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Weapon of Choice Review for Xbox 360

Weapon of Choice Review for Xbox 360

Run and Gun Returns

Combine the 2-D run-and-gun gameplay of Contra, the double-joystick shooting of Geometry Wars, and the hyper-masculine ethos of Gears of War, and what do you get? Something truly disturbing: Weapon of Choice, one of the most violent and captivating games to come to the Xbox 360’s download service. There’s no way to tell it’s an Xbox Live Community title, rather than a full-fledged, Microsoft-vetted Xbox Live Arcade entry, and it’s easily worth the 400 point ($5) asking price.

Weapon of Choice screenshot

Instead of progressing through the game in a linear series of levels, you choose from a total of four different paths. Whenever you begin playing, you’ll be launched to your mission’s start point, and first, most players will, by instinct, run off to the right and start killing stuff. You’re fighting off an invasion by an alien race, and a fork in the road soon confronts you: you can do what your human military commander tells you, or you can obey the advice of another alien race purportedly trying to help you. Once you’ve played those two paths, you can try running to the left at the game’s outset to find two more endings (to which you’ll be chaperoned by the mysterious hologram Agent Axon).

Each play-through takes only about 15 or 20 minutes once you get the hang of it, but it doesn’t take much time to realize how innovative this game is. For one, the controls are brilliant. You’ll move your character with the left joystick and shoot in all directions with the right, an intuitive system that served Geometry Wars well and feels just as natural in this completely different setting. The left trigger jumps, which takes a little getting used to but becomes second nature quickly. The right trigger switches your gun’s mode of fire, and the right bumper switches to a secondary weapon. That’s pretty much it.

Weapon of Choice screenshot

Also, there are plenty of minor but clever tweaks to the basic Contra gameplay model. One is that instead of a fixed stock of “lives,” you have a number of “operatives” to play as until all are dead. Each has a unique weapon (weapon of choice, get it?), a standard gun that’s good for long-ranged shots, and a special way of double-jumping. The unique weapons shoot lots of fun contraptions, ranging from what appears to be a long string of chainsaws to little robots that in turn fire lasers (which you can aim with the right stick, concentrating multiple beams on a single enemy). The special double-jumps are a lot less useful, but sometimes help in tight spots, if usually by accident. Each character also has a “Spiderpack” that automatically grabs hold of nearby surfaces (sometimes when you’d rather it didn’t), enabling you to climb walls and walk on ceilings.

You start the game with very few operatives available; the rest are MIA and awaiting rescue at various points in the game, for a total of seven. When you find a downed operative, you can carry him to the end of the level, thus unlocking him for use and in effect increasing the number of “lives” you have (both in the current game and subsequent ones). Similarly, when you get hit, you can use the next operative to pick up the one that took damage, and if you make it to the end of the level (which will usually require surviving an epic boss battle), you’ll start the next with all your operatives again.

Weapon of Choice screenshot

Another tweak, called Death Brushing, significantly mitigates the run-and-gun genre’s notorious difficulty; you won’t need (or, so far as we know, find) a 99-lives code here. Whenever you get perilously close to an enemy, the background goes black, and an ominous skull appears. The action goes into slow-motion, and your character gains a little speed relative to the alien enemies. By running away from the danger and firing toward it, more often than not you can avoid taking the one hit needed to down your operative.

When Death Brushing fails, your next operative arrives in an explosive rocket you can aim (the “Vengeance Missile”). This is great for dealing a little extra damage to bosses, or even just to take bloody revenge on whatever creature took out your favorite character.

Weapon of Choice screenshot

Thanks to these rockets and Death Brushing, this game is pretty manageable in terms of difficulty. It took us a little work to get the hang of the game and complete the first path we chose, and it’s a little tricky trying to find the final path on the left, but on the lower difficulty setting, we beat the other two on the first try. This is a bit easy for a setting called “normal” that the developers dub “a good challenge.” However, those looking for a tougher time can try the higher difficulty (“more aliens, higher octane!”), and within each of the four paths to unique endings, there are multiple routes to take, some harder than others. Therefore, pretty much anyone can play Weapon of Choice in a way that’s as difficult or as easy as they’d like.

As if all this didn’t do enough to push the run-and-gun genre into the next generation, Weapon of Choice comes with a truly polished presentation. The developers call the art style “Colored Penxil,” which aptly describes the beautiful, hand-drawn environments, huge bosses (often bigger than the screen), and loads of multicolored alien blood spatter. Each environment has multiple layers, depicted with a parallax-scrolling effect that gives off a bit of a Super Mario World vibe.

The soundtrack is a marvel as well, with killer thrash-metal guitar riffing serving as a background to all this slaughter, courtesy of composer Hamdija Ajanovic. The audio effects dish up all the pew-pews and splats you’d want from a game like this. The story won’t win a Pulitzer for fiction, but it handles the four subplots well, offers some nice twists and turns, and showcases tight and typo-free writing.

In short, run-and-gun fans have been waiting a long time for Weapon of Choice. It fires the genre into the next generation with a decisive, gruesome, well-produced blast, and if there’s a flaw here, it’s that there should be more of this game to conquer and take sick pleasure from. We’re eagerly awaiting a sequel, or whatever’s next from Mommy’s Best Games. In the meantime, it’s a treasure trove of fresh ideas, and other developers should take note.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.7 Graphics
A great-looking game with a unique, hand-drawn art style; multilayered, parallax-scrolled environments; and huge, daunting bosses. 5.0 Control
This game brings the Geometry Wars two-joystick configuration to the run-and-gun genre, with great results. 4.8 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Awesome metal guitar tracks and well-done sound effects. 3.7 Play Value
This is a blast to play through, but it only takes a few hours to get all four endings on both difficulties. Once you’ve done that, there’s no real reason to go back, though it remains a fun way to kill time. 4.5 Overall Rating – Must Buy
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Third Place in Microsoft’s Dream Build Play 2008.
  • Branching levels leading to four unique endings.
  • Seven characters, each with a weapon of choice. Rescue them to add to the total number of playable lives.
  • Cheat death with Death Brushing, an opportunity to get out of a tight spot.
  • Rock out to original, blistering metal guitar tracks.
  • Reap revenge with a Vengeance Missile.
  • Scale walls with your automated Spiderpack.

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