Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand

"Wow, this is just like MGS. Only without the asinine plot twists."

In recent years, it's come to light (for me, at least) that Nintendo has become the undisputed reigning king of gimmicks. From the E reader to those GBC games that had the gargantuan rumble packs built on to them to Hey you, Pikachu!, it only seems to get worse and worse. And now Nintendo's taken the relatively meh concept of hooking your GBA to your GC and raped it with games that support it only to get you to buy the $10 hook up cable (Metroid Prime) to games that live off of it (soon to be Final Fantasy:CC). The plague of gimmicks has even infected third party developers, which is where we get Boktai with its whole solar sensor shindig. I've always liked the category type reviews, so let's get down to business, boyeeeeeee.

Gameplay: 8/10
Okay, so the gameplay gets broken down into two parts: The core gameplay without taking the solar thingy into consideration, and how the solar thingy effects the core gameplay. Let's start of with the latter (or is it the former? I can't ever remember. Whatever the first one I mentioned was). The gameplay itself is kind of like a meld between Legend of Zelda's clever dungeon quest with MGS's stealth action. Well, not stealthy to the point MGS2 reached, but you can shimmy against walls and knock on them to draw the attention of generic Resident Evil type monsters that use the same exclamation point above head system from that other Hideo Kojima game everyone like to bash on anymore. And the one everyone worships as their god that will soon be rereleased on the Gamecube, probably with some more GC-GBA gimmicks (fingers crossed for MG/MG2 ports). Actually, the monsters act exactly the same as the always conspicuously masked MGS guards, in that they have near sighted vision and like to walk back and forth for hours. Anyway, your main weapon is a sun gun that Django, the main character, uses to purify the undead that are walking the earth. The gun can be customized to an extent with special parts you'll find for it, adding some RPG elements into the mix. With that, you can probably figure out what the core gameplay is all about. All in all, it's pretty fun and interesting. Now, on to the solar aspect of the game. The real selling point for this whole adventure comes in the form of an oversized clear plastic GBA game with a little black square inside, all bringing back memories of the long since past Game Boy Color days. That little black square detects UV rays (Yeah, you heard right. Real UV rays. Albinos and Occupants of the Arctic Circle, beware) that are used to power up the in game sun gun, making the game super easy on a bright, sun shiny day, and near impossible during the dark, cold winter months, which are just around the corner, might I add. The sensor itself is pretty stingy with sunlight. Either you've got too little sunlight or you've got too much (which causes the gun to overheat). Once you've found the perfect ray of cancer causin' light, or purchased a black light, you'll be in pure gaming heaven. The whole system works out pretty well and makes for some very interesting and varied gameplay, but if I have one major complaint about it all, it's that you can't start boss battles if you sensor isn't picking up UV light. Many late night gaming sessions have been interrupted by that crappy concept.

Graphics: 9/10
Okay, no arguments here, the graphics are beautiful. They have this great artistic look to them. Umm...on to the next section...

Sound: 7/10
The sound effects are all loud and clear and fit with their respective actions, and the music gets the job done. Pretty generic sounding most of the time, but not so much that it detracts from the overall gaming experience. There are some impressive voice bits thrown into the game here and there, but any amazement that will overcome you from the fact that that crappy little sound chip can dish out understandable English will be ruined by the fact that it's all done by crappy voice actors and has that ever present ''I'm watching some goofy anime'' feel to it.

Story: 7/10
The story is quite insane, actually. It's kind of hard to follow at times even with all its simplicity, but really, who played MGS2 for the story? Who plays any Kojima game for the story? Certainly not me or anyone else in that questionable realm of sanity. There's a plot in this game, but it's more just there for padding the instruction manual and probably won't keep you up until the wee hours of the morning contemplating the existence of ''immortals not from our solar system''.

Replay value: 8/10
Once you've played through this game, you've basically seen it all. But, the fact that the presence of sunlight effects the whole gameplay experience in unpredictable ways makes for some varied replays. And there's a bunch of collectible crap that'll have perfectionists leaned over that tiny little Game Boy screen for weeks.

Okay, that's my review. With all these negative pointers, it's a good thing the overall experience of this game is pretty fun. Actually, I probably would have enjoyed this game a lot more if it didn't have the solar sensor, but such is life.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/28/03