Ghost Squad is a faithful version Sega’s arcade game… Sega’s 2004 arcade game. That means the visuals are going to look dated compared to other games on the Wii. But you don’t have time to analyze the bland backgrounds. Ghost Squad piles untrained criminals on the screen for you to shoot. Most of them can’t even hit you at point blank range so there isn’t anything immediately to worry about. When one of the gun touting chaps is about to fire a circle appears over them (a la Virtua Cop) to let you they are a threat. To add some spice to the shooting Ghost Squad has events. One second you’re gunning down terrorists, the next you’re saving hostages by holding down the A button or the Z button if you’re in Wii Zapper mode.
Ghost Squad gives you the choice of playing the game with just the Wii remote where the D-pad lets you alternate shot fire (single shot/three shot burst/full auto), the B button lets you fire and the A button is for event actions. When you want to reload you wave the remote off screen. Alternatively, you can flip this scheme and make the A button shoot and reserve the B button for events. There is only one style of control for Zapper mode. It assigns the B button as the fire trigger, which is nicely placed underneath the Zapper’s trigger, and the Z button on the nunchuck is for event actions. You cannot freely assign buttons to make the Z button for firing, at least in the Japanese version.
Enough about the controls, the missions are more interesting. Here is a quick summary of them.
Mission 1 – Villa Rescue
You have to infiltrate a cabin filled with terrorists who are holding hostages. Obviously, you don’t want to shoot the hostages. It’s wrong. More importantly you lose life if one of them gets shot. Along the way you may have to diffuse a bomb by cutting three wires in order, protect team bravo from higher ground and use a one-shot-per-reload sniper rifle to take out six guys. What happens depends on what route you take. You don’t freely move in Ghost Squad, but options pop up with multiple paths. Everything converges at the end where you have to shoot down a helicopter with a rocket launcher.
Mission 2 – Operation Air Force One
The president has been captured and you have to save him. In harder difficulty levels you go into “stealth” mode when you board the plane. A little roulette wheel appears and you need to hit the Z button when it’s in the safe zone. If you end up in the danger zone one of the terrorists sounds the alarm and calls for back up. There are hostages to save here, but you can skip that part and take a route where you directly confront the terrorist who holding the president hostage. When you move into the plane’s cargo area you get a chance to try out thermal vision and night vision. Both of these options change how enemies look. Night vision highlights them in green and thermal vision gives them a neat looking heat mapped aura. The boss at the end is a little tricky, you have to kill him in a single shot without reloading.
Mission 3 – Jungle Assault
This mission is by far the longest, nearly the same amount of time as the first two missions. You start this level running in guns blazing to rescue a captive. Right away the third level sets a different tone: run and gun. You can opt to do a sniping mission and in one sequence you need to deflect punches by pressing the Z button on targets. This level also has the most challenging mission objective for single players. You have to diffuse mines by holding the Z/A button in place for four seconds. While you’re trying to do this terrorists are shooting and throwing grenades at you. As soon as you change your attention to the immediate grenade in the face problem the mine detonates. With two players this mission is much easier because one player can work on the mines while the other takes care of the terrorists. Once you get past the mines you jump on a speedboat and start shooting helicopters with your machine gun. The action packed sequence continues with grenade lobbing troops, an armored ship battle and a boss hiding behind an iron shield. Good thing you get a rocket launcher/machine gun combo weapon at the end of the stage!
Just like the arcade game* (if you have an IC card) Ghost Squad's missions level up. As you play the game you gain experience, which opens up alternate paths in missions, new weapons and costumes. New routes increase replay value a tad. However, you’re limited to three missions in Ghost Squad. Three missions isn’t much even if it is amusing to replay them in a panda suit carrying a shotgun.
The actual new content in Ghost Squad is at best meager. There is a training mode where you take aim at floating bulls-eyes and a timed stage to run through. Yet, it’s not much considering you can race through Ghost Squad’s arcade mode in less than half an hour. You’re going to be playing the same three missions quite a bit to unlock new firearms and Sega’s campy secret modes. In ninja mode the enemies turn into ninjas and you throw shuriken. Then in the much talked about paradise mode you get a dolphin shaped water gun and you shoot terrorists who double as bikini models. I love Sega’s twisted sense of humor and it’s fitting because stuff like this was hidden in the arcade game. However, since I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Ghost Squad at the arcades I wish there was a brand new mission to jump into.
When you've got company, Ghost Squad makes a good party game. The new party mode lets four people play simultaneously (arcade mode only allows two) and mixing this with "bikini mode" is a guaranteed good time. I guess the online rankings are sort of interesting too, if you’re into proving your skills to the world, but I’m not into that kind of thing so I’ve pretty much ignored them.
Even though it’s lacking in the "new" department, Ghost Squad is a deal for thirty bucks. You might want to up the value if you never played the arcade game too. It’s a solid, adrenaline pumping light gun experience that I’ve been enjoying without having to dip my Gameworks card into the machine for more credits.
