Ghost Squad

Arcade shooters that are collecting dust in the dingy malls across the world now have a new lease on life. After the success of the Wii, and the subsequent release of the Wii-Zapper a few weeks ago, Nintendo is expressing more commitment than ever to bringing these games to the home console. Ghost Squad is the first official arcade port to the Wii, and while there is still room for improvement, this game does what it sets out to do: recreate the arcade experience.

For those unfamiliar with the series, you are part of the Ghost Squad (surprised?), a tactical police force that is sent in to diffuse cartoonish terrorist organizations and rescue the occasionally captured president. The story will traverse three different locations in three short missions, which can be technically beaten in under an hour. However, because of the branching story paths, the game actually is much longer. To get the full experience, you have to go back and play through all of the missions until you take each of the branching paths. On top of that, the game gives you incentives to replay the missions. As you play, you’ll level up your character and unlock new costumes and guns, changing the game experience. The Wi-Fi Ranking mode, while not being actual online play, will give you a reason to rack up some extra kills.

 
“Guys will literally pop up from nowhere.”

The developers of Ghost  Squad for some reason found it necessary to only save your game and score after you have completed the 3 main missions straight through. I find this almost hard to believe, and it was a total headache for days of playing this fun, arcade shooter, to wander why in the heck it wasn't saving my progress and leveling up my character. But this is an important note for when you actually sit down to play it.

Ghost Squad offers a relatively robust training mode and multiplayer. While there are not that many ways to play the training, there are three different challenges that will spark some competition between you and your friends. Besides the basic two-target shooting games, the second of which merely has you shooting a stand-still target, the Combat Exercise is fairly interesting. It is a combat mission but it’s length and completion depends solely on your speed and how quickly you can take out the enemies. It would have been nice to have more mini-games like those. Multiplayer is what will bring you back to the training modes long after the thrill is gone, however. Everything, except the aforementioned Combat Exercise, can be played with friends.

The controls work pretty well. Ghost Squad features an IR calibration setup, where you will shoot two corners of the screen to position the cursor straight down the barrel. And when and if you decide to turn your Aiming Reticule off (you get more points if you do), calibration will come in handy. Playing with the cursor off is a really fun and realistic way to play the game, and works for the most part. The only problem is that when you point the IR towards the edges of the screen, your aim will become less true, and the cursor will float to the sides. This is an unfortunate technical shortcoming of the Wii IR system, and I don’t know if it can ever be corrected because of the very nature of the Wii’s hardware.

Besides that, though, GS gives you a lot of customization for your control setup. Whether you’re playing with the Zapper or without, there is a control method that fits. Last week, when I reviewed Link’s Crossbow training with the Zapper, I mentioned that it would be great if developers would give the option to use the Z trigger on the Nunchuck to fire from the Zapper. Sure enough, GS has that option, and it works great! Honestly, I think not only is the Z trigger more realistic because you’re actually using the natural trigger finger, but the button itself is much more solid than the Zapper’s front trigger, which feels soft.

Within the game, shooting and reloading feel really good. To reload, you only have to point off-screen, so you can do the Terminator one-hand reload or you can pretend to pump in shells yourself – the level of nerdiness is up to you. You can also switch between shooting patterns pressing the analog stick, changing between single shot semi-auto, multi-shot, and fully automatic. There is of course a limited amount of full-auto rounds, but there are infinite multi-shot rounds, leaving no reason to ever use the single shot.

While there is really no A.I. in the game because everything is scripted, the enemies seem to be scripted without an IQ. In levels like the Jungle, you will break into a village, guns a-blazing. However, even though you just blew up a little wooden shanty or just mowed down three guys in a lead storm, when your character turns around there will be three more guys just standing around as though nothing was even going on. Continuity is really just a pet peeve of mine, and is probably something that won’t bother most people.

What might irritate some people though is the confusing and unintuitive menu system. If your controllers are in the Zapper, this will be even worse. If, for example, you click on Arcade, but decide right after that you want to go back to the main menu, you have to take your left hand off the trigger and hit the 2 button – the least intuitive button possible to find. It then pops up “Return to Mode Select,” which means you put your hand back on the trigger to fire; and assuming you hit it, and then fire at “yes” to confirm, you just successfully went back a menu!  On top of that minor annoyance, the menus will switch your control schemes. Maybe you just switched to the Z-trigger setup as your fire button; however, on the menus, you’ll have to use the default B-trigger to confirm menus, until the pre-game menu, which will then mysteriously use the Z-Trigger (or whatever you selected). Then when you finish the game, you’ll switch back to B-trigger! – it’s just confusing and something that hurts the intuitive nature of the Wii-mote control.

Despite several shortcomings, this intensely fun shooter is only $30. If you played the arcade version, then you will feel very nostalgic playing this game. Grab some friends and some Wii-motes and you’ve got yourself a great party!

Gameplay: 8.0
Well done aiming calibration and bonus items make this game extremely fun to play.

Graphics: 6.5
While the Wii can do much better, these graphics are nostalgic for those familiar with the arcade game.

Sound: 7.0
Generic music and cartoony sound effects honestly give Ghost Squad its campy flavor – which I am not complaining about.

Difficulty: Medium
A very easy game to beat, but the difficulty can be changed.

Multiplayer: 8.0
While there was no reason to expect a Wi-Fi deathmatch for GS, the multiplayer does have considerable legs.

Concept: 7.5
GS is a well done port with a decent amount of bonuses on top.

Overall: 7.8
Ghost Squad only costs $30, which is a deal considering how much pure fun you can get out of it. This is a solid shooter and playing with the Zapper actually works well. Let’s just hope this starts a tradition of arcade ports that could potentially beef up the Wii’s shooter library.