V.I.P.

"All the mind-numbing boredom of bad and cheap TV shows without any of their comedic camp potential"

The PSX version of VIP, although embarrassingly bad, was actually pretty entertaining to play on account of how hilarious it was (both intentionally and uninentionally). The GBA version, sadly, has all the same flaws but none of the advantages of its older brother.

For starters, the game is now a side-scrolling shoot'em-up that does nothing to differentiate itself from the fifteen thousand similar games in the market. You control one of the five characters of the series' cast, depending on the level, and you have to take him or her from one end of the map to another in one piece. Then, the level will end and you will get to take another character to another part of the map. Yay!!

As if that wasn't thrilling enough, the levels are also lousy with groups of enemies that you get to shoot. Maybe a better term would be “bystanders”, since their limited AI only allows them to run in circles –literally- forever until you're so close that they can kick you in the face. Once they take note of your very obvious presence just a few steps away, they'll attack you with guns that could have reached you from much further. Yes, it's kind of sad that these muscled thugs seem to be remarkably shortsighted, but after a couple of minutes you'll cease to pity them and you'll learn to shoot them from the other side of the screen, as soon as you see them, hours before they notice you.

If an enemy poses any kind of threat anyway, you can always crouch or jump several times your own height to dodge his shots as they slowly make their way across the screen. You can also use a desperation “To hell with it” attack of sorts, if you've picked the right item. If the enemy is one of the few bosses of the game, though, then you're in BIG trouble. The AI is as ornery as ever, but instead of running from left to right like schizophrenic puppies, these guys simply shoot incessantly, only stopping for whatever time it takes to toss a grenade at you. Finding one spot in the room where you won't be dismembered instantly is difficult enough –actually landing a bullet on the boss is another matter, one that will drive you to waste many lives.

It must be said that the graphics are for the most part colourful, but not very detailed. Each level is big enough to make the backgrounds seem repetitive and uninteresting. The characters, on the other hand, are also repetitive and not very detailed. There must be only about four or five types of enemies, and since they all behave in the same way it would be better to say there are only about four or five types of enemy skins. Pamela Anderson's character can be said to be an exception in character detail, since her bosom makes her occupy about twice as much screen space as anyone else in the game.

Although the concept of running around shooting bad guys in wifebeaters is in theory more entertaining than the PSX's version of DDR command input, the thing is that if you've played the GBA's VIP for thirty seconds, you've played all of it. There is no plot whatsoever, and all you ever do is run from left to right shooting the same enemies over and over, with no difficulty increase at all. I honestly can't tell whether different levels have different background music (it all sounds like a dull techno beat to me), and the addition of level bosses certainly doesn't improve the deep boredom of the game. And we don't even have camp comedy to make up for it.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/24/06