Wielding a Wii Zapper, Mark investigates some Ghostly goings on...

After an hour with Ghost Squad I stood up and put down the Wii Zapper, content in the knowledge that I’d finished the game. In a matter of speaking, at least.

Ghost Squad isn’t like the majority of home console titles, all multiple gamestyles and narrative in one seamlessly epic slice of value-for-money consumer electronics cake. Far from it. Not that it doesn’t present enough enjoyment to warrant a puchase, mind – it’s just that, with Ghost Squad, you’re getting a much more bare-bones approach to arcade ports. No convolutions, no complications; Ghost Squad is pure, unapologetic one-dimensional Sega lightgun fun.

It’s also the best out-and-out lightgun shooter on Wii. Where Resi Umbrella Chronicles and Link’s Crossbow Training see you guiding the Wiimote pointer around the screen like a 3D mouse, Ghost Squad lets you turn off the pointer and calibrate your aiming, making for a much more authentic-feeling point-and-shoot experience, and a much better fit for the Wii Zapper and similar hardware than its current competition.

Presenting the same three stages as the 2004 arcade coin-op – each of which can be completed in 15-20 minutes – Ghost Squad would at first glance appear to be a lazy cash-in from Sega. And if you’re simply after a title to plough through, put down, then move onto the next new Wii release, you’d be forgiven for avoiding Ghost Squad completely.

But if you’re a lightgun fan or simply want to sample one of the system’s most pick-up-and-play experiences, then you could do a lot worse than Ghost Squad. Indeed, the one-hour playtime is a bit of a red herring. As a coin-op port, Ghost Squad is obviously designed with short-burst play in mind, but nonetheless presents enough diversity to have you coming back time and time again.

Stylish shooting

Stylistically speaking, the Villa, Air Force One and Jungle settings of Ghost Squads missions are distinct and engaging, offering three different approaches to the basic point-and-shoot mechanic. The latter, for instance, is by far the most open-plan, with camouflage-wearing bad guys blending into the background making it by far the more difficult of the three. Air Force One, meanwhile, is as you’d expect from a plane, an incredibly claustrophobic environment, while the cottage-like opening level is somewhere in between, proving a great introduction to the brand of table-ducking, scenery-shooting gameplay Virtua Cop veterans love so much.

Unsurprisingly, Ghost Squad is very much from the Virtua Cop stable. It’s all on-rails shooting, without the Time Crisis style duck button. Flicking the Nunchuk analogue changes your fire mode from single shot to semi-automatic, to uzi-like full-on autofire – the latter of which has a bullet count, adding a degree of tactics to when you’ll want to break out the proverbial big guns. Moreover, shooting up the environment will see ammo and health power-ups appear, while the addition of bomb defusals, sniping and hostage rescue serve to diversify Ghost Squad’s compelling shooter gameplay.

If there’s a major problem with Ghost Squad and the Wii hardware, it’s that shooting off screen to reload occasionally causes problems, with the sensor bar losing track of the Wiimote’s infa-red, especially in some of the more frenetic enemy-packed shooting segments. However, it’s hardly a damaging experience, as you’ll soon adjust to aiming with subtle wrist twists, rather than waving your arms around like Rambo toting a plastic SMG.

Despite its shortcomings, the sheer amount of fast-action replayability makes Ghost Squad a worthy purchase. With Easy, Medium and Hard modes to complete, branching pathways within the levels, one-attempt boss encounters and unlockable costumes and weapons, there’s a lot more to this than is first apparent – and a second player added to the mix only doubles the fun factor.

Additionally, the four-player party mode, hilarious Ninja mode, target practice and online high scores tables further flesh out what suddenly starts to sound like an immensely well-rounded package.

It’s probable that even the dated visuals for what is, in essence, a four year-old coin-op won’t dent the enjoyment. Put simply, it’s not without flaws, but as a bare-bones arcade shooter, Ghost Squad, as the name would suggest, is scarily good fun.

GAME's Verdict

• Compelling reaction-testing arcade shooter gameplay from the Virtua Cop Stable.
• The best pure lightgun shooter on the Wii so far - works brilliantly with the Zapper.
• Lots to unlock, and multiplayer makes things infinitely more fun.

• Longevity comes from replayability, three difficulties and multiple routes, instead of a lengthy story mode.
• Dated visuals.
• Sometimes the sensor bar will lose track of the IR when you reload.

Review by: Mark 'Squaddie' Scott
Version Tested: Wii
Review Published: 25.01.08

Wii Zappers at the ready...

With Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and Link’s Crossbow Training releasing in recent weeks, Wii owners are finally starting to see software that takes advantage of the Wiimote’s pointer functionality to offer a good ol’ fashioned lightgun-style shooter experience. And with the Wii Zapper, we’ve even got the hardware to take advantage of what’s sure to be a very popular genre on the system in years to come.

Sega have long been masters of the lightgun game, with the likes of Virtua Cop, House of the Dead and Confidential Mission on their resume, so it makes sense that the first batch of Wii lightgun titles includes Ghost Squad, one of their more recent arcade successes.

By 'recent', however, we mean circa 2004 – so Ghost Squad won’t push the console graphically in the same way Resi does. And as a direct arcade port, Ghost Squad also promises to be less lengthy than Capcom’s survival horror blaster. So why are Wii owners getting so excited about it?

Probably because Ghost Squad follows the tried and tested formula of bringing Sega arcade playability to the home, with an offering expanded especially for the console market.

To that end, Ghost Squad on Wii will take the arcade version’s three 15 minute stages and give home gamers 16 different versions to play through – with varying enemy spawns, multiple routes through the levels and a whole bunch of weapons to use along the way. It may not boast the originality of Umbrella Chronicles, but Ghost Squad should still be distinctly more than the sum of its parts.

Ghost Squad will also be far closer to a ‘proper’ lightgun game than anything else on the system. Where Resi in particular has players moving a cursor around the screen with the Wiimote acting like a 3D mouse, Ghost Squad’s calibration screen allows you to remove the crosshair and specify to the game where the corners of your telly are – allowing for a more accurate gun-style point-and-shoot experience. Granted, it won’t be perfect – the closer to the edge of the screen you get, the further the aim will drift – but it’s still a pretty good middle ground by all accounts.

Those ‘accounts’, of course, are from players in the US, who have already got their hands on Ghost Squad. Thankfully though us UK Wii owners won’t have long to wait, with Ghost squad due on these shores before January ends. That should make it one of the console’s best early-year releases, and especially appealing for those multiplayer fans who found a second Wiimote awaiting them under the tree at Christmas.

Preview by: Mark 'Shoot-On-Sight' Scott
Preview Published: 03.01.08