"Point Blank hits the DS with guns blazing!"

A few months ago, when I first heard that Point Blank, my all time favorite game series from the PS1 was coming to the Nintendo DS, I laughed. I thought, "How good could that actually be without using a light gun?"

After much deliberation, I figured that it probably wouldn't be bad. I mean, the arcade versions of Point Blank forced you to be right up on the screen, so if you were just tapping the screen instead, it wouldn't be that horrible.

I am glad to say, I was right.

OVERVIEW
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This game was originally designed to be a cross between frantic twitch-style game play and a standard light gun game. Game types range from "shoot x number of your color targets" to "shoot the satellite 65 times in 15 seconds". Think WarioWare mixed with Lethal Enforcers and you pretty much get the idea.

GAME PLAY
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In the DS version, the meat of the game play is in Single Player. Of course, I pretty much thought single player was where it was at in the original versions of this game too.

Anyway, you have 5 game play options to choose from. Arcade, Brain Massage, Games Museum, Freeplay, and Vs.

ARCADE MODE
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This is pretty much the standard Point Blank Arcade mode, except for the fact that in the original game, you had 16 staged to go through, and in this one you only have 8. Practice is 4, but I think that's all it was before too. I can understand why they would have changed that, but it's still a disappointment for fans of the series. Of course, you still get the randomly inserted "Insane"-level games on Beginner and Advanced difficulty, just to switch things up a bit. When you start a game, you have 4 hearts, and you are presented with 4 random games to play through, and you get to pick the order in which you would like to do so. After the first 4, you get a bonus stage in which you can get nothing, a bonus heart, bonus points. Then 4 more random games, then the final stage.

BRAIN MASSAGE MODE
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Now, this isn't what you are thinking. It's not something like in Brain Age or Big Brain Academy. There are several categories to choose from (with a few more to unlock), and each one has "themes". After you select one, you play through 4 games(it also doesn't matter if you pass them or not, you won't get a game over for running out of hearts). At the end of the 4 games, you are given a score and a title. The thing is, there are 100 different titles to earn, all depending on your overall performance and score. Me being the collector, I gotta earn 'em all.

GAMES MUSEUM
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This was the biggest surprise for me, because I hadn't noticed that they were including this. What they did here was take 4 classic Namco Coin-op games (Gator Panic (a Whack-a-Mole type game with gators that bite you), Cracky Crab, Cosmo Gangs, and Shoot Away II (think Clay Pigeons from Duck Hunt)) and made digital representations of them. And, they're really good too. Out of the 4, the only one I never played in an arcade was Cracky Crab, and the conversions of the other three are pretty spot on. A welcome surprise, and a good injection of nostalgia into this game.

FREEPLAY
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A sort of practice mode. You can play any game that you have played in Arcade Mode. Not much to say really.

VS.
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Unfortunately, this game only supports Single Card play. The main downfall is the downloading of the game to the other system. It's LONG. However, once you get past that part, it's a pretty solid multiplayer.

CONTROLS
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The transition from light gun to stylus was a pretty straightforward one, and it was handled very well.

Some of the games require pinpoint accuracy, and there are times where you will wonder if your touch screen is calibrated properly because you will tap the screen a pixel or two away from what you want to hit and you won't hit it. That is nothing new though, because you get those thoughts about the light gun in the original.

Everything is handled with the stylus in this game, you never need to touch a button.

VISUALS
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This game series has always relied on fairly simple rendered sprites, and nothing is different here. There are lots of cartoony characters and bright colors that give everything a pretty whimsical feel.

The visual style of the characters works for this type of game, but I think some of the sprites could have been a little cleaner in the DS version.

SOUND
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There is a pretty good range of sound effects in the game, usually they're fairly strange, but they convey the feel of the game play very well.

The music isn't bad, but it is very forgettable.

SCORES
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GAME PLAY: 8/10
CONTROLS: 10/10
VISUALS: 7/10
SOUND: 6/10

OVERALL SCORE (NOT AN AVERAGE): 8/10

FINAL THOUGHTS
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If you are a fan of this series, or if you enjoy WarioWare or the Feel the Magic games, you can't really go wrong with Point Blank DS.

I am personally addicted to this game, just as I had been to the other games in the series.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/06