below 45% accuracy will get you an "S" ranking.
Anyway, there are 4 different modes in the game. All they have are different plots. Seriously, like you're going to care about that. There's also a mini-game mode, but if you don't have an auto-fire mod for your GunCon, I'd recommend staying away from those.
Audio
Boktai would be the worst localized game I'd played recently if it weren't for the fact that Ninja Assault goes above and beyond the call of duty to create a Zero Wing for the new millennium, and the vocals are right up there with the text. It makes my mind hurt to think that these people got paid for this level of inept work.
The music for the game, and the shooting and stuff is ok. This is all completely overshadowed by how bad the voices are, and the fact that you aren't really going to hear anything for more than a second and a half before all sound is drowned out by the constant barrage of gunfire sound effect.
Graphics
The graphics don't fare too much better. The enemies keep repeating, the environments are really blocky, and basically...standard fare for a light-gun shooter.
Overall
This would be much better if I had two GunCons. As it is, with just one, there's just too much on the screen that takes too many hits to kill. Instead of designing the game to be challenging by tricking you and doing little timing things to keep you off-balance, it's just an hour or so of hitting the trigger button. It's tiring, while being mildly entertaining...but mostly just tiring. It's the type of game that is very, very easy to put down and walk away from, because you just don't want to hold the gun any longer.
