Game Title: Gal Gun Double Peace
Developer: IntiCreates, PQube
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.3 GB
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download (August 2, 2016)
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Over the course of the web site, I don’t think I’ve played many games that started out showing the Unreal Engine logo for a handheld game. Sure, maybe some of them have used the engine, but I don’t think many have actually shown the logo right when you boot the game up. That’s a lot of games, too. What you’re reading right now is the site’s 400th review!

Getting back on topic, though, I played a game this week that smacked the Unreal Engine logo first when the game booted up. It was a shooting game, too, so that’s sure to bring at least a little bit of hype for the PS Vita community. Not so much for the PSTV community, though, since it isn’t compatible.

Then, the fact settles in that the game in question isn’t really in league with games like Call of Duty or Halo. It’s more of an anime fan’s game. Actually, let me rephrase that as more “lewd” anime fan’s game, as you’ll inevitably find out in a moment. Here is my review of the Vita version of Gal Gun: Double Peace!

Story

New-age cupids now call Goddesses on phones

Do you remember episodes of various anime where the main character got put under some magic potion or spell that caused every girl around him to be incredibly attracted to him and needing to hug, grope, kiss, and all around confess their undying love for him? If you do, this game’s story is just like that sort of episode style.

In Gal Gun, an Angel is sent to Earth to help a guy in high school find his true love as part of her own “exams” on becoming a fully-fledged Cupid. What ends up happening, though, is that her rendition of the Cupid Arrows is overcharged with full power, making him so attractive that literally every girl in the area obsessively attracted to him and reduces his overall attractiveness in the long term, meaning that he has 24 hours to accept the love of a girl or he will never be capable of receiving love for the rest of his life.

My opinion of the story didn’t really change from start to finish. I feel that this type of story is great for one episode of an anime, but not an entire series. The fact that this covers an entire game feels a little stretched. While each path does offer a lot of character background for the MC and the possible girls to couple with him, it felt like there just wasn’t enough depth to it.

Gameplay

This is a pretty typical battle.  Fighting girls out in the open and the shy ones hiding behind lockers

Gal Gun is like a wacky mix of a rail-shooter and a dating simulator. Each playable stage and boss is in a first-person shooting fashion on-rails (meaning you don’t have free movement) and between these segments, you have scenes, dialogue choices to affect affection levels, and mini-games that will also increase your Affection with a certain girl.

When you first boot up the game, you have several game modes to choose from. Story lets you play the game’s Story Mode. Score Attack lets you just go through a stage in shooting-mode for high scores. Collection lets you look at game data and character information you’ve found in the game through hidden items in each stage. Dressing Room lets you dress up any of the girls in the game with costumes you’ve found. Options lets you change game settings. Game Sharing allows you to upload your save data to the PlayStation Network.

Moving through the game In Story Mode is in the form of stages and character paths. When you reach a certain story point, you choose who you “love”, and that sends you down a specific story path geared towards winning the love of the girl you’ve chosen. At the start, you only have “canon” scenarios in the form of 2 girls that the Main Character grew up with. But, once you beat the game, more paths become available to you for replays. Along with that, each character path has several endings, like Bad, Good, and True endings.

This is where you can choose which story path to take

Once this is chosen, you go between Rail-Shooting Stages and Story areas each time you go through story progression. You also have a shop between stages for items to help you or add to a different story path.

The Rail stages are where you have your shooting elements. You move through 3D areas with enemies running towards you, attacking your with objects in their hands or what they say in the form of flying kanji. Your task is to shoot them down to be able to make them pass out and “defeat” them. You can do this either by shooting or by going into a special “Doki Doki” mode with energy gained from defeating past enemies, allowing you to do touch mini-games to cause large explosions that can take out many enemies all at once. These also change your stats for dialogue choices.

Once you get through a stage, you’ll be passed along to story events where you will interact with the girl of your chosen path and be able to choose dialogue choices for situations and increase your affection level with them, which directly affects which ending you’ll get. The higher the affection level, the better the ending.

Doing well for feathers is very important for one character path

After each stage, you’re rewarded with MP used for reviving if you die during a stage and “Angel Points” that are used as currency in the game’s shop.

Now let’s talk about this game’s level of “fan service”. When you play this game, you’re going to have hordes of schoolgirls assaulting you with love confessions and love letters. Your only resistance is to shoot them up with pheromone bullets until they pass out from the emotional thrill. And all of the mini-games mostly involve rubbing their bodies in choice locations Like their face, chest, ankles, hips, butt, etc to essentially cause them pleasure and make them more attracted to you.

Then, with certain scenes and the “demon energy” enemies, you have some very specific fetish fan service in how they act. By specific, I mean that the game programs ways of acting, moving, etc in such a way that it is clear and very apparent fan service bits for people with a couple very specific sexual fantasy types (If you want specifics, they are the typical “Tentacle Porn” for Japan and there is a pretty decent amount of material that screams out to the Foot Fetish community). These are somewhat at a minimum and aren’t as blatant in story as in games like Senran Kagura Estival Versus, but they’re definitely there, so there’s a fan service factor you should think on before purchasing.

Yeah, I don’t even need to explain what’s going on here.  Fanservice

So, how does this all come together? The shooting elements work surprisingly well in the game, and you’re even scored on typical rail-shooter elements, from accuracy to how long it took to take down the enemies in the stage. The balancing between dating and shooting elements also offers a pretty balanced experience that doesn’t get repetitive over a single play-through.

Speaking of, the game isn’t an incredibly long one. One run through the story will probably take you about 4 hours, given story scene time as well as all of the combat and boss fights you’ll have to go through. After you beat the game, you unlock new paths to go through which in turn unlock further paths. So, 4 hours to beat it once, and more on top of that if you want to see different endings and different story paths. If you really enjoy it, it ends up piling up that time.

Controls

First off, the game is not compatible with the PlayStation TV, mostly due to how heavily and quickly the touch screen is used in some of the mini-games. Even with the Dual Shock 4 Touchpad, it’d be hard to keep up with the time limitations on these mini-games while using the PSTV.

The D-Pad doesn’t do anything outside of menus, while the Left Analog moves your cursor during gameplay as does the Right Analog Stick. The L and R triggers are used for zooming during combat which in turn will reveal hidden enemies and items used in Gallery and Dressing Room modes. X and Circle don’t really do anything outside of menus. But Square is used for firing off bullets and Triangle can initiate Doki Doki Mode.

The rest is handled with the touch screen, which does have some exclusive features. Choosing paths to go down is done with touch, as it moving the camera during boss-level enemy hordes and almost everything in the mini-games.

Presentation

I had to choose this because she’s just so cute when she smiles

Visually, the game deserves props. The 3D renders are done really well and sometimes it’s hard to tell when something is an active render as opposed to a 3D render made for a visual novel-style scene. That’s how well it all flows together.

There are a couple things that need some work, though: Load Times and Frame-Rate. The loading sequences can get pretty long. Sometimes, loading a stage or even the game itself when it first starts can take a good 30+ seconds to do. It makes waiting around get a little tedious. And the frame-rate drops whenever the camera moves while enemies are on-screen or when a large number of enemies are on-screen. It can mess up your shooting a fair bit.