Another week, another 10/10. For any new subscribers, while we're in this fairly dry Summer with very little of note being release and even less news worth talking about, I'm going to run a few issues talking about some games that I think are cast-iron, set in stone ten out of tens. Essential games on a bunch of different platforms that have stood the test of time and are just as worthy of your attention right now as they were upon their initial release. This week - Sega's brilliant arcade shooter (and it's exceptional Wii port) Ghost Squad.

"Ha! Don't you know how to aim?"

I've already talked about the subtle difference between classic lightgun games and 'pointer' gun games in a previous issue. The classic style lightgun has been killed off by the endless march of technology but the Wii represented the weird point between the two styles, where we'd moved onto something pointer-based but a lot of classic lightgun games were being released because, for the more casual audience who wouldn't know or care about such things, they're a perfect fit for Nintendo's Wiimote controller. Sega's Ghost Squad was the best of the lot.

A quick look online at reviews of this game will no doubt have you wondering why on Earth I consider this a 10/10 game. Every review complains about the short length of the game, as the three stages can be full finished in about half an hour. Once again, the journalists have missed the point. That's not a new thing, it seems.

I mean, they're not wrong on a base level. Out of those three stages, the second one can be finished in under five minutes (while the other two lean towards the ten minute mark). However, to say you've done or seen all that Ghost Squad has to offer after finishing a run through all three is like saying you're done with Pac Man after one go, or that you've seen all of the content Space Invaders has to offer once you've lost all your lives. A fucking run through of OutRun 2's entire 15 stage course will show you every track in the game in around quarter of an hour but if you're done with the game after that, the problem lies with you, I'm afraid. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what an arcade game is all about and, as games that offer a 'cinematic' story-driven experience become bigger and bigger every year, the idea of replaying something over and over to attain a level of mastery becomes less and less important to your average reviewer. It's tragic but also, in the case of Ghost Squad, absolutely wrong.

There's a bit more to Ghost Squad's structure than games like Virtua Cop and Time Crisis and in fact borrows one of the key elements from another one of Sega's classic arcade shooters, The House Of The Dead. Throughout the stages, there will be sections where you can tackle one of a selection of objectives, taking you down a different path before reconnecting to the main critical through line later one, allowing for many different possible routes to the boss. Some of these objectives don't even appear until you 'level up' each stage, which is achieved by completing them multiple times and also up the difficulty, as well as opening up these additional objectives. Each objective tends to fall into one of a few categories - kill more enemies, save some hostages or complete a minigame (usually a reactions or memory test). Choosing the one that you feel you have the best chance of success at is key to not only getting a high score but getting through the game with the fewest amount of deaths.

Rack up high scores and you begin to unlock new weapons (some of which require you to play the game quite differently) and new costumes, which vary from a few different types of camo, references to other Sega shooters and some pure silly ones. There's a lot of content to unlock here and it is certainly going to take you more than half an hour to see it all.

The real genius of Ghost Squad is how all of its component parts work together to keep you in a nice sweet spot at all times. It's a really good game to begin with, that perfect blend of high stakes action, ridiculous characters (ALEX HAVOC, take a bow) and plot and that trademark chunky 'blue skies' (at least on stage one) Sega arcade look with a great feeling assault rifle weapon. You blast your way through to the end, picking the route you wish to take and when you're done, your overall score gets tallied up and you work towards unlocking some stuff. Start another run and you'll have the option to play on more difficult versions of the stages, which obviously allow for more opportunities to score points, open different routes and then, when you're done, work towards unlocking even more stuff! A different gun might help you tackle certain situations - a shotgun might be fantastic for a route through increased enemy numbers but terrible for one that takes you through an area jam-packed with hostages - so you can start experimenting, finding what works for you but - crucially - you're always working towards SOMETHING and the flexible difficulty means that you can tailor things towards what you want to get out of that particular run through the game.

A big reason why Ghost Squad's Wii port feels so good to play is because the original cabinet wasn't a 'lightgun' game and instead used IR sensors to track the position of the gun, exactly like the Wiimote. You weren't getting a slightly but ultimately noticeable difference here and you weren't playing a game built around the ability to fire two shots off at either side of the screen without essentially dragging a cursor between them. Ghost Squad is a game designed from the ground up for this type of gun control method. Everything from enemy patterns to the various different minigames you encounter have been made with a cursor in mind and because of this, you don't feel cheated or frustrated when you're trying to play at a high level.

Ghost Squad is a fantastic arcade game and one that falls into that brilliant category of the 'improved home port', sitting shoulder to shoulder with other exceptional console versions of classic arcade titles like Crazy Taxi and Soulcalibur. It's a perfect fit for Nintendo's Wii hardware, not only in technical terms but also in regards to the audience at the time, offering either a fun time shooting up baddies or a properly engaging hardcore arcade score attack. The reviews at the time might say you can blast through it in half an hour but it has been nearly fifteen years and I'm still blasting away so I think they might've been chatting shit.

THANKS FOR READING.

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