Most guys have fantasized one way or another with the idea of being irresistible to women, to be unable to walk three steps without some cute girl trying to get close to you and declared her undying affection towards him. Gal*Gun: Double Peace teaches us to be careful with what we wish for, because it what seems to be a blessing may be a curse in disguise. In this peculiar on-rails shooting game, this is precisely what happens to the protagonist, Houdai, a regular Joe with some inclination towards perversion, that happened to be in the crosshairs of archetypic clumsy angel trainee Ekoro, who, distracted by the mischievous behaviour of a demon, accidentally shot a fully charged love dose to poor Houdai. Now, instead of making his true love fall in love with him, it is all the girls around him who are inevitably attracted to him in the most sexually kawaii fashion. What’s the catch you ask? If Houdai fails to find his true love in the next 24 hours, he will be unfortunate in his love life for all eternity and will be unable to find his true love. Now, this student must traverse throughout the girl-infested premises of the school and parts of the city shooting pheromones towards their erogenous zones in order to stop this curse from ruining his future. Now, that is a weird sentence.

The game itself does not add much to the on-rails shooting genre; to be fair, it actually may be a rather bleak entry in terms of gameplay. With the help of a circular reticule, the player must shoot pheromones to the girls to take them down. As mentioned above, some girls respond better to a certain part of their body, which amounts to some sort of headshot or 1HKO. Being quick while finding this spot is rewarded with a bonus too. Speaking of bonus, there is also some sort of minigame called doki-doki mode. While shooting girls, a bar will fill progressively, and faster if you are efficient in your pheromone shooting extravaganza, once the meter reaches its maximum level, it will trigger the mini game sequence in which, instead of shooting girls, you will rub and caress several points of the girl’s or girls’ anatomies so they can climax in a very adorable way. That is another sentence I wasn’t expecting to write today. The only real improvement in terms of difficulty, aside from the naturally expected boss battles is the addition of possessed women, who are under the influence of roach-like demons you must first target before subduing the girl in question.

In terms of replayability, the game does offer a couple different endings, six to be precise, alternative routes, easter eggs, collectibles and a class system that one must learn by means of trial and error, because of the lack of any real explanation of how it works and how it impacts gameplay and the outcome of your storyline. Nevertheless, the game is short to begin with, around 2-3 hours per playthrough, and a solid 15 hours siting in order to finish the whole ordeal.

The PlayStation 4 version of the game is almost identical in every aspect to the original Vita experience except for the critical optimization made for the console. What were minutes long loading times are now seconds, and the frame rate drops (to 25 in some cases in the Vita version) are now non-existent. Although, to be honest, the game does not excel in the graphic department, to the point that it may as well be a game running on a PS3 or even a PS2. Audio isn’t a strong point either. Not only in-game dialogue is irrelevant, with the majority of the phrases spoken by attacking females are a variation of “I love you”, but the game is not dubbed to its western release. At least story relevant cutscenes are subbed, otherwise, it would be very hard for most to understand what is going on in an already confusing game.

To its advantage, Gal*Gun does offer a variety of game modes, including score attack, campaign and dressing room, so regardless if you are in for meta-gaming trying to beat your best scores or just for the fun of playing dress-up with the various models of girls in the game, it has something to offer to you. As one could expect, this game does not offer online gaming as it is thought as a solo experience and, let’s be honest, that is not a game you want other to play with you or even to know you are playing.

The game is aimed to be kinky, let’s scratch that out of the way so we can judge it by what it is. Not only it allows you to pet girls in suggestive poses with various camera angles as rewards for doing it effectively, but it also allows zooming in with transparency effects in the girls’ clothing, and yes, one of the bosses is a tentacle monster, because of course it is. All that kinky stuff aside, the game does not manage to hold up by itself. A genre that depends so heavily on peripherals feels weird when you take that part of the fun away. The Vita version allowed touch functionalities, whereas the PS4 does not, which makes it even weirder to play. Imagine playing Duck Hunt in the NES but without the Zapper and with a thumbstick, it just feels wrong.

Overall, the game is fun within its own niche because of the humour it achieves and the unusual theme. Some may find it attractive, but those who are not that into anime and/or kawaii endeavours might find this game as a superfluous note on a well-defined genre that, frankly, belongs in an arcade room.