Genre: Action
Publisher: Bandai
Developer: Cavia Inc.
Release Date: November 8, 2004

Pre-order 'GHOST IN THE SHELL: Stand Alone Complex': PlayStation 2

I have no idea what the hell is going on here.

It involves the theoretical state of the human soul when the human body can be fully replaced by technology, a hightech Japanese police unit, a fully autonomous complex within Japan that’s shipping weapons and bioengineered food, a five-year-old murder case, really scary spider assault droids who speak and act like small children, and a whole lot of people who really should not have opened fire on me.

In other words, it’s a Ghost in the Shell game, and it’s very faithful to the source material. The plot twists and turns a bit, moving through several thousand lines of spoken dialogue from the same talented voice cast that brings you the dubbed version of the anime series, but in the meantime, there are about five hundred people who really kinda need to be shot.

You play Stand Alone Complex as either Major Motoko Kusanagi, who used to be human but is now a small amount of brain piloting a woman-shaped cyborg, or her partner Batou, who doesn’t have Motoko’s agility but does tend to get cooler weapons. You’ll switch off between the two over the course of twelve missions, which take the third-person shooter into cyberpunk territory.

When you play as Kusanagi, Stand Alone Complex can feel a little like a platformer. She can jump, ricochet off walls, perform acrobatics to avoid incoming gunfire, and occasionally die because her state-of-the-art cyborg body isn’t waterproof.

Both she and Batou have access to an arsenal of firearms, none of which are really a surprise, such as submachineguns, assault rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, and an anti-tank rocket. You can carry up to two primary firearms, as well as two types of grenades and Kusanagi’s throwing knives--

(What is it about throwing knives in action games that just feels so right? There’s a grim satisfaction in a one-shot kill, delivered via a flung knife, that cannot be matched by any firearm. Is it the ninja-style sneakiness? The effortless precision? I can’t pin it down.)

--but if you’re like me, and I know I am, you’ll spend most of your time kicking people in the head. As both Kusanagi and Batou, when you finish somebody with a melee attack, they’ll end their hit string with a slow-motion haymaker or roundhouse kick, punching the unfortunate hitee several feet backward. Moral bonus points are, of course, awarded if the mook you just whacked goes flying off a tall building or into the harbor. Kusanagi can pick up a stun module, which adds an electric backfist to her melee arsenal.

To get around obstacles, you can also hack computers or people via a remote connection. This’ll allow you to take control of an enemy for a very short period of time, anywhere from five seconds to a full minute, which is usually just long enough to ruin somebody else’s day or throw your ride screaming off a balcony.

…you know, thinking about it, there’s a real “throw some other guy off a tall building” theme going on here. I’m not sure if it’s the way I’m playing it or the way it’s designed. It’s probably the former.

Kusanagi and Batou’s job is to investigate a case that begins when they disrupt a shipment of illegal weapons, and trace it back to a storage facility, where a group of armed terrorists are willing to kill and die to protect some bizarre cargo. This, in turn, leads them to an ostensibly abandoned autonomous facility in Japan, where the plot continues to thicken.

The terrorists in question consist of your usual interchangeable mooks, armed with the latest weapons and quite capable of punching your ticket unless you’re very careful. Snipers are a particular worry, as their military rifles can kill your character in one hit, but several men with spark grenades or assault weapons can mow you down in seconds, despite both characters’ superhuman levels of durability.

There’s more margin for error in Stand Alone Complex than in a lot of recent third-person shooters, but it’s decidedly more realistic than most anime games. You’re a posthuman cyborg, but you aren’t really bulletproof, and should you lose sight of that, there’s usually a squad of robots with chainguns around the next corner who’ll happily remind you. You’ll have to adapt your tactics accordingly, blending Kusanagi’s acrobatics and agility with running, gunning, and the occasional attempt to sneak up on someone despite clanking when you walk.

Stand Alone Complex’s look is sort of a quasi-realistic spin on the movies and series; the angular long-bodied panty-flashing designs of Masamune Shirow have inexplicably been transformed into something that wouldn’t look entirely out of place in a Splinter Cell game. It’s not a photorealistic look, but it does come closer than you’d expect an anime license to get. It works pretty well, especially when the game starts flickering back and forth from pixellated computer screens to gritty blue-and-white sniper scopes and so on.

It’s kind of a given that fans of the series will want to check out Stand Alone Complex, because Ghost in the Shell is like a religion to some of those people. A scary religion.

If you’re not a fan, though, you should still check it out. You don’t have to have seen Ghost in the Shell to play or understand Stand Alone Complex, though it’d probably help, and the core of the gameplay is fast-paced, challenging, over the top shooter action with style to spare.