It’s sad to admit but light gun shooters have long been on their way out of the market. Their popularity piqued in the arcades, and the scene has long been in decline with the advent of 3D gaming. A few developers such as Namco and Sega worked hard to keep it alive, releasing polygonal shooters in arcades and porting them to home consoles in the 32-bit era, but in the generation that followed they were all but ignored by the market. Admittedly there’s not a lot you can do with the genre; it’s about shooting incoming enemies across various set pieces, and then moving on to the next one. Namco apparently tried to buck this trend in the mid 90s by releasing Point Blank in the arcades, and eventually porting it to the Sony PlayStation. This is a gallery style shooter with a very ‘carnival’ twist to it and was noteworthy because it didn’t focus entirely around violence. It also doesn’t hurt that it made use of the legendary Guncon controller which has gone down in history as one of the best light guns ever released. I wasn’t interested in the genre back then (aside from putting a few quarters in Time Crisis and Virtua Cop here and there) but now I’m a big fan and decided today to give Point Blank a look. I’m truly disappointed in myself for waiting so long to play it. It’s really that good.
There’s not much of a set up here; simply plug in your controller turn on the console and you’re good to go. This home release features two different modes; both arcade and and arrange. Arcade takes you through the basic coin-op version wherein you select a difficulty and then you’re off through a series of different gameplay objectives each of which obviously involves shooting on-screen objects. Each is treated as its own level, and you’re given the choice between four different stages at a time. When you complete each of them you move on to the next challenges and so forth until you’ve played through them all. Should you fail to complete the outlined goal you lose a life and move on. The arrange mode is played in almost the same fashion, but it adds a bit more meat to the experience with new stages and objectives to complete. It isn’t drastically different, but does add enough new content to make this feel like a full fledged home release instead of a quick and dirty port of the arcade version like so many other developers are guilty of. I’m happy overall with the additional content which makes this one of the meatiest light gun games I’ve ever played.
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| I told you it’s hectic! |
If there’s one perfect word to describe Point Blank then it’s ‘hectic.’ Each gameplay section lasts for only a matter of seconds with goals that range from shooting a specific number of targets to hitting all incoming projectiles before they can reach the edge of the screen. You’re given a very small amount of time as per each challenge, and this makes the game extra frantic especially when you’re playing with a second player. The biggest change up in these challenges is the trajectory of your projectiles. They rarely stand still, and you’ll have to shoot objects like falling leaves, fish swimming across the screen, items falling from above, etc. My absolute favorite mini-game involves a 3D environment your character moves through (via a first person perspective) as targets pop up on all sides of the screen. This is the only mode that really seems to push the hardware in any significant way, and shooting pop up targets designed to look like criminals is zany and hilarious. The fast pace and variety of stages actually really reminds of me Wario Ware, but Point Blank was released years before that was even a thing. The experience is like not anything else you’ll find in the genre.
While tackling the arranged and arcade modes alone is amazing the real meat and potatoes of this package is the multiplayer modes. You can tackle the main objectives with a friend and this is an absolute blast, but tracking down two guncons can be a real chore in modern times. Thankfully you can use a standard controller with on-screen crosshairs, and while this is usually lame I was surprised at how fun the game still was using this method. You can adjust the speed of your aim, and both crosshairs are different colors (and not red/green thankfully for the colorblind people). The guncon is preferable, but I had almost as much fun with just the standard controllers. That’s all well and good because Point Blank is one of the best casual party games I’ve ever seen. The concept is so easy to grasp for everyone, and the simple parlor style shooting gallery scenarios are something that everyone can get into immediately. Additionally the pacing makes it so even the most cynical of gamers won’t mind giving it a shot, and believe you me when I say that they will be hooked immediately.
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| One of the various 3D sections of the game. |
This is not a game that pushes the PS1 hardware in any particular way, at least most of the time. 90% of the gameplay vignettes are fully sprite based and two dimensional with the rest relying on polygonal environments. That’s half of the charm of this title though. In an era of 3D gaming Point Blank wasn’t afraid to dwell on the past. Don’t get me wrong; there’s some really intricate sprite work here and several pre-rendered elements that couldn’t have been done on past hardware. Either way, the art style is colorful and cartoony and I like it a lot. The 3D areas of the game are very competently done and definitely hold up with some of the platform’s best efforts with a smooth framerate and high polygon count. The soundtrack is a mix between techno and pop, but it still retains that classic feel to it while fitting the carnival games motif perfectly. I listened to both this and the arcade game’s soundtrack and as far as I can tell it was directly ported over and sounds amazing. There’s a huge variety of music to carry on the huge variety of themes this game explores, and I found it all to be enjoyable.
I went in with tempered expectations. Fans of the genre, due to the sparse releases in it, tend to cling to games that aren’t that great (Area 51 anyone?) What I found here is one of the most inventive light gun games I ever imagined could even exist. The timed objectives breath new life into the genre, and the emphasis on the shooting gallery style of gameplay is amazing and fits the genre exceptionally well. Point Blank is inventive, frantic, and a whole load of fun. My only regret is that I didn’t jump in sooner; this may be one of the greatest light gun shooters of all time, and as a fan of the genre I don’t say things like that lightly.
