Ghost Squad

[Nester the Lark]

Despite the spotlight being on Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, I've actually been pretty interested in Ghost Squad. Maybe it's because Sega has a good track record for light gun games with Virtua Cop and House of the Dead.

Ghost Squad originally came out in arcades in 2004, and as far as I know, it was considered pretty good. It was supposed to recreate the experience of a FPS as an arcade game. The original Japanese version used a card which players would use to save their progress and unlockables. The American version removed this feature and presented an abridged version of the game. The Wii version, of course, will include the extra content from the Japanese game.

From what I've heard of comparisons between GS and RE:TUC, RE is the longer game. However, the three levels that GS provides include multiple pathways, and playing them on different difficulty levels alters them further with enemies appearing in new places. I've also heard that GS is a faster paced game than RE:TUC. Unlockables include extra costumes and new weapons. Also, of course, the Wii version supports four-player simultaneous play.

The latest news from this past week suggests that GS will launch at a price of US$30, while RE:TUC will cost a full US$50. I also heard rumor that Sega will be making some new announcement about this game on Monday.

Until then, check out the trailer.

[Nester the Lark]

IGN has a new Ghost Squad preview with a couple of videos of the extra modes. One is "Paradise Mode" in which all the enemies are women in bikinis (check the video--it looks a lot creepier than it sounds), water guns shaped like dolphins, bananas instead of knives, and jet skies shaped like swans. The other is "Ninja Mode," which actually looks really cool!

It also talks about some of the other extras. It also notes that even tho there are only three levels, each has 16(!) difficulty levels:

Our updated build of the game also allows for full use of the game's extra features, but silly and serious, so we had a chance to try out each of the 25 weapons, play with all 14 of the costumes, and try out many of the mission variants. Since each of the three missions have 16 levels of difficulty, there's a deceptively large amount of content in the game, and contrary to what we thought, many of the levels add a ton of unique aspects to the game. All new mini-games are used throughout, some of which change existing modes into newer, harder ones, while other sections are entirely new. So while one portion goes from a regular sniper rifle mission to a night scope version (a pretty basic and cosmetic change), other sections include things like stealth - a kill-vs.-time challenge - that you simply won't find in the first levels of each mission. With all extras included on top of the new $30 price tag, Ghost Squad is looking to a pretty strong package; even if the core game is a few years old.

[Fryguy64]

I saw an animation of a bikini woman being garroted with a banana. It was weird, that's for sure!

This game is looking pretty awesome. I'm on the lookout for good third party Wii games now, as I've been largely disappointed with Nintendo's output over the last year.

[Nester the Lark]

admin said:

I saw an animation of a bikini woman being garroted with a banana. It was weird, that's for sure!

If you think that was weird, you should see what the squad member does to the woman at the end of this trailer. There's just something wrong about it.

This game is looking pretty awesome. I'm on the lookout for good third party Wii games now, as I've been largely disappointed with Nintendo's output over the last year.

I think there's a lot of hope for this game. It was developed by AM2, which is Yu Suzuki's team and probably the last in-house Sega developer that has any real credibility.