Silent Scope

Ah Konami! Everyone loves Konami! At least they ought to if they claim to have a love for videogames. They truly are one of gamings greatest publishers/developers, and when they announced they would be porting the highly successful arcade title Silent Scope onto the Dreamcast gamers the world over exhaled a collective sigh of relief because we knew Konami would score a direct hit (to keep it in sniper-speak.)
Silent Scope arrived on November 17th, 2000, which suprised me as I thought I remembered it as one of the Dreamcasts launch titles but a quick spot of research shows me to be mistaken.
Nevertheless I do recall the excitement I felt as previews and screenshots of the game appeared in magazines (internet wasn't so popular back then), and I vividly remember wanting to get my hands on it ASAP. It looked so cool.
Okay, what type of game is it? Its another on-rails shooter, this time putting the player in the shoes of a highly trained police sniper hunting down terrorists who have kidnapped the First Family. (First Family = the President of course.) Basically you go from one scenario to another picking off targets as they pop up in front of your sniper's scope.
In the arcades you literally had a rifle peripheal but on the Dreamcast version the zoom in screen was actually WITHIN the main screen. Very clever Konami. It works well too and zeroing in on targets is simple via a squeeze on the shoulder/trigger button or the B button. Brilliant!
As you would expect Silent Scope looks fantastic and is very faithful to its arcade counterpart, even down to when the sight scope cursor turns into a heart whenever you spy a sexy cartoon lady. Top marks there too.
In the Main Story (in Arcade mode) there are a number of different stages to complete; Downtown, Stadium, Highway, Hotel, Night Vision and Big Boss. Each one getting progessively more difficult, as well as having their own unique styles. I particularly love the Stadium stage where Cobra (bad guy) is carrying the President's hapless daughter across an American football pitch as you attempt to snipe him from a helicopter. Cool as you like.
Together with the main story in Arcade mode you also have both indoor and outdoor shooting ranges which are a nice plus.
Silent Scope is a fabulous game and still highly playable today. I love spending a few hours honing my shooting 'skills' with it and it has Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to compete with nowadays. Not bad for a game which is 10 years old!
The only downside is the paltry amount of other play modes on offer; two. Ranking, where you move up the ranks and the better Training Mode where you set a scene (Farm, River & Cave) and shoot wooden targets, careful not to plug an innocent civilian target that occasionaly pop up. I say this is the better of the two extra modes because of the variety of challenges on offer; Time Attack, Perfect Shot, Pop Up Targets and Quick Shot.
So eventhough I say the few extras are a downside, there really is a fair bit to them. I guess with the current climate of downloadable content available for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, im feeling the pinch of Silent Scopes limited extras. However thats certainly no fault of either the Dreamcast or Konami's game, the fault lies at my greedy chops because as ive said Silent Scope is an excellent shooter and a Must Have title for any serious Dreamcast enthusiast/gamer.
This usually goes for around the £7 mark but more often than not you can pick it up cheaper. I paid £4 for my copy which was rather nice. Love the game. 8/10

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