Point Blank DS - Review

Light gun games in the arcades are timeless classic. Grasping a plastic rendition of a fire arm and shooting away at on screen targets can help sharpen those hand eye coordination skills and reaction time but really we play them because they’re good entertainment. Unfortunately videogame arcades are dying breed these days but one game I vividly remember pumping heaps of dollar coins into a few years ago was Point Blank. Most likely a game that you won’t see at the few remaining arcades nowadays but back in its prime it was a popular title both as a single player and as a co-op. I discovered this game sitting in the bargain bin at my local EB and I thought I would snap it up and enjoy some nostalgia. So how well did this arcade classic do when it made its transition over to the Nintendo Dual Screen? Read on to find out.

Upon loading up the game you are presented with an option/game selection screen that is represented as island with buildings sprouting from it. Each one of these buildings represents a game option and is selected via touching the lower DS screen.
Free Play mode allows you to select any stage at will and have a play so this is basically a practice mode to allow players to familiarize them selves with the various stages.
Arcade mode allows you take part in the game’s adaption of the arcade original. There are four difficulty levels to choose, practice, beginner, advanced and insane all of which have you aiming for top score across groups of four randomly generated stages which you get to select the in order you wish to play them in. Each group of four stages are separated with a bonus stage where you have a chance to earn extra lives, bonus points or absolutely nothing.
In both free play and arcade mode you are given a rating on how you perform after each stage. Hits, accuracy and quick shot is what you’ll be rated on along with a total score for that stage which will be saved in the games internal memory if you rank high enough.
Game Museum is basically an added bonus where a handful of old arcade classic light gun games can be played in the same manner as the traditional Point Blank stages. Shooting clay targets and crabs are among the few available.
Brain Massage has a bit of brain training feel to it because of how it scores you after completing a set number of stages. A number of stages are grouped together in a categories, eagle eye, mental focus, shoot to survive etc, with even more categories available if you can unlock them. Once you complete a category the game tallies up your score in accuracy, judgement, reaction, precision, attention and overall, then tags you with a name depending on how well you did.
VS mode lets you play against a friend with another DS unit. Unfortunately I never got around to exploring this option so I can’t give you much information on this.
Options doesn’t give you many options as you think it would with the only thing you can do here is to erase save game data.
So that’s basically what the game is constructed of. Your main goal though out the game is to achieve high scores and try to beat them again the next time you play with a few unlockable categories to work for.

When a light game makes the transition from the arcade to another platform usually a gun is supplied or the gamin system’s official gun is compatible but in the DS versions case it’s certainly not practical to be pointing a plastic gun at the screen and shooting targets. So the obvious decision to utilize the DS touch screen interface was used. Tapping the lower screen with the DS stylus is how you shoot at targets. This control system works fine but it takes so much of the game’s original feel away it actually makes the game quite repetitive. Just simply tapping the screen doesn’t have the original excitement factor it had in the arcades and takes away a lot of the hand eye coordination skill that was previously needed to achieve high scores. Add to this the close proximity of the screen and you have your self a pretty easy game. To be fair though I do understand that the only other control system they could have used was to manually move a set of cross hairs around the screen then press a button to eliminate targets and that would have made the game completely frustrating.

Graphically the game wasn’t very impressive when it was in arcades with most targets being represented by a cardboard cut out that moved on rails, or toon like animation that compromised of only the bare minimum of animated frames placed over simplistic backdrops. No textured mapped polygons or special lighting effects here just enough detail for the player to establish what they are shooting at. The DS port is virtually spot on to the original though so full credit given there for that. Same goes for the games audio, all the quirky stage and menu music is all the same affair. The gun sound, exploding targets and the squealing noise of creatures being shot are all the same as the original but they do sound a little weaker mainly due to the low powered speakers built into the DS unit.

I now know why this game was tossed into the bargain bin as there’s not much in the game to keep you playing for extended periods of time or to keep you coming back for more. Point Black was a great game when it was in the arcades and basically it should have stayed there as it looses too much of its original feel when the gun has been taken away. Namco Bandai games did make a good effort in the conversion but wasn’t given the correct tools. Overall the game is a fairly decent time killer and can be easily picked up on the fly for a quick game but it will no doubt be gathering dust not long after purchase.

Overall Rating 6/10