Sin and Punishment: Star Successor does one thing well and one thing only, hectic arcade shooting. No really, that is the only thing it does well. This is a game that fails so completely in every other area, sporting shitty graphics, a horrible story, and truly horrendous voice acting, and yet still manages to be very playable when all is said and done. It’s a testament to how much gameplay actually matters in the world of video games which gives me hope for the future, even if every other aspect of this game is far more depressing than I would like to mention. I’m a critic though, so away I go.

Let’s start with the good, the gameplay. Star Successor is basically a rail shooter, except you can actually see your character on screen. It’s your job to move that character around in 3-D space, dodging your opponent’s projectiles, while shooting up everything you see. I would say that it is a 3-D version of a bullet hell shooter, but there simply isn’t enough bullets to make it qualify. Entire stages are filled with enemies that are more accurately described as lambs to the slaughter, and your main goal is to shoot them all to get the highest score possible. Boss encounters, on the other hand, fit the bullet hell mold quite nicely, and you will find yourself deftly dodging around entire screens filled with energy blasts and bombs. Sometimes you will encounter five bosses all in one level, each with multiple forms, each practically dwarfing your character in terms of size, so it doesn’t take a genius to see that the boss encounters are the big draw to this game.

The game is best controlled with the Wiimote, with the pointer controlling your cursor and the nunchuck controlling your character, although you can hook up any other controller (including classic or gamecube controller) and control the game in a more traditional method. Basically, you hold down the fire button as if your life depended on it and never let go. Sometimes you’ll wait to charge up a blast or tap the button to strike with your melee attack, but these situations are few and far between. You quick dodge with the Z button and lock-on with the A button and sometimes you get to pick up stuff like life and power-ups but besides that it’s a simple formula. All you have to do is shoot the enemy and avoid getting shot yourself.

The stages are what make the game so special. One stage has you rocketing through a tunnel of air suspended in the middle of the ocean. Get to close to the sides and you plunge into the water, muting your sound and blurring your vision. Another stage shifts the view to 2-D and has you playing the game in a style more reminiscent of a classic shoot ‘em up. Still more stages have you on vehicles, bounding from platform to platform, diving down what seems to be an endless pit while fighting against a giant turtle, and much much more. Long story short, it is damn fun. A second player can join in the game but they are nothing more than a phantom cursor that has no melee attack, charge attack, or character on screen. There are two protagonists to this game, so you think we should have been able to control them both at once.

Now as much as the gameplay, stages, and boss battle are genius (seriously who would have thought to script a fight against a shape shifting oil dolphin that smacks bombs at you with its tail … it’s BP all over again) like I said before, every other aspect of the game falls short of anything appearing to be competent. The game looks horrible, absolutely horrible. I would say it looks something like a PS2 game but it’s even worse than that. Textures are pixilated, the main character’s faces barely move, and the lips of your enemies are glued into place on what appears to be a flat polygonal mask. It’s embarrassing for this gaming generation. Of course when you are fighting a giant turtle, the sheer scale of it seems to make the graphical problems fade to the background, but when you sit through story sequences you really see the game’s flaws. At least we never experience slowdown.

Speaking of story sequences HOLY HELL! The script is so bad in this game … SO BAD! As far as I can tell your main character Isa is escorting a strangely amnesiac immortal girl Kachi out of an apocalyptic Japan while mutants try to kill them all. I don’t know, I started skipping the story sequences after the 4th cutscene where Isa explains to Kachi that all humans have 2 eyes, a nose, a mouth, 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 ears, and SHUT THE HELL UP THIS SCENE LASTS FOREVER!!! The script is not only horrible, but the voice actors make it even worse. There is no affect to their voices whatsoever. God it’s like they paid some guy behind a dumpster to do all the voice acting. The music is nothing to write home about either. Like I said before, the ONLY thing this game has going for it is the gameplay.

Is it worth buying? Well, that is kind of hard to say. It’s worth playing, that’s for damn sure, so you might as well rent it once if you have a Wii. However, the game lasts maybe 6 hours at most, and although there is a bit of replay value in trying to work your way up the online leaderboards, it’s not necessarily enough to warrant everyone purchasing a copy. Do check this game out, and if it hooks you, buy a disk. It’s the ultimate rental, which does say something for game quality, but there is not much beyond that.

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