Ball Bullet Gun (VG) Review

Well now, I wonder how many of my loyal readers I drove off with my last little b*tchfest...? On the other hand, if they've managed to slog through the other junk I put up here, I doubt that that bit would be enough to get rid of 'em.... Either way, I promise I'll try not to go off the handle like that again anytime soon.

Let's see now, what's been up? Video games have been occupying much of my leisure time this last week or so. Going back through Neverwinter Nights has been my main focus, and while I do like the game, mein gotts, was the Henchman A.I. always that stupid? And then there's Metal Saga; there's something to be said for a game that lets you reach a complete ending within thirty seconds of starting a new game. I also reinstalled Wizardry 8. I keep doing this every so often, but I'll be darned if I know why.

Oh, and I watched Serenity the other day. I kind of want to do a full post on this one, but I also don't want to do a full review, and I think I may have exausted my readership's patience for Mini-Updates with that last one, so I'll just go briefly into it here. It's a pretty good movie overall, but watching it I found myself noticing how neatly it fell under the Friedman Theory of Entertainment Media Progression. For those of you unaware of it, the Theory goes something like this: whenever a work of entertainment encompasses multiple media, the viewer should always progess from the most compact medium to the most expansive, thus gradually increasing the amount of story he or she experiences. Going the other way just upsets the viewer, as he or she grows frustrated at elements that are shortened or omitted. The reason I bring this up is that I remember several people saying that to get the full effect of Serenity one would have had to have watched Firefly, the T.V. series that spawned it. But I could see a few points in the movie where it could have gone into more detail; I can only imagine what I would have felt like if I had watched the series and known how it was supposed to go.

As I said before, this week's review is of a bit of an oldie. Released toward the trailing edge of the SNES's lifespan, B.B. Gun is further proof that our dear friends in the Land of the Rising Sun will make a video game out of anything. This week's review is of the Tactical Strategy Survival Game Sim, Ball Bullet Gun.

Ball Bullet Gun

First off, I am a serious Tactical Strategy... well, we'll say fan, since the more accurate term is a bit too impolite to use here. And I'm also a minor Airsoft enthusiast; it may not be readily apparent to all of you out there in internet land, but I'm not exactly the 'macho' type -- in fact some have gone so far as to refer to me as a [austrian accent]Girlie Man[/austrian accent] -- , yet despite this lack of testosterone, I cannot seem to escape the mysterious allure of mid to heavy ordinance. Airsoft fills this desire quite nicely, allowing me to possess fully automatic weaponry without the dangers and legal issues of actually having a real firearm around the place. So, when a game that touches on both of these interests, I 'm certainly going to sit up and take notice. So if you were expecting an unbiased review: hi, you must be new here. Welcome to the site. Joking aside, it is a decent game; not quite genius, but definitely playable.

First thing that should be said is that this game is hard. I know a thing or two about tactics, (more than a novice in a nunnery, for example. ... Sorry.) but I still end up just scraping by on most maps. But, while the difficulty is up there, the game isn't cheap. Your opponents work under the exact same set of rules you do (though the random number generators seem to favor them. That could just be me, though), and you never end up with any artificial disadvantages placed upon you. Thing is, though, the A.I. is smart -- especially for an SNES title -- and merciless. It's not just the enemies that make the game tricky, either; the game mechanics are rather unforgiving. The line of sight system is particularly punishing. All too often you'll end up ending your turn with several enemies just outside your visual range, thus giving them the opportunity to stroll on over and bust a couple caps in your behind.

That leads me to my biggest complaint about the game: the turn system. The "My turn. Okay now you go." set up really doesn't lend itself to this sort of game. Not when combined with an Action Point system at any rate. It's rather frustrating when during the opponents turn, they can pop one character around a corner, squeeze off a couple bursts and then drop back behind cover, while any of your team that happened to survive just stand around with dumb looks on their faces. Now granted, you can do this too, but it's still somewhat upsetting to watch half your force get cut down without you being able to do anything about it. Even the ability to use a few left over A.P. to allow your character to shoot at the first enemy that pops into view would be something.

Graphics and sound are about what you might expect from a late-run Japanese SNES title. Colorful anime-styled sprites abound, and they're all pretty well animated, particularly the attack animations. Snipers peer through their scopes, shotgunners operate the pump action, it all shows good attention to detail by the artists. Music is decent; it's nowhere near, say, Chrono Trigger, but it does the job without getting irritating. The sound effects are similarly utilitarian, from the little pffuut of the B.B.s being fired to the cries of "Hit" as the characters get tagged. All in all, the game's not really high art on either the visual or auditory front, but it gets the job done.

Finally we come to the main reason to play this game: the guns. And there are a lot of them. You start out with a wide selection of handguns, SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, and light machine guns to pick through, and you get another every time you beat one of the 24 maps in the single player 'campain'. I put that in quotes because there's really no story here. I mean that literally, too. There's no character interaction, not dialog beyond the short snippets of your units radioing in when they spot an enemy's movement. I guess, and this is just a stab in the dark, that you're participating in some kind of survival game tournament, but if that's true there's no clues in game pointing one way or the other.

Honestly, I think this game would be better on a handheld system, as opposed to a console. The disconnected nature of the single player game, combined with the ability to save mid-mission, makes it ideal for playing for fifteen minutes when you've got nothing better to do. Still, it's a fun little game, and worth giving a try if you like tactical games, or, you know, guns. AGTP even did a translation patch for it to change the minute amount of text in the game to English. Ball Bullet Gun gets a seven out of eleven.

Final Score:
7/11

I've really got no clue what I'm going to do for next time. I might have HoMM5 by then, so you might get a full review of that. Or maybe not. Oh well, I'll figure something out, I'm sure. See y'all later.