Sin and Punishment: Star Successor (AKA Sin & Punishment 2) is the long-awaited direct-sequel to one of Treasure’s most beloved games.
The original game was highly regarded critically and garnered much acclaim from those that played the title (essentially a run and gun rail-shooter) but sadly it was never released in the United States. This is despite the game featuring fully voiced English-dialog and even English subtitles, which would’ve made for an easy localization and painless American release. However it never came and one of Treasure’s best 64-bit titles fell into obscurity for all but those in the know.
Fast forward to modern times, and Nintendo made the wise choice to finally release the game to American and European audiences on the Wii Virtual Console, as one of the first titles in the “Import” category.
Perhaps one reason why they did so was because they knew that Treasure was getting ready to develop a bonafide sequel to that game with Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for Wii.
A worthy sequel, I hope it sells well and goes a way to prove that re-releases of classic titles on a service like Virtual Console can spur real-world sales of new sequels to old classics and revive interest in a long-forgotten franchise.
But is this Wii sequel worth $50 bones? Or does it only appeal to the nostalgic?
System: Wii
Also Available On: None
Released: USA June 27, 2010 – EUR May 7, 2010 – AUS TBA – JPN October 29, 2009
Players: Two-Players
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up/Rail Shooter
Save: Saves automatically after each level cleared. If you die you start at checkpoints. Four save slots.
Online Support? Yes. But only for leaderboards. No online co-op sadly.
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: Nintendo
Country of Origin: Japan
Rating: T for Teen because of “Fantasy Violence”.
First a disclaimer. Despite highly anticipating the original game due to reading so much about it in videogame magazines like EGM, I have never played it. Always wanted to, and perhaps I’m part of the problem since I’m a Wii owner who wanted to play Sin & Punishment 1 and was happy to see it getting a re-release for Virtual Console, but I didn’t buy the game myself (I actually haven’t bought any N64 Virtual Console games…).
Thankfully the game still sold enough copies without me to bless us with what I imagine is a worth sequel for those that played the original game.
Sin and Punishment: Star Successor is a run and gun, rail-shooter in which you control a human character who is tasked with shooting everything in their path. The game “scrolls” automatically but the viewpoint and geometry is three-dimensional. Although the game “scrolls” by itself, you control your human character and can move around the screen as you blast at enemies and other objects.
While you can land on the ground if there is ground below you and “walk” or run around as if you were on the ground. Most of the time you will be floating through the air as you blast everything in your path.
That means that the game plays like a traditional schmup (“shoot-em up”) in a lot of areas. Those who are familiar with the developer, Treasure, know that the Schmup is their forte. Even if you aren’t very familiar with the game industry side of things, a lot of players will probably know the game Ikaruga, which Treasure-developed and is released for the GameCube in 2003. The game was an intense vertically-scrolling shooter in which the player was tasked with switching their ship between light and dark colors (polarities) to absorb bullets of the opposite color and deal damage to enemies of the opposite polarity.
If you’ve played that game, then you’ll be familiar with how Treasure games operate, and Sin & Punishment 2 is no exception. The game often feels like a side-scrolling shoot ’em up with tons of enemies coming at you from all directions. But the cool thing that Sin & Punishment adds is how the viewpoint is not always side-scrolling.
Often times you will be shooting “into” the screen to attack enemies and objects that are shooting at you from the background. And one of my favorite aspects of the game is how the viewpoint is constantly switching from “3D” views to different side-scrolling perspectives and back again. It really adds some “flash” and helps keep the game interesting from beginning to end by not sticking to a single viewpoint and taking advantage of being in 3D.
The game can be played either using the Wii Remote & Nunchuck, a GameCube controller, a Classic Controller or with the Wii Zapper.
When playing with the Wii Remote & Nunchuck, you control your character with the Control Stick, aim by pointing at the screen with the Wii Remote (which controls a cursor), hover with your jetpack by pressing Up, jump by pressing C (Naturally, you can only jump if you are on the “ground”), Evade by pressing Z (Nunchuck), shoot your gun by holding down B (Wiimote), Melee Attack by tapping B, lock-on to targets with A and perform a very powerful Charge Shot by holding down A once your Charge Shot gauge is filled.
There are two characters that you can play as, a boy and a girl. Each of them have variations on their moves and the way they handle. Isa, the boy, has a powerful blast shot that is manually aimed and damages enemies in the blast radius. The girl, Kachi, has an auto-targeting Charge Shot that can lock onto up to 8 enemies at once (or you can target a single person 8 times). And while Kachi uses her fists and feet to kick and punch for her Melee Attack, Isa attacks with a sword. While these differences are somewhat slight, they are different enough that you will have your preference as to which character to choose. You’ll also eventually gain the ability to switch between the two characters when playing single-player by pressing the Minus Button on the Wii Remote.
Combining these moves actually gives you a lot of variation and tactical depth to the game which will give a lot of reply value to those players who love to play games for high scores. The game also keeps track of how many enemies you’ve killed, combo strings, points earned and shows a bar for your health and that of bosses. There are also leaderboards and the game keeps high scores for each level.
Although there aren’t many levels, the stages are quite long (we’re talking an hour here) and are very challenging as well. Expect to die a lot (on Normal you get infinite continues). There is also a wide amount of variety in the stages especially when you combine the different viewpoint switches that will happen as you make your way through a level.
In one level you are flying through a water tunnel inside the ocean and flying through it as you shoot enemies that come at you from the front and sides. A certain points you will “splash out” of the tunnel and into the ocean depths for a few seconds before being sucked back into the tunnel.
In another level you are “running” through a dark forest as you are attacked by enemies, some of while hide in grass or behind the trees. The coolest part of this level is that the forest around you is dark, making it hard to see the enemies. And they are mostly illuminated by the light from your bullets only!
Still another level reminded me of Starfox, as you are going through a metallic tunnel. At one point half walls will pop up as you are flying forward and you have to dodge to make sure you don’t slam into the walls by flying to the left, right, top or bottom. Later on, it gets even tougher as the walls are divided into fourths, and only one piece of it will break away AS the wall is coming towards you. This level is really cool as there are parts where the viewpoint will “turn a corner” and then it switches into a side-scrolling shooter.
The side-scrolling shooter sections really feel like your classic Schmup as well. But they are more intricate since you can shoot in any direction and still make use of your Melee Attack and Evade moves, etc.
At the end of each stage you will also fight against some awesome and crazy bosses, each of which has some very cool designs. And they can be very hard as well. One boss fight in particular has you fighting against giant “walls” each of which lined with turrets which reveal or are patterned different on each wall. Not only does each wall fire at you differently, but the walls rotate around you and there is one “master wall” in the background that you you need to aim at. It’s all insane and only those with the best tracking and eye coordination will be able to make it out alive and successfully dodge all the bullets while also aiming at the boss.
Because of all this, the game can both be a lot funner in two-player co-op, or a lot harder. Depending on your communication skills.
Graphically, Sin and Punishment 2 doesn’t look too impressive and looks like a GameCube game. In fact several of my friends were significantly underwhelmed. Causing them to lose interest even moreso was the absolutely horrendous dialog and speech. Paired with the melodramatic story and it’s a recipe right out of a bad anime that doesn’t do the game any favors. In fact I would’ve given the game a better score if this aspect of the game was good, as it’d make the whole package more interesting. As it is, simply this aspect alone makes it impossible for me to rate the game as “great”. Which is a shame.
Although I must say that the more you play the game the cooler the effects get and the game does some really cool stuff later on that will have you catching your breath or being like “Wow! That was awesome.” But there are many people that will be turned off by the stupid characters, the lame designs and storyline, the horrible voice acting and crappy dialogue, and the way the characters “slide” as if this was the N64’s “Jet Force Gemini” and won’t give the game the shot it deserves.
But if you are a fan of Treasure’s past games or of shoot-em ups in general, then you owe it to yourself to give this game a shot. I truly believe that fans of the original N64 game will find a worth successor in this title and it is somewhat rare that we get these kinds of titles nowadays. So if you are a fan of shooters and are coming for the gameplay and nothing else, then definitely check the game out. Having said that, I personally do not think the game is worth $50. Give it a rent first because the game is short, as these games always are. If you know you’ll be into it though, then I’d definitely say it was worth $30 or maybe even $40 if you are really into these types of games. Hopefully the game sells well, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of these types of titles.
FUN FACTOR: 7.5
Fast and furious shooting with lots of switching viewpoints and tactical gameplay. If you enjoy shoot-em ups there is no reason you wouldn’t enjoy this game. By the same token however, if you don’t like shooters there is no reason you’ll like this one. Especially because it has some absolutely horrible dialog and voice acting with a completely throwaway story that’s ripped straight of a bad direct-to-video or TV-made anime.
GRAPHICS: 6.5
This game is nothing to write home about and several of my own friends could not get over the quality of the graphics. However to the game’s credit, the effects and level design that inserts some awesome moments gets better and better as the game progresses. This can make up for it and you won’t really notice the “quality” of the graphics (think PS2) when you really sucked into the game and trying to survive. And it’s not like the game looks horrible. Although I must say the designs of the main characters are some of the worse ever.
MUSIC AND SOUND: 5.5
Nothing to say here. The dialog though is absolutely horrible. The only cool moments that stand out were a few tunes when you are about to fight a boss.
INGENUITY: 7.5
This game doesn’t necessarily do anything new, but the way it plays with various perspectives and mixes the run and gun shooter and shoot em up genres really go a ways to make the game feel unique and interesting. All the elements gameplay-wise come together really well.
REPLAY VALUE: 6.0
This game doesn’t really have replay value in a way that makes sense to anyone but shoot-em up fans who are used to trying to get higher scores or trying to increase their position on the leaderboards. Having said that, you can play any level at any time once you have beaten that level once. And there are various difficulty settings.