auriga platform

Or: how morbid curiosity killed the me.

You'd imagine that a lightgun game wherein you shoot “Ecstasy Shots” at high school girls to overwhelm them with “euphoria” would be high up on the list of creepy taboo R18+ hentai games or something but as it turns out, for the most part, Gal*Gun Double Peace is only one or two steps above the Carry On franchise for its bawdiness. I've always been averse to going near this franchise as you'd well imagine; on the face of it the entire concept makes one uncomfortable from the get go with rash, but admittedly fair assumptions. So let's take a look at what I've learned of the game from playing through it for a bit.

Lesson 1: It's not as inherently creepy as you'd think.

I won't lie. The first thing that comes to my head whenever I think about this franchise is Jeff Gerstmann from Giant Bomb playing it, acting up a pervert character as we view him alone in a room in black and white, a caption on screen letting us know it's the “Creeper Cam”.

But, thankfully, once you get into the game the actual base gameplay is pretty standard lightgun business; it's just that the zombies or army lads or what have you are instead girls. They act almost exactly the same as regular enemies too, including grabbing you and giving you a smooch. If anything, the only genuinely “creepy” (read: more just, outwardly horny than anything) parts are the minigames and what the game terms “Doki Doki Mode”.

DDM is an entirely optional mechanic of the game. You activate it once youve filled up a meter in the top left, select one or more of the girls on screen and then the lot of you are whisked away into a pink void wherein you proceed to poke and prod at said girls as if you're Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star in order to make them, well, perform the titular Double Peace ahegao sign. The fact that this is completely optional and only exists as a mild form of crowd control as well as a way to earn more points in game makes its existence more tolerable but honestly you have to also remember that this is a bawdy horny game and not a horny horny game; there's no explicit business going on here.

The minigames meanwhile are largely just “shoot away this particular floating icon and then poke at a specific spot (literally called “The Spot” and heart shaped, which is just hilariously dumb) to proceed. These minigames are framed around plot related scenarios which seem to range from “attempting to pull your friend out after they somehow got stuck in the worlds tiniest window” and “surviving the same friend being corrupted by a demon and consequently getting turned into a foot focused dominatrix”. Yeah, as I said, it's a couple levels above Carry On. We're well past “Ooh, Matron” and firmly in “Bloody hell, Matron, calm down a bit” territory.

But again, these segments are the worst it seems to get. For the most part you're just shooting girl shaped enemies and then enjoying a small bit of a visual novel. The third part that one may read as very uncomfortable is the mechanic of zooming in to get the girls measurements. Now then, dropping this suddenly out of nowhere will probably cause a worse reaction, I admit, but honestly I'm not one to defend this part. It's a bit uncomfortable for me (especially since zooming in allows the player to see their underwear) but largely the gameplay makes doing this absurdly difficult anyway and on top of that its completely optional for the sake of filling out profiles on the girls that you don't even need to look at, ever.

Lesson 1.5: No seriously it's not as bad as you'd think

Just to reaffirm, I got absolutely nothing out of the horny aspects of this game. Nada. Nothin. Zilch. Downstairs was just relaxing having a fuckin beach vacation the entire time. Anime girls aren't my thing, especially not ones in high school. I'm stating this now because I also want to mention that describing the gameplay mechanics in detail like this make it sound far worse than it actually is. My reactions to this games more horny parts ranged from “...is that it?” to grimacing from being uncomfortable in general; which is largely because I find random lewd inclusions in video games to be awkward as hell, not helped by the fact that I'm grey-asexual. Anyway, moving on.

Lesson 2: Waistlines are ghostly apparitions that only exist when they feel like it

Not to be going back on my word but I did of course attempt to partake in all the game mechanics where I could for the sake of getting a fair opinion on it because I dislike judging things without fully experiencing said thing in question. So, with regards to the measurement mechanic, I have to question why in the fuck all of these girls seem to have a waistline that makes up approximately 1-5 pixels worth of their entire body. Seriously, it's nigh impossible to find it and hilariously so.

Lesson 3: Girls can and WILL kill you forcefully with the power of love

From the kiss of death to repeatedly giving you papercuts with a card in an envelope to just straight up punching you. It's kind of bizarre considering the set up for the game is “your guy got shot with a high power cupid arrow and now all the girls are in love with him” only for the game to start and all the girls proceed to attempt to kill him. If anything, it ends up teaching you possibly one of the best life lessons of all: ignore any and all romance stuff until you're out of high school because it fucking sucks otherwise.

Lesson 4: The writing is....ehhh, fine.

Looking at online reviews for this game turns up one of two common opinions: “The writing is satirical of tropes for these kinds of games and its hilarious” and “This writing isn't remotely satirical and it's just bad”. I find myself falling right in the middle on this one. It definitely has it's moments, that much is true (I appreciated the games mild self awareness with acknowledging that your protag is a “total creepozoid” for example.) But overall it reads very much like standard romance novel writing, complete with the classic but very tired-to-the-point-it-needs-to-fuck-off-already trope of “you're lame if you have no romantic/sexual interests”. Maybe it gets deeper or better the more routes you complete, but just doing the one was more than enough for me because...

Lesson 5: The game doesn't understand what makes for a good lightgun game.

Don't get me wrong Gal*Gun lovers, the gameplay is perfectly fine. I'm talking very specifically about the camera movement. It's fucking atrocious. The damn thing swings around constantly so much that your cursor actively has trouble keeping up with it and it makes aiming at literally anything far harder than it has any reason to be. Pair this up with the fact that the game wants you to be finding and grabbing any and all collectibles you find in the levels (most of which you can only see by zooming in, which makes the cursor slower) and the entire thing rapidly becomes a lesson in frustration. I've never played a lightgun game where the protag's head shifts about so much before and I'm not sure I want to do so ever again.

Lesson 6: You can't date a girl unless you make her orgasm?

The game puts you in a failstate nonstandard game over if you don't make your chosen partner's affection hit 100% and consequently make her pull the signature Double Peace sign. Which just raises all sorts of questions that I'm not sure I'm prepared to ask or think about. Someone take this game to sex ed please.

Lesson 7: Despite being okay with talking about lewd things with close friends, I continue to find myself embarressed for even thinking about playing this game, much less being caught actually playing it.

It's curious, really. For as much as I just said how it's not really anywhere near as bad as you'd think it is overall and most of it is just “egh, no ta” grade material, I still find myself actively making sure that I'm not seen playing it. To the point that I refused to even pick it up on Steam. It's very curious, but I suppose the base assumptions one makes about the game from its concept and screenshots does lead to the ol' kneejerk reactions by default and that consequently contributes to it being looked down upon by default. I suppose one could also make a connection to the weird stigmata around being openly horny in private in general as well even though this game is barely horny at the end of the day. IDK, my reaction here is very much a big ol' shrug before moving on.

Lesson 8: Someone sent a letter in to a blog mentioning how they're a lesbian and how they love Gal*Gun for a variety of reasons and one of those theories was that your faceless protag was transmasculine because he apparently attends an all girls school and every character supports him in this except for whoever it is sending him to said school to begin with and to be honest it all checks out and fits in nicely with the established plot that I can't not think of it as canon

Yeah.

Lesson 9: Making this one the last one even though a round 10 would be better makes for a convenient exit out of the article because I'm bad at writing conclusions

In short, I'm glad I gave it a go. It corrected a lot of my assumptions about the game and franchise and also let me properly judge it for what it is. It was a fun experience ultimately, even though I didn't completely enjoy the game itself. And honestly, having only played through one route, I would be lying if I said I wasn't curious about what happened on some of the other routes (which includes dating the angel that shot you with the love arrows to begin with which simply reads “I Don't Know”.) It also makes me realize I should probably take more time to write articles like this for fun, even though I don't have access to easy image posting anymore due to not having pro on this platform anymore. Oh well, I'll figure something out eventually. Until then, see yous later.

Lesson 10 – Addendum: After finishing this article up I remembered a couple things I wanted to mention

Lesson 10A: This game has some damn respectable worldbuilding

Whilst, yes, the game doesn't ever stray far outside the high school setting, it's not to say it doesn't go all in for grounding it vaguely in reality to stop it flying completely off the rails (ignoring the fact that Shinobu pulls out a fucking rocket launcher in her boss fight.) Specifically, I'm talking about the fact that the game takes extra effort to give every single girl you see in the game a unique appearance, name, profile and voice. All of em. To the point that you can actually start memorizing appearances and where their weak spot is. It's honestly a surprising thing to see especially considering the rest of the game! I can't get enough of stuff like this, personally.

Lesson 10B: The game is far more enjoyable when you ignore most of the mechanics and just play it like a regular lightgun game

This should probably come as no surprise considering my core complaints with the gameplay above were specifically aimed at the additional mechanics the game introduces such as the zoom and collectibles. But going through another route just now and ignoring all the other stuff and playing it like a regular House of the Dead Horny type lightgun title makes for a considerably more fun and enjoyable casual experience. Shame. Anyway, that's it.