Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

"It's another one of those blood-fests"

Parachutes are for whiny little girls and hippies. Cyborgs ignore the threats represented by high altitudes and jump from hovering helicopters, landing gracefully in a combat-ready crouch and scanning the area for hostile targets to gun down.

Being fed constant information from the cybernetic implants that allow her fellow team-mates to keep a high-tech voice-feed link directly into her brain, "Major" Motoko Kusanagi finally gets the chance to survey the area she has been so dramatically dropped in. The Nihama Pier's untroubled appearance of docile water boarding a concrete jungle, stacked with rusting metal storage containers can been seen through with a little investigation. The huge shutter doors leading further into the open-air facility is guarded rather shabbily by a napping guard. Creep past the slumbering stooge, or silently cap him, but you still need to find the correct computer panel to slide open the portal to your destination.

Because hidden within the breezy pier is a suspect that Motoko's government agency, Section 9, would very much like to question. And it's only upon further probing into the once-innocent looking location that you'll discover he's brought along with him a small army of prosthetic soldiers equipped with military-grade armourments and a surly disposition. It's your job to eliminate all these threats as well as apprehend the suspect before he escapes on a soon-to-depart freighter boat. But in more simplistic terms, your goal is simple: kill anything that moves before it kills you.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex makes wholesale slaughter fun again.

You see, Motoko isn't your standard femme fatale: she's more comparable to a one-woman army. She can slink around her beautifully recreated scenarios while unleashing hails of bullets effortlessly; execute dazzling athletic abilities to avoid the unwanted attentions of her heavily-armed foes; perform complex feats of agility like springing off walls or pulling herself up from sheer drops or even pummel faces with devesting melee combos that crush skulls and snap necks. All handy traits that you'll have to employ at your discretion if you want to progress through the hostile-choked dock and find your target.

Not long in to the mission, you need Motoko to hack into a huge, hulking stilted construction machine so she can use a mammoth stack of steel containers as a makeshift stairway, allowing her to leap at the recently activated moving platform above. You'll then need to sneak through a warehouse filled with those who so passionately vie for your demise, only so you can later scramble to survive a frantic slice of gunslinging on top of a multi-storey high crane, while being showered with bullets from bee-like robotic drones that hover agonisingly out of your range. All the while you need to make precise jumps across this unforgiving span with a single error leading to your death-dealing free-fall. And, just when you have your target in view, you must contend with a trio of snipers perched well beyond your reach. You must use your surroundings to evade the flickering laser sights that are your only clue to an oncoming fatalistic one-shot kill that can ring out at any time.

Making zigzagging runs when you are not sheltered behind the sanctuary of cover to try and shake off your unwanted attention, you need to still contend with the on-ground forces armed with their acquirable shotguns, assault rifles and sub machine-guns. But it is by killing off the commanders of these forces that your way forward becomes clear. You can't reach your destination as long as those snipers have you pinned, and you don't possess the firepower to reach them. But Motoko's world presents a fresh option: obtain localisation codes held by a superior-ranked foe and hack into the cybernetic mind of a pesky sniper, then have him off his colleagues with his longer-range weapon before suggesting he dive from his elevated platform to a squishy demise. Problem solved!

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex keeps within the pre-existing universe already set up by the respected anime. The distinctly futuristic Japan is your playground and the hi-tech gadgetry contained inside your toys. In keeping this universe intact, it presents the player with a unique and fresh game that always manages to impress.

It's also happy to give you choices. A later level will give you control of Motoko's long-suffering partner, Batou, as he battles his way through an abandoned military training camp to try and gain access to a derelict building, suspected of hiding suspicious materials. Upon reaching the entrance, he'll find it heavily guarded by a hulking battle-bot and two huge AI-controled gun emplacements. Your options are as follows:

1/ Abuse the smattering of heavy weapons your less burly colleague can't manage and run at these threats head on, hurling high-impact mayhem around in a delightfully violent manner whist trying to avoid the explosive repercussions directed your way by the alerted security systems.

2/ Sneak through a hard-to-spot hole in the fencing and destroy each threat stealthily before they notice your presence and try to gun you down.

3/ Heartlessly murder all the area's surrounding soldiers until you find the right code, and then hack yourself into the robot and let it run rampage against the gun emplacements.

Stand out moments like this liberally litter Ghost in the Shell. Both Batou and Motoko have to brave a battle against a nimble antitank helicopter, but they use their strengths to wage war differently. Stocky Batou grabs up a bulky rocket-launcher and goes toe-to-toe with his hovering adversary while lithe Motoko runs around a desolate building, avoiding the wave after wave of bullets and heat-seeking missiles to track down a surface-to-air missile emplacement she can employ to dissuade her foe. Even then, she needs to climb to the building's summit and jump into the out-of-control, burning carcass of the 'chopper in order to finish it off, having to nail a centimetre-perfect jump flawlessly to avoid the fatalistic repercussions. Moments like gaining control of a Tachikoma, a spider-like mini-tank with sentient AI, only to glide around a large open space and nuke any target stupid enough to present itself; moments like double-jumping up a curving air-duct, knowing that a single slip-up will grant you a bloody death at the hands of the industrial sized fan that spins rapidly beneath you; moments like running around a biologically engineered farm trying to hack into the numerous consoles littered around while trying to dodge the onslaught of a tank clad in stealth camouflage.

And then it ends all too soon. Ghost in the Shell will rock you with non-stop action and brain-twisting inventively, but the admittedly fantastic conclusion comes so abruptly. Perhaps you can then amuse yourself with the tight multiplayer mode that allows up to four players the chance at filling each other with lead, or retry the game on any of the three difficulty levels to earn unlockable bonuses, but your experience will stay with you. The action within may not last for as long as it should, but it will grab you by the throat and not let go.

The only way to engage in wholesale slaughter can be found in Tokyo. Mindless violence has never been so much fun.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/06