👧🔫 Gal*Gun Returns | Review | Nintendo Switch | "A Light Gun Would Light This Up" 👧🔫 @PQubeAsia #GalGun

Whilst I’m not familiar with the Gal*Gun series, my initial thought was that any rail-shooter that is to be controlled by anything other than a light gun would really suffer in the gameplay department and those worries were indeed well-founded. 

As well-presented as the game is, it feels to tame to be titillating and too repetitive to be engaging.

Accidentally shot by a beginner cupid, your character (a high-schooler, natch) suddenly becomes irresistible to the opposite sex and, as he attempts to seduce one of a selection of women (all of whom are immune to his newfound powers), he makes his way through the school and surrounding grounds constantly shooting a pheromone gun at girls to keep them away from his sexy visage.

The initial quirkiness of the setup and the strange mechanic of shooting at teenage girls who are madly in love with my character quickly gave way to bizarre tedium. 

Whilst the music is jaunty and light, combined with smooth animation and clean, crisp anime visuals, the pretty bland locations you walk around whilst hammering the button to shoot pheromones at approaching girls (with the occasional ‘ecstasy shot’) gets old fast. 

There are two to three of these sequences in-between the narrative-heavy parts where you make basic dialogue choices to further the relationship with the current girl that you are pursuing and these often lead to the more interesting parts of the game whereby it takes more of a mini-game approach such as watching a concert and shooting raising BOO’s to change them to YEAH’s. 

These moments call to mind the king of light gun games, Point Blank and offer up much-needed variety in the gameplay and at least present a challenge not really found in the other parts of the game.

The problem is that rail shooters just aren’t fun when you are controlling them with a thumb-stick and everything else included here, the sections of the game where you can unlock and re-dress girls to your liking and the seemingly meaningless points and many stats feel like window-dressing on a fundamentally flawed setup. 

Gal*Gun Returns was originally released on the XBOX 360 back in 2011 (Japan-only) and to be honest, I can’t recall if there was even a light gun accessory for that system at all so in order for a re-release to be warranted on a system that again does not have a light-gun accessory means that I’m assuming that there is a market for this genre that I’m just unaware of.