The player's unusual ally adds a lot of fun to the game.
A lot of people gave this game a really low rating, but I'm not sure why. I love this game, and I question why I hadn't bought it a long time ago. I remember telling a game store employee and a semi-friend of my parents that was a PSP fan himself that I was wondering if there were any cool shooter games for the PSP (preferably first-person) with teamwork in them and he didn't say CRAP about Ghost in the Shell. Jackass. I regret not having bought this game months ago when I got my PSP.
This game is so old (October of 2005), and yet I'd been going around before the release of Medal of Honor: Heroes thinking there were no good PSP first-person-shooters.
Let me start off by saying the game looks and sounds great. Environments are great-looking, and there are some neat special effects. Sounds are even better. Gunshots are really satisfying to hear. I really dig the music. Enemies and the player's ally talk during combat, which is always fun stuff to hear.
I like the controls. They're really easy, though they don't ever tell you that the square button inverts the Y axis when setting the controls (had to figure it out myself). The game jumps a little too early into the action without any sort of tutorial. Some people don't like having to use the face buttons to look around, and would rather use the analog nub to look around. I personally can't do that at all (tried it in other games) and I'd much rather use the face buttons, but I'm not everybody. Perhaps it would've been wise to make an option so face buttons would move and the analog nub would aim.
The cutscenes are entertaining for the most-part, and remind me of actual Japanese cartoons where everyone stands around talking a lot about stuff, and some characters will act like they don't know what the other person's talking about, but they give a really long and descriptive guess.
Even the mouths of the characters move like a Japanese cartoon. They go up and down in the same motion, not matching what the character is saying even slightly. The voice acting is great. The cutscenes play out the exact way a Japanese cartoon would, for better or worse, since I don't really like Japanese cartoons, but it's interesting that they captured the feeling in a 3D video game. They're pretty lengthy and contain a lot of descriptive dialogue, so you can actually understand the plot, which is freaking amazing.
Everyone "brain-talks" quite often, which gets really confusing. Like, "Who in the hell is talking?" confusing.
The detail of the characters in the cutscenes is great, mainly because this is a PS2 port, so pretty much all they did was lower the texture quality, though the textures still look really nice.
Cutscenes are excessively lengthy, like several minutes lengthy. I wouldn't want it any other way. I like cutscenes, some reason.
Let me get to the actual game. The pre-level setup lets the player pick one out of four characters. The characters only differ in their damage and "rof" (whatever the hell that is), though one of the characters has bad "rof" AND bad damage, unlike the other characters which have good "rof" and bad damage or bad "rof" and good damage. Cutscenes also adjust to fit in that particular character, as the four characters don't work together throughout the game, though they'll sometimes all be in the same area at once for the cutscenes.
There's only one girl on the team, and she dresses like a hooker. Yeah, I said it. Like she wants $100 for an hour and a half in a hotel with a stranger.
When choosing a level, the player can often select from multiple levels at once, eventually unlocking the next set of levels to choose from. Levels are really short, and they include a variety of interesting things to do, though they all boil down to killing enemies as you either go from point A to point C (literally) or wondering around to find stuff, whilst killing enemies.
The player gets to choose three weapons of any kind at all. ANY KIND. That could include a rocket launcher, grenade launcher and SAW or a pistol, a submachine gun and a shotgun. You could even carry around three different kinds of grenades, though I wouldn't recommend it. There are no restrictions on which weapons the player chooses or how many of that particular weapon, though many weapons must be unlocked.
Weapons, by the way, are awesome. There are dozens and dozens of awesome, semi-realistic, cool-looking weapons, and each one is worth trying out. From sidearms to heavy weaponry to grenades to lasers, it's all here.
Though the four characters don't fight alongside eachother, the player does get one teammate- A freaky spider-looking robot with a child-like voice called a Tachikoma. It's overly optimistic and happy about everything before and after murdering every enemy in the room, which it's perfectly capable of doing. The little-kid-spirit of the robot thing adds life to the game, though it's weird to hear the robot talk in its happy little voice, then fire rockets and shoot machine guns to kill people, and once again talk in its happy little voice. By the way, as far as the story goes, there's like four more of them and they have annoying conversations in their childlike voices, like the government couldn't afford to give their killing machines more buff, manly and mean voices to use while they mercilessly tear through their enemies.
Weapons for the Tachikoma are just as awesome as they are for the player. The player gets to decide what weapons the robot has every mission. There are five weapon slots: Two back weapons, which consist of heavy weaponry and supplies for the player; Two arm weapons, which consist of lighter (but not light) weaponry; And a face weapon, which consists of stuff similar to the arm weapons. Customizing the weapons on the robot is really fun, perhaps because the robot puts them to good use and it's fun to watch it use them by itself without the player's guidance.
Though I might've liked it more if the player fought alongside his human comrades, the robot's still really awesome to have as a buddy. The player can boss it around, which is always fun, though when responding to orders, the Tachikoma will often say, "Yes, ma'am!" even if you're playing as a guy. The robot can follow the player, stand still or run around like crazy. It can also be told to go to three different points in the area, "A, B and C", which are simply the beginning, the middle and the end. When moving a short distance, it walks, but when it wants to get somewhere fast, it slides, which looks kind of funny.
Lastly, it can be ordered to either never shoot anything, fire its weak, high-ammo weapons first (like machine guns) or fire its strong, low-ammo weapons first (like rocket launchers). Give the robot a grenade launcher and a rocket launcher, tell it to "destroy", let it freelance around the area and watch the fun. The Tachikoma has no problems eliminating just about everything, on easy levels at least. The robot can be destroyed, so it's not wise to try and make it do everything alone.
The player can play as the robot by walking up to it and pressing the use button. When the player is the Tachikoma, he has to switch between five weapons, only able to shoot one at a time. THAT'S really fun. Also, the player's character disappears, so if the player wants to play as the robot, the player will have no teammate, which made the idea of playing as the Tachikoma pretty boring to me. I'm not sure why the player's character couldn't be AI-controlled and "ordered" to do things while the player plays as the Tachikoma.
The horrible problem with the Tachikoma is that it CAN die, resulting in an immediate Game Over. This wouldn't be terrible, but whenever the Tachikoma spots an enemy, it waves its arms around and stands completely still for at least three seconds before actually firing. Enemies don't hesitate to shoot, so while the Tachikoma is doing it's retarded "Enemy spotted!" dance, enemies are hitting it with grenades and rockets and filling it full of bullets. This puts an enormous damper on the game.
Enough of all that. Let me talk about the level design. As far as size goes, some levels are pretty small. Most levels are split up into areas, and each area is usually tight-fit. The Tachikoma can easily annihilate most enemies by itself (assuming it has the ammo), and most levels only have a few enemies around at once. Because of the Tachikoma's power and the small amount of enemies, you'll usually have to fight a dozen guys with grenade launchers and one guy with a submachine gun.
Most levels feel tiny and crowded, and there's pretty much no use for the sniper rifle, as it's rare an enemy will be so far away that the player couldn't easily take him down with his submachine gun. The robot is pretty big, so it's weird that they'd make such tiny levels to hold the robot in. There are big levels, but such levels are foggy, and STILL pretty devoid of enemies. At least the Tachikoma has some room.
Multiplayer doesn't go online, has no computer-controlled players and only supports six people through Ad Hoc. Luckily, each level is sized so that the six players will constantly run into eachother.
Multiplayer generally works like single player in that you can select a character and choose three different weapons of any kind, or select five different weapons for their Tachikoma. What's weird is, strong weapons like the rocket launcher will be placed in some levels so players can pick it up, but players could choose to start with the rocket launcher from the very beginning if they wanted to.
Gametypes are limited to deathmatch style, with teams or without. Players can be either humans or Tachikomas, but not both at the same time. It's unlikely that you'll ever find five people with five PSPs and five copies of Ghost in the Shell so that you could actually enjoy multiplayer with the full player count.
The player has three different special camera types, all of which restrict the player's movement. One camera type is an outside view centered on the player, so he can look at himself as enemies shoot him. Another camera type is centered outside of the robot, so the player can look at the robot as enemies shoot him. The last camera type, the only one that's truly interesting, is the one where the player sees what the robot sees. Telling it to wander around and then watching the killing through the robot's perspective is fun to do, though there are rare opportunities where the player can afford to do such.
Ghost in the Shell has a lot of quality to it. The enemies are fun to kill and the weapons are awesome. Explosions look great, bullets make cool-looking impacts on everything and the music and sound effects are awesome. Levels are a bit undersized, and it's unlikely that anyone will ever have the opportunity to enjoy the multiplayer.
The greatest thing about the game is the Tachikoma in single player. It's fun to boss around and it's really helpful. Having a teammate makes combat much more enjoyable. Without the Tachikoma, the game would be rather basic and not all that great, because it still has all that previously mentioned quality, but it wouldn't be that fun without the Tachikoma.
The game would've had more value if it had included online multiplayer or bots in the offline multiplayer. That, and a higher player count than six. SIX? Why not eight? What's so hard about that extra two, people?
Six, eight, it doesn't matter when you've got no online mode and no computer-controlled players. Too many PSP shooter games try to get away with Ad Hoc and no bots, as if anyone ever played multiplayer games like that. What are the odds that a bunch of friends would all own PSPs and all own the same games so that they could actually enjoy Ad Hoc with no bots?
It's a wonder they didn't put in a cooperative mode. There would've been no problems having one player be the human and the other player be the Tachikoma, and it would've given two people that both own the game something to do beyond one versus one.
If you want an enjoyable single player experience in a portable first-person-shooter, then get Ghost in the Shell as soon as possible. Don't make the same mistake I did by not owning this great game for such a long time.