Among the thousand ideas exciting the gaming community with the Wii's announcement, players thought "I want to shoot stuff". Ignoring the social implications and ignorance towards 80% of modern game content, light-gun games are practically what the Wii was built for with its IR-capabilities. But would Nintendo do it? On one hand you have a company that, as far as I can think, has never shown blood in an in-house game and censors social aspects of products in fear of swearing, and on the other hand you have a company that made its debut with the help of a digital gun and hunting game. Nintendo not only decided to please us, but gave us a triple hit combo with the Zapper (with Link's Crossbow Training), Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles and Ghost Squad.
I'm gonna lay it on you straight: if you can only choose one, Ghost Squad is your game. But since this is a gaming site with an obvious academic interest, I'll give you an academic thesis: Ghost Squadsucceeds with arcade-faithful stylings, excellent replay value and a right-on-target price.
Story 8/10
This score is surprisingly high for a light-gunner, not because I was ever moved or interested, but because it's BADICAL (BAD and RADICAL for you squares). There is no real story: you are GHOST SQUAD, an anti-terrorist unit and you undertake three missions of bad guy shooting. That is to say, it's every arcade game you've ever played., but Ghost Squad might be slightly aware of this with its Genesis reminiscent intro screen for the Wii menu and the open-to-feminist-criticism "Paradise Mode" in which all bad guys are converted to bikini girls and guns replaced with water-squirters. Normally bad guys are big strong men and in one of the best video game scenes every thought up you save the president and high five him. This is video game kitsch if ever there was such a thing and I love it. I bought this alongside a rental of a Van Damme movie and it was a perfect match.
Controls 9/10
The Wii was built around its controls so it makes sense for these to be first priority in a Wii experience. Well rest assured, Ghost Squad's controls are accurate and responsive. While there was debate as to whether a real light-gun game could be done with today's LCDs and Plasmas, and while I played on an old CRT, this is a real light-gun game meaning you point at the enemies instead of moving the Wii controller a relative distance. While aiming reticules are available, the game is completely playable without them and gives you an option to do so. If the controls are off, never fear, there is a calibration menu.
The game supports the Wii Zapper, which I didn't have available for review. However, it is entirely playable without it and despite the game's box, the nunchuck is practically unused and optional for play.
