Review - Ghost Squad (Wii)
posted 29 November 2007, Thursday
Ghost Squad (Wii)
$29.99
1-4 Players
Variable Difficulty
Ghost Squad is your typical arcade light gun game where you shoot loads of bad guys on screen as you are automatically taken from place to place. A run through of the game takes about 30 minutes, and while this is shorter than your typical light gun game the focus is on replaying the levels to unlock branching paths and harder difficulties. You get to set your difficulty in the options menu, but as you replay the levels they get harder with new enemies and situations. You are always in control of how hard you want the game to be however. There are a lot of things to unlock in this game and there is even 4 player multiplayer and online leader boards. There are four different button configurations and yes you can use the Z button as the trigger. YES!
The only issues I had with the game, apart from the calibration issue, were the fact that pausing or continuing the game while using the Zapper are a pain because you have to hit the (+) or (2) button. They should have mapped these to the A or C button in Zapper mode. The other thing is that sometimes you will shoot and kill hostages even though the reticule is not on them making it a pain to shoot enemies close to them. Also to skip cutscenes you have to press (+) when other, easier options were available.
The main issue I have with Ghost Squad is the Zapper calibration. So far this is the best attempt any developer has made at calibrating the Wii Zapper to function like a light gun. However, Sega apparently designed it for large TVs located in big, spacious rooms making it useless to everyone who doesn't meet those criteria. Basically the calibration in Ghost Squad is only effective if you have enough room and are able to stand a whopping 10 feet away from your TV. I was able to play at 5 feet but not without things getting wonky. Any closer than 7 feet and the calibration is made useless by extreme acceleration that it adds for some stupid reason. This probably could have been fixed with a cursor speed adjustment option, but Sega didn't include one.
The worst part about the calibration is that you have to be 10 feet away to calibrate it even if you do move up closer to play. So every time I boot up the game I have to jump over my furniture to reach the magical 10 foot mark in order to get the calibration screen to work properly. Needless to say, this isn't fun. Even after calibration the cursor never really is 1:1, but you notice it less the farther away you are from the TV.
The lack of fine tuning options really hurts the calibration and with them it probably would have achieved great results. Sadly Sega didn't have the foresight to tackle all of the issues regarding wiimote calibration with this game. It remains to be seen if the Zapper can achieve light gun like precision from less than 10 feet, but it doesn't seem that far out of reach.
While plagued with problems Ghost Squad's calibration method works, and it provides the best zapper experience the Wii has to offer thus far if you play 10 feet away from your TV. More importantly is the fact that you don't need the Zapper to play or enjoy this game. Ghost Squad is short bursts of concentrated fun and the budget price only makes it that much sweeter. I was really wishing for the perfect light gun Zapper controls, but even though I didn't get them I still think this is a great game.
I GIVE GHOST SQUAD A 8/10 [GREAT]
Genre bias +
Value bias +
Zapper bias -
PROS:
- Lots of guns, costumes and game modes to unlock
- Easy to play
- Online leader board
- Z trigger option
CONS:
- Calibration only effective at 10 feet away
- You can only calibrate the Zapper from 10 feet away
- No fine tuning adjustments for calibration
- Some of the button configurations could have been better
- Have to pause the game to exit some menus
- Have to pause the game to exit some menus
VALUE:
- $30 is a great price point for this game. With lots to unlock and scores to challenge online there is plenty of replayability.
