Games of the Abstract: Silent Scope (1999)

 

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

One Player

Arcade Version

 

Considering the type of firearms replicated in plastic arcade cabinet form - pistol, shotgun, rifle, Uzi, big machine guns with enough recoil built in for potential strain on the hands - a sniper rifle is not a surprise. This game and most of its franchise were released for the Playstation 2, the Dreamcast and the original Xbox, with even a Game Boy Advance version of the first game inexplicably existing for the handheld console. This review will stick however entirely with the arcade version, as there is a huge difference, whilst I am glad someone converted it for the consoles, in having to hold a plastic sniper rifle, thankfully something foreign to most English people. Having accidentally eaten the hand grip constantly trying to focus, breath in, and take shots as an amateur for an arcade cabinet is a curious experience in itself even next to other light gun shooters.

Silent Scope also follows the fascinating trope of Japanese video game developers clearly watching a lot of American action films and, in depicting North America, exaggerating the films and the iconography to an extreme. The broadness of Hollywood's films, filtered by another culture, has a lot to answer for in how broad and over-the-top these games could be, here with the President of the United States, alongside the First Lady and First Daughter, being kidnapped by terrorists. Here, one sniper is a bad enough dude to rescue the president. The sniper rifle on the cabinet itself, for obvious reasons, is the biggest touch of the game, how onscreen you have the target move when you position to rifle fixed on the cabinet, with the potential to be able to snipe dots in the distance. The true point of the game though, and idiosyncratic touch the console ports had to work a method around, is that like an actual sniper rifle, you have a viewfinder which stays at a fixed distance allows you to see the targets as far away on a skyscraper in the distance.

Not wishing to turn this review into a grim point we cannot take this out from, for what is a review of a silly and fun arcade game, I admit there were moments of weirdness in even latching onto a plastic replica of what would be a very powerful weapon in real life, something which is telling in how, in Germany, Silent Scope is on the list of games not allowed to be sold to minors by the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors (the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien or BPjM)¹. Admittedly, many games are on this list, such as F.E.A.R. (2005), or the original Doom, alongside many light gun games, so the list is not really one which suggests this is transgressive. That merely emphasises, just in an entire list of games in Germany, of how violence in games is perceived in that country in general, nestled in a list that lasts into the 2020s with entries added. Silent Scope, for the brief uncomfortable moments I admit to feeling, is also very cartoonish, as broad and over-the-top as you can be.

Whilst Silent Scope offers a challenge eventually that goes against the practical uses of a sniper rifle in real life, it does, even for a cartoonish representation, push you to something more realistic than a plastic handgun in just the emphasis on focusing on targets in little time to act. It presents a fascinating dynamic of how, especially as this as the first game quickly gets into moving targets, you still have to position shots. The game's mechanics are even found in how, for a huge risk for a game originally designed to ingest player's coins, you can barring one boss, take out bosses with multiple health chunks with just a single head shot even on the first attempt. You can also snipe a helicopter boss with one shot to the rotor, emphasising the cheese on display, but this even in itself was a risk in how, for a game which you will be thrown into scenarios with many enemies to take out, this could cut swathes through large set pieces. It also, with credit with the developers, ends up showing respect to the player however to get better; even after just a second attempt at the game, an amateur like myself could figure out this trick, and improve my coordination. The goons in general fall just from clipping their hands, and the challenge is instead between the time limit to clear each section or that, if the enemies have you in their sights or become aware of you, they will shoot back. That the game, with a secret code even for the arcade version, allowed you to even remove the target you use emphasises this being developed to get the challenge to grow each time a player returned to it.

You will have your work cut out, especially as having to target enemies in the far distance does require hasty focus, the last major stage involving fighting in a mansion in the dark, having to use the scope for night vision unless you notice a shiny light or jacket in a glimmer. One additional aspect which has aged, but comes off far less problematic than other games from the time, is how if you catch a beautiful woman in the scope, you get a life back. This is pure cheesecake, as they do not even have to be in a bikini or in skimpy clothing, and is more of an aspect of a different time. Obviously, with this a method to help the player, bystanders and hostages, whilst they cannot die (barring one stage's exception) proves an obstacle you lose a life on if you clip one.

The exception I mentioned, and where this will prove a task, is if you select to go to the sports stadium. Silent Scope has three major moments where you can choose how the narrative plays out, even if they all go to the same final stage. The third, selecting elevators in the mansion, is less an issue than the first two. They change the difficulty, how the second either allows you to trek through the woods in the dark, or the really hellish challenge of parachuting into enemy territory. The first is the most dynamic of choices. You can fight a fighter plane, or you can rescue the First Lady on the roof of skyscraper, circling it in a helicopter and firing at a rocket launcher welding grunt, or you can see the ridiculous if hard challenge in the stadium. The last is probably one of the more memorable moments in spite of the challenge, as early into Silent Scope the games introduces moving targets, here where a villain has the First Daughter over his shoulder, running around the pitch during an American football game with players chasing after him. If you cannot hit him in the head, or enough time, it moves onto a boss chase with that villain you can access in other modes, and also leads to rescuing the First Lady in an alternative boss battle in a hotel, but the stadium is funny as a concept. Yes, sadly hitting the football players does actually leave casualties that are more permanent, so this challenge has an additional edge alongside grunts firing back if you spot you.

The sense of absurdity, an American action film which is more openly cartoonish, is found throughout the game such as having to fire at a man attempting to drive a truck at you, thankfully contrasting that aforementioned ill-ease with having held and used a plastic sniper rifle even as an arcade peripheral. The game's cartoonish tone contrasts its violence by portraying it with an absurdity, particularly as the challenge of the game, trying to play as a light gun game with a rifle not designed for rapid fire, is over-the-top. Arguably the hardest moment in the game, the actual final boss, cements the lack of reality as well as feel frankly a mean difficulty curve in itself, where you find yourself fighting Marina, a metal armour BDSM woman with razor claws in a dock warehouse. She, with a headshot only possible after three hits, and only the bared breast bone which can be hit, is from a harder game, Marina feeling a mean challenge even after having to hit search lights on a parachute or following a running target weave about on a football pitch. Her first round is trying to catch a twirling, skipping and frolicking sadist who takes lives like a kinky Wolverine. This is the one moment Silent Scope does feel like the coin devourer it was designed for. Thankfully, the second half of the boss fight is easier and more amusingly over-the-top, where she fits the bill in seductively stroking the tied-up president, even cavorting around him like a stripper pole whilst firing at you.

The actual "final" boss begins a troupe of Silent Scope as a franchise of one bullet, one shot challenges, explicitly in this case one headshot and nothing else being acceptable. In this case, [Huge Spoiler] hitting a random white suit wearing megalomaniac on his yacht far away before he sets off a bomb, whilst he just monologues too long, [Spoiler Ends] felt befitting the tone of the game. The franchise would continue on for three sequels, including the console conversations, leading to a long gap from Silent Scope 3 (2002) to Silent Scope: Bone-Eater (2014), the only Silent Scope game never taken to consoles. This took a significant step into a different aesthetic, when Silent Scope as a 1999 game is realistic for the time, by having an anime aesthetic. Set in a sci-fi future, aspects definitely show of appealing to a certain audience, with its female cast in very heightened and fetishishtic outfits, but considering the male lead is also a youthful lead who proves sci-fi body armour is sexy regardless of your orientation, Konami placed their hopes on multiple audiences being attracted to the arcade cabinet. Whilst developed by tri-Ace, as a 2010s game you always have the reservations that the decade was when Konami became villains for many, or at least messed up their franchises in misguided directions, such as cancelling a Silent Hill sequel involving Hideo Kojima, but commissioning a pachinko machine instead. The original Silent Scope, from far before this, is a fun game. The conversions would be fascinating to witness, but for those lucky enough to locate an arcade cabinet, it is unique.

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1) Rather than just one link, here are two, one here for a Web Archive page for a Cybercafe Software list; the other Moby Game's list of BPJM indexed games from the time Silent Scope was added.