Anime Expo 2016: ‘Gal Gun: Double Peace’ Is The Most Japanese Game I’ve Ever Played
When you’re at Anime Expo, you expect to come across some weird stuff considering you’re surrounded by all things Japan. Knowing this, I was confident that I found the most Japanese game I would ever hope to play early into the first day. If you have your doubts about such a bold statement, imagine a rail shooter where your targets are an army of Japanese school girls who are desperately in love with you. And you can see through their clothes when zooming in. And headshots are replaced with a bullet to the boobs or vag.
Yep, that’s Gal Gun: Double Peace in its purest form. As the sequel to the original Gal Gun, which was released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, was shockingly never released outside of Japan. Proving that there is still good in the world, that’s changing with this PS4 and PS Vita sequel. As far as I could tell from my brief demo, the girls are being controlled by demons that are forcing them to attack you with their love, and it’s up to you to shoot them down with your pheromone bullets to help them come to their senses. That’s right, even in a game such as this, the girls have to be coerced into paying attention to you. Being the hero that you are, no breast will be untouched as you save your school from this menace.
Beneath all of the absurd content, there’s some solid gameplay to be discovered. Believe it or not, the game is developed by Inti Creates, the team behind classics such as the Mega Man Zero series. Searching the environment for hidden demons and passports give you extra points and more insight on your classmates, while pulling off a series of one hit kills gives you huge bonus points for that coveted end of stage rank. Once your special meter fills up enough, you’ll be able to use a special attack that rounds up as many girls as you can fit on your screen and sits them down in compromising positions, while you rub and poke the evil out of them by finding their favorite spots. It’s for their own good, you see.
Double Peace isn’t all about shooting though. Sometimes, you’ll have to give your clumsy friends a helping hand. One example showed your friend try to look out of a window, but ended up getting stuck when she bent over and stuck her body outside of it. You’ll naturally want to get her out of that position in the quickest way possible, so what do you do? Open the window further? Push it upwards to give her a little more space? No, you’ll obviously stand behind her, grab both of her hips, and proceed to push and pull her until she’s able to pop out of her predicament. Using the PS4 controller’s touch pad to simulate pulling her by sliding your thumbs up and down the sides, I can honestly say that’s a first in my many years of gaming. And yes, this game is completely self aware, which is obvious since the game actually has a command to blank the screen out and replace it with a fake 8-bit RPG. Yeah, that’s right. The game has a panic button to hide your screen in case someone walks into the room. But hey, your character is a girl! Does that make it better or worse?
When I walked away from Double Peace, I knew that nothing at AX would be as shameless as the time I spent with the game. And yet, given how ridiculous the game was from start to finish, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. In a completely unironic way, I can’t wait to see how much more absurd the final game can get, which is why I’m suddenly finding Gal Gun on my radar.
Gal Gun: Double Peace is scheduled for a July 19 release.
