Review: Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand (GBA)

"The Sun is in your hand" is the subtitle of Konami's inventive vampire-hunting game; and if you were to glance around at your fellow commuters on any given morning journey, you'd probably see what they're getting at. However Gamestyle suggests an alternative to London's most popular tabloid for passing away those minutes of traveling, in the form of Boktai - Hideo Kojima's shining example of handheld gaming innovation.

Unfortunately, innovation alone does not a good game make. For any new idea or inventive implementation, there always remains the risk of sacrificing function; letting ambition cloud reason, and ultimately making the consumer feel let down. Boktai is an example of this very situation.

Protagonist Django has been given the task of ridding the world of evil; vampires, ghouls, golems and all manner of things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. His weapon - the Sun; your weapon - a very strict playing schedule.

The uniquely oversized Boktai 'Game Pak' has a light sensor on its flat edge, which cannot be fooled or foiled. It responds only to direct sunlight and (alongside the built-in realtime clock) affects the game world accordingly. Standing Django in the sunlight allows you to charge your weapon (the 'Solar Gun') which is your only means of damaging the hoards of evil nasties.

Structurally, Boktai is doing nothing new and it even borrows quite heavily from Kojima's other works as well as action adventure titles like Zelda. There's the obligatory stealth element, the various block and treasure chest puzzles that pave the way to each dungeon's boss - powerful dark creatures within the gloomiest depths of their abode. Defeating them will entomb them within their coffin, which must then be pulled (physically dragged) from the heart of each dungeon and out into the sunlight to be 'purified'.

As you open up each new area, you go through progressively harder dungeons, interspersed with smaller mini-dungeons which can be skipped through again when already cleared once. Indeed, the game regularly ensures that if you need to do some backtracking, you don't repeat too much of what you've already done, with warp points to cut corners and a helpful companion called Otenko (messenger of the Sun) as a guide and tutor.

The in-game items that heal and replenish your various energy bars can be combined and grown with the help of the Solar Tree, which - along with many other elements in the game - is charged and fed through continual exposure to sunlight.

It's a conceptually sound idea - a fantastic one at that; however due to the necessity to be in direct sunlight, it can be extremely frustrating to be outside on a beautifully sunny day, and still have a completely empty Solar Gauge due to standing near a building or a tree, or being next to a window (they seem to filter out most of the Sun's strength). That, plus it gives the Vampires a kind of 'Buffy-like' attribute, rather than a 'Dracula-like' one (i.e. they can survive the daylight, as long as it's cloudy!).

The thing is, it wouldn't have taken much gameplay balancing to get something that functioned far better; the majority of the dungeons can be tackled without any sunlight whatsoever (they're inside, occasionally allowing the sun to shine in through square ceiling openings) and much of the game is merely made 'more difficult' by the absence of light, but occasionally the game gets it hideously wrong by forcing an essential sunlight requirement onto you (you cannot administer the finishing blow [the Pile Driver] to any boss unless it is daytime and sunny), and due to the linear nature of the game when you get stuck without light, you're stuck completely... until the Sun rises again.

When something as trivial (and alarmingly external) as the player's lifestyle, location of residence or position of their house categorically prevents their progress through the game, something is very wrong indeed. It's especially apparent how damning it is that the hardware was not altered for sensitivity of light levels now that it has arrived in Europe; a simple adjustment to detect low-level ambient or indirect sunlight would surely not have been such a problem to implement? Instead it seems the answer was to wait for the Summer to arrive, (explaining the huge delay for the PAL version?) and let the hot weather make it at least half-playable, most of the time.

It seems rather unfair to be so harsh, especially seeing as it's quite possible to play this game without any problems whatsoever and thoroughly enjoy it for the solid, inventive adventure game that it is. Cleverly, when it is dark, the game's dungeons enforce a much stealthier approach as the safest way to proceed. When you have no light to power your gun, you can only avoid confrontation or risk depleting your stock of solar energy. Using various upgrades you find along your adventure, you can augment your Solar Gun and produce different results - for example, a different 'frame' may produce a stun function that freezes enemies, or a more powerful wave beam to destroy them. The different lenses can either store solar energy or fire it; you can even get a 'Lunar' lens which, although deals no physical damage to enemies, can still push them away when you are totally stuck without power. Larger batteries will increase the amount of light your gun can hold, and you can even acquire Solar Grenades which - just as they sound - are very useful consumable attack weapons.

In spite of this, it is still a matter of too much demand. Boktai is simply not quite good enough to demand such harsh scheduling of the player. Whilst there is nothing crucially wrong with the mechanics of play, the slightly fiddly shooting, movement and action selection of Django can begin to grate over time (especially with the more rigid D-pad of the GBA:SP, and even more so when you're trying to angle the sensor to face the sky), and the structure is fairly repetitive throughout. The presentation is stunning, however, and the graphics stylised and 'sketchy', complete with some excellent sound effects and voice-overs to accompany them. And then there is the characterisation, which - although simple - has definite hints of Metal Gear Solid to it... even some of the dialogue has familiar undertones.

When Boktai shines, it shines brightly; a beacon of innovation to be held aloft for others to follow in its ideals. But the trouble is it doesn't always shine (the game or the weather) and the result is a rather limited and gimmicky appeal, which could have been so easily forged into something essential. We applaud the innovation; we even revel in most aspects of its implementation, but sometimes a game just takes things a bit too far.

Rating: 7 / 10

Words by Daniel James