Game review: Black Rock Shooter The Game for PSP/PS Vita
Yes, this is an older game, but I just finished it, and it’s a part of Sony’s online store, where you can buy it for either the PSP or the PS Vita. One of the great things about reviewing the way I do is that I’m not in a rush to finish stuff in a week after release to give people a quick score. Whether it’s books, games, or music, I only review what I feel like trying, and however long it takes me to finish doesn’t matter, because I’m not in a hurry.
So, having known about the history of Black Rock Shooter’s main character, but never seeing the anime, I’m not one to reliably say if the game’s story is in any way faithful to the anime. What I can say is that the game’s story is bleak as fuck. Like the end of Evangelion bleak. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I just want to get this out of the way for people who prefer their stories to be a bit more positive. But whether you get the good or bad ending, the final result is that there’s only one or two people left on Earth, and the scenes during and after the credits don’t do much to change the bleakness. This is the kind of game where you win a battle, and someone still dies horribly anyway. Nothing you do will change this, so it’s all a bit hopeless to plod through.
The main character is Stella, a clone with enhanced strength created by the failing remains of the human race in the wake of an “alien invasion.” I use quotes because there’s actually only 8 aliens, and the rest of their army is made up of blocky robots. Aside from the boss battles, you’ll be fighting these robots with Stella, and the mech designs range from laughable to vaguely intimidating if they weren’t so blocky.
The bosses are all dressed in anime fetish outfits, making one wonder if they intimately studied Japanese tentacle porn before making the decision to wipe out every last living thing on our planet. Which might explain a lot about their desire to erase all life on the planet as well as their crappy clothing styles.
And the humans left over…well let’s just say I didn’t miss them much when they got wasted. In the third stage, the guys (only 10 dudes survived the invasion) discover a woman may be alive in Moscow, and they race across the planet for a mission for “humanity’s last hope.” They do this all the while standing behind Stella as their combat shield, and never once acknowledging that she too might be capable of having kids in a few years’ time. You’d think they’d be more interested in protecting her, but she’s “just a clone,” which I guess makes her inferior as breeding stock.
That’s what makes the guys kinda disturbing. Until much later in the game, the men treat Stella more like their own combat robot than a person, and while they would never think of her in any sexual way, they DID dress her in a combat jacket zipped down to the stomach to show off her bra, knee-high boots, and no pants. Sure, standard issued battle clothing for women in video games, but it does come of as creepy at times.
By this point, you must be thinking, “So Zoe, you hated the game, right?” Well, no, I disliked the story and the side characters. But I rather liked the game. I suppose a lot of this has to do with the combat system, which is very different from anything I’ve played before.
The game’s stages are linear corridors where you use the left stick or the D-pad to move around until you encounter a robot or a boss. Then the game shifts to a fixed battlefield where Stella stands on one side, and her robot or alien enemies stand on the other. You control Stella using the left stick to aim a targeting recticle and the four face buttons and the shoulder buttons to shoot a massive machine gun, dodge attacks, or block them with an energy shield. All these moves make Stella heat up, and if she overheats, you have to sit still and take attacks from the enemy without recourse.
There is an item accessed in the item menu with the left shoulder button called Body Cooler that can treat this problem on the fly, but more useful are the four customizable options given to you by using the face buttons with the right shoulder button. These can be buffs, heals, or special attacks, and in all cases, they don’t generate heat. There’s a catch in that they all take time to cool down in their own way, much like magic attacks in RPGs. As you beat certain challenges, you’ll be given more options for what you can use, but you’re limited to only four options during combat. And for me, this is what makes the game a blast. It’s completing a challenge to unlock some new attack or buff, and then playing a few rounds to see what the new weapon or buff is like.
My current configuration has Stella freezing enemies with a “G-1 Stun Snipe” so I can hit them with a pulse cannon, a war hammer, and finish them off with a slash from my Iksa katana. I just unlocked the Volcane, a massive upgrade for my Vulcan cannon, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet. The few times I did use it, it certainly looked badass.
There were some driving sequences that take Stella to battle robots on the busted highways, but I didn’t care much for these sections. You have to time your dodges of enemies to the last second, at which point Stella whips out her sword and slashes the bots as she passes them. If you screw this up, the robots kamikaze dive the bike, and after it takes enough hits, you crash. The latter two stages set up like this were exercises in frustration for me, much like the water sliding sections of Uncharted: Golden Abyss. In fact, trying to get past the third driving stage made me put down the game for a while because it pissed me off. Obviously, I came back to it and got around this sticking point, and I’m glad I did, because the rest of the boss battles make up for this less desirable portion of the game.
In addition to fighting the robots, you also face off against the alien bosses at the end of each stage. It’s the same battle setup as fighting the robots, but the bosses take a bit more strategy to defeat. Beating the bosses also unlocks Free Hunt mode, allowing you to play the stage over without the story bits, and with some extra challenges thrown in to unlock art or movies in the gallery, or other costumes. Normally, I’d say this is just for completionists, but I actually prefer playing this way. Then I don’t have to keep skipping cut-scenes I’ve already seen a number of times. I just get on with the game to unlock more stuff.
So, what we have is a game that I adore for the game play, but I’m not real hot on the story. I’m not saying it’s a bad story. It’s just bleak and kind of creepy. And if I’M saying it’s creepy, considering some of the stuff I write, you know it’s got to be working that creep factor harder than a trench-coated dude fondling stuffed toys on a playground park bench.
As this is a game made for PSP, the graphics aren’t so great, but the music is pretty good, and there aren’t that many games I can recall where the controls and combat feel unique. The boss fights are challenging without being insanely hard, always ending with a climactic camera swooping duel where you rapidly tap the X button to overpower the aliens and then slash them with Stella’s sword or shoot them with her ridiculously massive rifle. I did find a couple boss moves cheap enough to lose my temper, but they weren’t so bad that I’d never want to play them again. And Free Hunt makes the levels more bearable by not killing someone off right after you win. Seriously, that “you win, but you still lose” premise is kinda depressing.
All told, I give Black Rock Shooter The Game three stars. I’m glad I picked it up on a whim, and I can see playing it over from the start, something I don’t often say about most games. If you’ve got a PS Vita and were looking for something to play that’s different, give this a chance.
