I’m going to go ahead and confess, this review may be a little biased.
Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is the sequel to Sin & Punishment, a somewhat obscure title released during the Nintendo 64’s dying breath in Japan, then re-released worldwide on the Wii’s Virtual Console, where it saw a restored popularity. Both games are developed by Treasure, the development team responsible for some of my favorite action games like Ikaruga, Gunstar Heroes, and more. They’re also both rail-shooters, a dying game genre that remains one of my favorites. Ever play Rez, the Panzer Dragoon titles, or Star Fox 64? Ever play Ikaruga or any other Treasure title? Then you may have a pretty good idea of what this is about, in which case, stop reading and go buy this game, you fool!
I can sum up the game pretty quickly and easily: you run and fly around blowing up monsters and ships and stuff while dodging barrage after barrage of bullets, projectiles, and other obstacles. It’s a white-knuckle adrenaline rush that doesn’t let up until you’ve beaten the game or given up because holy crap, there’s a lot going on at any given moment and dodging and shooting simultaneously can get rough.
Thankfully, the controls are simple and make gameplay supremely easy to pick up and dive into. You have two characters to pick from, a guy with poor fashion taste named Isa, or a girl named Kachi. The only differences between them are their aiming and their special attacks. You control their movement around the screen with the joystick on the nunchuk, aim your Wii remote at the screen, hold B to shoot, tap it to use a melee attack (trust me, you’ll need it), A button uses your special attack, and Z button dodges (you’ll need that too). Being on rails, your character will always be moving along a linear path, but you can and will be throwing them all over the screen in an effort to avoid wave after wave of enemy attacks. Back to the differences between the two, Isa cannot lock onto enemies unless you tap A to target one, so you need a steady hand for accurate shots. His special attack is a tremendous charged blast that deals a lot of damage in a large area, and you will come to rely on it a lot. Kachi, on the other hand, will lock on automatically to anything you start shooting at. If it’s an enemy that doesn’t go down within a few shots, she’ll stay locked onto it until you let go of B and point your targeting reticule at something else. This can be a little frustrating when you’re confronted with over a dozen smaller, more annoying creatures but you’re stuck locked on to some large structure or tank that’s not even really doing much of anything. Her special attack is to lock onto up to eight targets at once by holding A, or you can target one enemy up to eight times, so it’s a lot like Panzer Dragoon Orta or Rez. The only issue is, if you’re targeting one enemy, it takes longer to target them eight times than it does for Isa to charge one massive explosive blast. Who you pick is up to you, though, maybe you’d handle Kachi better than I could. Their melee attacks pack the same punch, and you’ll be using it a lot to rack up massive points and for deflecting missiles and other projectiles back at other enemies, which is both awesome and completely necessary if you want to see this game through to the end.
Everything else comes secondary to the gameplay. The graphics, when things slow down and during cut scenes, are really not so great. Both Isa and Kachi, despite being separate genders, look like the same character model and their faces are practically identical, and the same goes for most of the human-looking villains in the game either. But that’s kind of understandable, Treasure is not a huge team and with the sheer amount of things thrown on the screen at any given time, they had to sacrifice graphical power in order to make sure the game runs smoothly with no frame-rate hiccups whatsoever. The story is absolute crap, with bad voice acting and very little explanation as to what’s going on. Now the first Sin & Punishment didn’t have a good story or voice-acting either, but it’s somehow superior to whatever they scribbled together here. Do yourself a favor, skip the cut scenes and get straight into the action. Music is typical electronic synthesized craziness one would come to expect from arcade-style action games, with some screaming and wailing guitars for good measure. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but your mileage may vary.
It really is all about shooting things up. The game throws wave after wave of enemies at you as you fly through underwater tunnels, race down a desert highway on a sweet hover bike, and run through a secluded forest in the middle of the night. There are numerous bosses, and they will try their best to kill you. It becomes a bullet-hell game, trying to navigate through a tiny opening between waves of projectiles while also trying to stay locked on. It is an intense, old-school experience through and through.
It’s only eight levels and the game is over between four and eight hours, depending on which difficulty you select and how good you are. However, even four hours is quite a lot for a rail-shooter, especially considering that the first Sin & Punishment was over in around an hour. I could only play it in small bursts anyways, and even then if I shut my eyes I’d start seeing dozens of bullets flying at me at once. Every minute of this game is heart-pounding insanity, and you’ll be spending the majority of that time screaming expletives at the TV, usually out of sheer, dumbfounded awe over what’s happening in the game.
Despite its flawed graphics and poor story, the game is still a joy to play. If you’re into rail-shooters or any of Treasure’s previous games, there is no question about it; you must get this game. If you’re skeptical however, at least give it a rental or play it at a friend’s house. Then maybe you’ll understand.
[Brett]
