Review by: Michael Barnes

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is the unexpected, decade-late sequel to Treasure’s Nintendo 64 shooter Sin & Punishment, a cult classic that languished as an import-only title for seven years before appearing on the Virtual Console service. The good news is that S&P:SS brings forward all of the classic Treasure stylistic conceits without compromise and they have managed to blow the game’s predecessor out of the water with better controls and tighter gameplay. More than that, the core arcade-style design is quite literally as good as it gets for the genre. It’s a shooter for the ages, the kind of game that aficionados will be playing for many years to come, chasing elusive leaderboard rivals and striving to outperform past playthroughs.

From the freewheeling run-and-gun mayhem of Gunstar Heroes to the Manichean polarity-swapping of the divine Ikaruga, Treasure has routinely delivered some of the best and most challenging pure action games ever made. There is a sense throughout a Treasure game that the designers are confronting the player with a series of insurmountable challenges. Whether it’s a screen filled with hundreds of bullets or a multi-stage boss with thousands and thousands of hit points counting down like seconds at each on-target shot, the Treasure model hearkens back to classic arcade-style design qualities and skill-based gameplay.

Rather than rewarding the player with narrative progression, character development, or ephemeral achievements, the return on investment for weathering the almost rhythmic cadence of death, “Game Over” screens, and restarts emerges as not only a development of the player’s skill to withstand the game’s challenge but also a sense of accomplishment in passing through difficult sections, achieving higher scores, and the moment-to-moment thrill of survival against impossible odds.

More than that, the game is an innovative new take on the 2D arcade shooter that moves the manic “bullet hell” strain of the genre significantly into a 3D space. Rather than controlling an on-screen character moving and firing across a vertically or horizontally scrolling lateral plane, the action occurs with the player firing into a depth of field with elaborate bullet patterns, projectiles, beams, and other hitpoint-reducing matter flying directly at the player’s face. The perspective remains a fixed, over-the-shoulder view as players use the Wiimote effectively like a light gun to aim a targeting reticle and the nunchuck to maneuver the character around the screen either on the ground or in the air thanks to a jetpack or a hoverboard in some spectacular aerial battles.

Most observers would be quick to dismiss the game as another maligned rail shooter for a console that has a few too many as it is, but there is really something quite different going on here that I think longtime “shmup” fans will be duly impressed with. As in their previous games, specifically Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun, S&P:SS relies on a couple of evasion gimmicks and limited but flexible weapons that give the skilled player a slight edge over the thousands of bullets headed their way. In addition to a regular rapid fire attack, each of the two selectable characters also features a lock-on ability that reduces the volume of damage but increases accuracy. Each also has a unique charge shot. Isa Jo (the boy) fires a big, explosive projectile with a damaging blast radius while Kachi (the girl) has the ability to “paint” several targets with her lock-on reticle for a massive spray of ordinance.