Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

"Stand Away From This Complex"

Ghost in the Shell: Stand ALone COmplex instantaneously became my favorite anime series of all time since the turn of the century. And I've seen a ton of good anime shows in the last five years, so when I heard that there was a video game based on the series you bet I was all hot and bothered. Afterall, the original Ghost in the Shell movie was what pretty much set off the anime craze here in the United States back in the late nineties, and I was there, giggling at the multiple scenes of bare robot boobies. Okay, enough of the naked robot talk, I'm mature now, time to get ot the games. I only had one problem with this game when I found out about it. Bandai was making it...

I went to EB Games to pick up either Ghost in the Shell or Ace Combat 5. I asked Melody (the beautiful clerk I had a crush on) what she thought I should get and she suggested Stand Alone Complex because she too is an anime fan and she was looking forward to checking it out because the game had just shipped. So I chose Stand Alone Complex... It was a long night...

Here's the breakdown.

STORY:

The Ghost in the Shell series takes place in a not so distant future where they have the saying "In a world without borders, terrorism knows no limits." The year is 2030 and the line that distinguishes a human from a cyborg has been severly blurred. In a world where people can enhance themselves cybernetically and can interact and manipulate machines just as well as a modern day hacker can today, injusticies such as cyber-crime, espionage, and terrorism plague society to the likes neither of us can even imagine. Well, you could just watch the show just to find out. That is were Section 9, a highly qualified and top secret defensive task force is called into duty, and when the protagonists of this game get to strut their stuff.

GAMEPLAY:

Stand Alone Complex pits you into a pretty deep storyline that goes well beyond anything I'd ever expect from a Bandai game. I could definitely tell that the folks behind Stand Alone Complex put a lot of time and effort into making a solid gaming experience. The game features over twelve different missions for two different characters. When the time is right in the story you'll have control of either Major Motoko Kusanagi, the spearhead and heroine of Section 9, or Batou, the brooding tough guy with a really ugly mug. One of the coolest things you can do is the game is Ghost Hacking, where you hack into another cybernetically enhanced person and control them for a brief period of time just like in the anime. This added some variety to the levels but it was a shame there weren't too many "Ghost Hackable" candidates. Aside from the single player campaign there is also a multiplayer mode which features up to four players simultaneously on split screen. I will admit I had problems with this though because there was a huge glitch where the other players kept falling through the ground each time they respawned...

SOUND:

That sound part of the game wasn't too disappointing. One of the major things that comes to mind is the fact that the voice overs are done so low that you can't really hear them over the background music and you'll have to go back and read your mission logs to actually find out what the hell each person is trying to say to you. When the background music and sound effects aren't hindering the voice overs you can be relieved that the voices aren't that bad either. Many people returning to voice over their characters from even the original Ghost in the Shell movie as well as the Stand Alone Complex series. I was pleased with that. On a further aside I'd like to add that the soundtrack wasn't half bad and the tunes stuck with me for a while, but they did get annoying after time.

CONTROL:

Oy, don't get me started on Stand Alone Complex's controls. THEY ARE ATROCIOUS! I've played tons of third person shootem up and adventure type games before and I know when a control scheme just doesn't work. Changing the controller configuration barely solves the problem and in many parts of the game just made the whole overall experience a chore. You'll find yourself jumping to your doom several times in some parts of the game, which can be very frustrating. Even more so are the parts where you have to wall jump up and around buildings with ease as if you were Spider-Man. Well, here are a couple of facts. 1) You wont be able to wall jump with ease. 2) These jumps would make spider-Man cry, and 3) these "jumping sessions" will seriously make your hands hurt because the button configurations are so horribly plotted out. At least you look cool when you dodge bullest by jumping over them. But it's still not enough to save this one. You'll have to get used to the controls - as bad as they actually are - in order to really enjoy this game.

GRAPHICS:

Besides having a story that really felt like part of the series and some really kick ass bullet-dodging flips, Stand Alone Complex's graphics were the only other saving grace of this game. And they weren't anything to get too excited about when you had other games coming out around the same time like Metal Gear Solid 3 and Halo 2. Lets just say that the graphics for this game "work." You get a really cool zoom-in effect when you knock out your enemies with a one-hit KO attack and did I mention a really awesome bullet dodging animation? This game also features over twenty minutes of beautifully rendered CGI FMVs that had me begging for more. Graphically, especially compared to the games in Bandai's previous anime-to-video game installments, I strongly believe that Ghost in the Shell is their best effort to date.

REPLAY VALUE:

Finally, I'd have to say that Ghost in the Shell has almost no relplay value whatsoever. When you play through the game once that's pretty much it. There's not much else too it besides extra difficulty modes and the quasi-glitchy multiplayer mode. Team battle and battle royales sound fun in theory but it's pretty much a rushed job in my opinion. You can "unlock" different costumes for Kusanagi but I was seriously disappointed when I found out that all they were, were just different colored version of the costume she wore in the game. I was really looking forward to unlocking the same outfit she actually wore in the Stand Alone Complex series but I ended up being disappointed yet again. If they did have the costume I would very much have played through the game again but with the bad control I probably wouldn't. Another unfortunate thing about this game is that I pretty much beat it in one sitting, so yeah, I brought it back to EB Games the next day and picked up Ace Combat 5. Melody thanked me when I told her to steer clear from that one.

The game may be disappointing but it's still Ghost in the Shell on the inside. So consider this final score to be really... really nice.

OVERALL SCORE: 6.5 out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/25/05