Project: Horned Owl Review

Project: Horned Owl is an unambitious offering - a game which neither breaks into new territory nor improves upon established standards. Ultimately, players will be severely disappointed when comparing it to the other light gun games currently available.

Horned Owl's problems begin with the first round (although shooting a civilian does provoke a semi-thrilling scream). The rendered robot enemies are very bland - they move and die in almost the same manner. Hit a car with a single shot and it's instantly destroyed (with hardly any animation to show it exploding). What's worse, the texture-mapped polygons are so pixelated that it's hard to believe the game is running on a 32-bit system. In fact, the shading on the walls gradates in giant blocks, and close-up explosions look like multicolored brick walls. The cutscenes are anime-style cartoons (the game was designed by famed manga artist Masamune Shirow), replete with bad dubbing and a corny plot. Simply, there aren't any neat touches that denote a well-developed video game.

If you live to shoot at your television, and you've exhausted all the alternatives, Project: Horned Owl will provide ample action. But ultimately you have to wonder why the effort wasn't put forth to make this a stronger title.