Confidential Mission
Score: 80% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Sega Developer: Hitmaker Media: GD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Shooter
Graphics & Sound: The graphics in Confidential Mission are not bad. They are nothing stellar either, but they surely get the job done, and fairly well at that. This is very House of the Dead stuff we are talking about. Some of the levels do have a good bit of detail to them, but its not like you'll have much time to be looking around. The characters are fair, but nothing memorable. The voiceovers are pure cheese, however. Very stiff and sometimes laughable, indeed. Not 'All Your Base are Belong to Us' bad, but pretty goofy. Sound effects are good and get the point across. Again, nothing spectacular, but then you don't play a shooter for its aureal quality, do you?
Gameplay: You play it for the gameplay, right? And Confidential Mission is fun. Its a good little shooter, and coming in at around 20 US dollars, you can't beat it. There are 3 Missions to progress through in the arcade conversion, and each is quite lengthy. Much like Zombie Revenge and the like, if you die and you have used all your Continues, that's it. You can save your 'progress', meaning your high score, however. There is also a comprehensive training area called Agent Academy and it contains some 30 different levels and this adds a lot of extra gameplay to the game, as well as Another World which is a modified version of the standard Mission Mode. 1 to 2 players can join in on this one, so there's more than enough good stuff to keep you busy here.
Difficulty: The difficulty is pretty middle of the road. Some parts you'll be blazing through (no pun intended) and others will kick your tail. There are branching paths that you'll encounter, and if you accomplish your task, you take the easier path. 'Failure' results in a tougher road ahead. There are also lots of little extras for the completists out there. You'll receive bonus points for the more precise Justice shots and tougher Combo shots, so depending on how deep you want to get, the game offers many different choices. All in all, I'd say the difficulty in Confidential Mission is at a good level.
Game Mechanics: Your best bet is to use a light gun with this one as using a standard controller is just not fun. With the light gun, its trigger to shoot and shooting offscreen activiates your reload. That's pretty much all you need to know. This one is an aim and shoot game all the way. Confidential Mission only uses 3 memory blocks and has decent load times, so you can spend your time playing and not waiting. Overall, Confidential Mission is a good buy if you are a fan of the shooter genre. Its budget priced at around 20 US dollars and jam-packed with plenty of trigger-pumping action. If you liked Zombie Revenge and House of the Dead, you'll get into Confidential Mission. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.
-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins
Blue Stinger Resident Evil Zero