With the serious survival horror of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles out of the way, it was time to jump into something a little less serious with even worse voice acting. Ghost Squad for the Nintendo Wii is a port of the classic Sega arcade game, which I unsurprisingly never played. It’s your classic point at screen, shoot terrorists and we’re done sort of game. You’re part of an elite squad sent in to neutralise threats that nobody else can and to make it look like nobody was there. Ooh, spooky. I’m not sure I would have even known it existed if it weren’t for Wii’re Going Back. This month has been a bit of a trip down a memory lane that I was never actually in. While I vaguely remember the other games I’ve played so far, Ghost Squad I would have continued being blissfully unaware of. I managed to knock this one out in a single sitting. Whether that says more about the game or my evening I’ll leave up to you.
Ghost Squad was released by Polygon Magic in 2007, with Sega continuing their involvement with the franchise as publisher. Just like in the arcade, Ghost Squad for the Wii is an on-rails shooter. You play as a member of the Ghost Squad, an elite Special Forces unit established in secrecy by the United Nations to combat terrorism without leaving a trace. The story plays out across three missions: infiltrating a restricted government villa, saving the US President aboard Air Force One and rescuing a top government official from a terrorist jungle camp. Each mission is split into three clear sections and is capped off with a boss fight. The missions aren’t totally linear either. Each mission contains branching paths that can send you down various routes through each level. Although, some paths are locked behind a ‘mission level’ system which basically requires you to finish what you’ve already got first. Replayability is essentially baked right in, whether you’ll want to is something I’ll get to.
There’s no mistaking it, Ghost Squad wears its arcade roots proudly and it feels completely at home alongside the classics of the genre. Time Crisis and Virtua Cop jump out as obvious direct comparisons and it might be just as satisfying. The sniper sections even carry a faint waft of Silent Scope, which is a nice touch. The Wii remote is a genuinely perfect fit for arcade shooters and it’s one of those rare times where it’s the right hardware for the job without the fuss of messing around or having to do any manual calibration. Ghost Squad’s ‘mission level’ ranking system is incredibly basic, but it slots in naturally. Your score builds from everything you do in a mission: kills, accuracy, bomb defusals and other in-game moments feed into it and the final tally will help to increase your level and determine what you unlock for the next run through. Ghost Squad manages to show a bit of personality with branching mission paths and its dynamic camera which has enemies pop out at you from all angles. The camera follows the squad rather than just being one direct, head-on view. There’s moments where you’ll be defusing bombs or protecting hostages at the same time as trying to clear a room, which helps break things up just enough to keep it interesting. Branching routes add some welcome replay value, even if most of them have to be unlocked first.
That all sounds pretty good… what’s the catch? Ok, here’s the thing. Ghost Squad is short. Very short. You can rip through all three missions in about thirty to forty-five minutes. At the original retail price of about thirty dollars, that works out to roughly a dollar a minute. Good value, if you’re into that. The branching paths and unlockables do their best to pull you back in, but when the foundation is only three missions deep the replay value starts to feel thin pretty quickly. Bad voice acting can be looked at as part of the charm but this is stiffer than a board and it wears out faster than you’d hope, especially if you’re replaying each mission. The graphics are firmly stuck in the late ’90s to early ’00s era and that probably didn’t matter much in a dark arcade cabinet, but at home on a larger screen it’s pretty hard to ignore. The tension of the arcade feels lost here too. Dying doesn’t seem to carry any penalty, without the countdown timer prompting you to feed all your spare change into the cabinet, this strips away a big part of what makes arcade shooters compelling in the first place. Ghost Squad is genuinely fun, but its greatest strength is probably what holds it back. It’s an arcade shooter through and through, but that means it comes with all the limitations that implies.
Ghost Squad is exactly what it is and simply nothing more. That stands to be both its greatest strength and weakness. It’s a faithful arcade port that really nails the feel of the genre and makes genuinely unreal use of the Wiimote to aid that feeling. Point at screen, shoot the bad guys. It perfectly recreates that mid ’00s arcade feeling. For a singular sitting of dumb fun, it absolutely delivers and there’s something to be said for a game that knows its own identity and fully commits to it. The problem is, a single sitting is about all you’re probably going to get out of it before the limitations start to outweigh the charm. Three missions is an incredibly thin foundation and without the pressure of a ticking clock or spare change burning through your pocket, the tension that made these games addictive in the first place just isn’t there. Branching paths and unlockables try to mould the game into something that wants you to come back, but the content just isn’t quite deep enough to make it feel worth more than one or two runs. For arcade shooter fans, Ghost Squad is hard not to recommend. It’s more than worth a run through. Just don’t go in expecting a Friday night throwback session, it’ll be over before the pizza even arrives.
Verdict:
Ghost Squad is a faithful arcade port that knows exactly what it is and commits to it fully. While it may be genuine fun while it lasts, at thirty to forty-five minutes it’s over almost as soon as it begins.
Deck Compatibility: 10/10
Overall Game Rating: 6/10 – Ghosted Too Soon
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