New Standard in Shmups – Sin and Punishment: Star Successor Review

A Shump is a 2-d shoot em up video game, personally one of my favorite genres cause I though I was good at these types of games until the new Star Successor for the Wii dropped a couple of weeks ago.

First off,  this game is not for everyone, if you aint a hardcore gamer just stop reading this. Alright those normals are gone lets get to the meat….

Sin and Punishment is an aptly named title. I just beat it on easy, and it was beatable but I cant wait to tackle the harder settings. It utilizes the Wii controls to make for  gameplay that makes sense, even though the story does not, at all. In fact if you can explain the bullshit story that is going on please email me, I would like a clue.

Back to the gameplay, awesome. You use the Wii mote to point, shoot and slash. The nunchuk is used to move around your character. It is sort of like Panzer Dragoon minus the Dragon. There are 2 characters to choose from, they only differ in their “special shot” The dude has a special shot that cause collateral damage to enemies in the vicinity of his blast, the robo-chick(I think she is a robot) has a special shot which targets multiple enemies at once to take them out.   There is an auto lock system that works real well but by the end of the game I was hardly using it, that is until I had to face the bosses in this gem of a game which I will get into in a minute.

There is a lot of movement on the screen, A LOT. If you dont like pretty lights and constant flashes mixed with and old school 80′s techno arcade soundtrack than this is not the game for you.

There is so much action in this game, at times you get overwhelmed with the amount of things that are out their to shoot. After ever level they upload your score to on online leaderboard, don’t judge yourself based on the leaderboard that will only make you depressed. Instead focus on how amazing this game is, there are always news strategies and specific angles on how to defeat an area which makes this game so addictive, oh and the boss battles!!!

Boss Battles is where its at. This is the heart and soul of this game. During each level there will be either a multiple boss battle during the level or just a main boss at the end of the level. Although some of these boss battles are challenging, frustrating and down right insane they are also FUN. It is defiantly a gamers game, constantly restarting boss battles brings me back to the 8 bit days where all you wanted to do is figure out how to beat this boss before mom unplugs the Nintendo, luckily in Star Successor you can literally save the game ANYWHERE. Thats right you can pause and save at any point in this game, which is rare in the Shump genre.

Things I didn’t like about the game. The graphics aren’t amazing, but they work, it has an old school feel to it but some might think its dated. Even though the gameplay and controls are GREAT I did get super frustrated with the target locking system, it might be that I just haven’t mastered on how to use it properly, but then again you don’t have to use the target locking system at all, until you get to a boss that is. And the story is very Japanese meaning I have no fucking clue what is going on, some advise use that skip button, its all nonsense. The game is also short, but these games are always short.

Did I mention that the makers of Ikaruga are behind this title?

Anyways this game is certainly not made for everyone but exposing yourself to new things is what the video gaming is all about. They have twisted a classic genre and pushed the limits to some other world on Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. Buy it, you will not be disappointed.

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