Ghost Squad

Movies like Donnie Darko and The Happening have left me scratching my head. George W. Bush has left me scratching my head. Pink Floyd music leaves me scratching my head. Never, though, has a video game left me scratching my head until I found a little game called Ghost Squad. When it was done I thought to myself Did I rent the demo?

Yes light gun games are notorious for their length, since they are usually emulated from arcade versions. You will never see Ghost Squad in an arcade because it's a Wii exclusive. This left me thinking that it would either be the same length as games like Time Crisis, or perhaps a little longer. How wrong I was. No lies, Ghost Squad will take you about twenty minutes to beat. It is perhaps the lowest budget title since ET.

My friend and I were just straight up bro chilling. There we were, laughing and making jokes at the ridiculousness of the game. We both were having a blast with it though. It's fun, don't get me wrong. When we realized it ended after the third level, it just got quiet in the room, and we both began weeping and hugged each other and then made out. Don't worry, this was all done in a bro chilling heterosexual manner. I was sad that the game was over but at the same time was thinking Man this is going to be an easy game to review

When a new light gun game comes out, no one really gets excited. Pretty much every light gun game is the same game, and that holds true with this game. If you've played any light gun game for any amount of time, you've pretty much witnessed everything this game has to offer. You just run through various rooms and shoot at all the bad guys in your path by pointing at them with the Wiimote. Try not to hit the civilians. Ooooh dear! Sticky situations!

So there really isn't much of a story in the game. You're pretty much a bad-butt soldier in a special sect of the army called "Ghost Squad" that's only used when there are extremely sticky situations. The first level takes place in a building where you must kill all the terrorists! Carnage! In the second level your guys get in a hijacked plane with the president on board. It doesn't show how the heck they got on the plane in mid-flight. This Ghost Squad must be pretty frickin good if they can board a passenger plane mid-flight. The third level takes place in a jungle. I'm not sure what the bad guys have done. The game doesn't really do a good job of telling you. You just know you're supposed to kill all these bad guys who are shooting at you. The first two levels take about five minutes apiece and the last level takes about ten minutes. The story is just terrible. There is almost no talking in the whole game.

One thing that I thought was kind of odd was the difficulty of the game. You cannot crouch behind objects like you can normally do in these types of games. This is no problem because of how ridunkulously easy this frickin piece of garbage is. You have unlimited lives and your guns are so frickin powerful that you just pummel through the enemies. After you beat the game what can you do? You can unlock some lame ways of playing through the game with co-op. These co-op modes are so goofy. In one they've replaced all the bad guys with girls in bikinis and you have to squirt them with dolphin shaped squirt guns. You know there have been so many 12 year old boys who buy this game just for that mode. In the other mode you can unlock you throw throwing stars at ninjas instead of shooting the bad guys. You can also unlock a few new suits for your guys and you can unlock some weapons. Your beginning machine gun is already so powerful, though, that upgrading your gun is basically cheating. You do unlock some more difficulties, but two times through this game was enough for me. If you really want to see everything the game has to offer, you can take different routes in the levels, but that really doesn't change up the experience a whole lot. It's no Fable in this respect. I can't imagine anyone having fun with this after three times playing it.

The graphics in the game are just terrible. They look like PS2 launch title graphics. The guys are expressionless and have no effort put into them. The voices don't even come remotely close to matching what they are saying. The character models are constantly repeated. The three levels look quite different and if they didn't it would be completely unacceptable. It would be pretty odd seeing an airplane seat in the middle of the jungle. The graphics really aren't terrible when you look at textures from a distance. Once you get in close and focused on what's really in the game is when it gets ugly. The frame rate is very steady, but the game isn't necessarily a technical powerhouse, so it would be tragic to see any slowdown at all.

The sound in the game is just awful. When they do talk, they show no emotion. It sounds so weird. They can have bullets zipping around from all directions and they still talk as if they're sitting by a fireplace smoking cigars. Luckily they don't talk often in the game. I could do much much better voicework, and I am a downright terrible actor. The music in the game is terrible and doesn't match the levels at all. The jungle level doesn't even have jungle music. How lame is that? Isn't that a video game law? It's all just cheesy upbeat techno that will make you want to mute that sucker fool immediately. The gunshot sounds are incredibly weak too. The sounds of gunshots through the Wiimote are so loud that you'll probably have a headache after playing.

Wanna spend $29.99 on twenty minutes of subpar gameplay? Well don't be my guest, because I don't invite people who support that kind of madness to my house. Don't buy this and we'll be friends.

Graphics: 4/10

Sound: 4/10

Gameplay: 7/10

Difficulty: Extremely frickin easy

Bang for thy buck: 1/10

Overall: 2/10