Confidential Mission

"Just about everything a shooter fan wants"

It's about time lightgun fans got another solid shooter out, and Confidential Mission fits the bill excellently. Sure, House of the Dead 2 was solid, but it came out a LONG time ago. Virtua Cop 2 showing up on the Smash Pack was a really great surprise and treat, but gun shooter fans played that one to death many years ago, literally. So finally, a breath of fresh air for Dreamcast shooters - Confidential Mission not only fills the gap, but does so with a style all its own.

You probably know the drill - shoot the bad guys, shoot offscreen to reload, don't shoot the innocents, rinse and repeat. For many of us, this adds up to excellent, tasty fun in and of itself, and CM has plenty of all that action. Fortunately and surprisingly, CM manages to innovate slightly without losing the fun factor of the typical blast-em-up. One particularly amusing mid-stage event involves being locked in an elevator shaft which is being filled with poisonous gas - the task is to shoot the holes bringing the gas in with a glue gun before a timer runs out. Failure to do this successfully results NOT in the loss of a life marker, however - instead, your viewpoint is hazy and warped during the next stage to reflect that you've ingested too much of the gas and cannot properly aim or see.

CM's James Bond theme is quite entertaining, and has a fair bit more flavor than Virtua Cop's bread-and-butter cop routine. Voice acting is acceptably atrocious, and cutscenes are entertaining if a bit creepy due to the lack of any character mouth movement of any kind. Graphics are quite excellent, both colorful and smoothly animated.

Level design is good, if not astonishing. CM takes roughly 20-25 minutes to play through the normal missions, which is about the length of most arcade shooters. There are some difficult and lengthy training modes to delve into which definitely help the replay value of the game and extend first-run usage.

In all, Confidential Mission isn't a masterpiece, but is a lot of fun, especially for the $20 asking price. Highly recommended to any shooter fan with a Dreamcast, and quite recommended to arcade game fans of all kinds for its humor and good pace, CM should at least be checked into by all but the snottiest, highbrow gamers.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/28/01, Updated 05/28/01