Water Gun Battle (Go Vacation) – Impressions

I’ve been playing quite a lot of Go Vacation on Wii. It’s a great way to relax, which i’ve been needing lately; the game is very calm and features a lot of fun mini-games with quite a bit of work put into them. The scope is so huge that a review wouldn’t be enough to give an accurate impression of this game – there’s that many different methods of control and presentation. So instead of doing a boring wholesome review, here I’m going to talk about one of the fifty mini-games, Water Gun Battle, in the first of at least one writeup for Go Vacation.

Water Gun Battle is an extremely fun third person shooter that uses the Wii Remote to aim and the Nunchuck to move. The controls are fluid (get it?) and responsive and the game takes advantage of the fact that it’s on Wii. The water flowing from the gun doesn’t act like a bullet with a straight trajectory; it has its own arch and doesn’t travel as fast. It feels like you’re peeing, although not quite as satisfying and reloading is a lot quicker. Like most Wii shooters, you turn simply by aiming at the sides of the screen, but it happens quite slowly her; there’s a restriction on how fast you can turn. This means if you get hit from behind you’ll be in quite a bit of trouble. Sometimes I wish there was a punch button for situations like this, but that wouldn’t be in the spirit of KaWaWii Island. It can be frustrating, but it also makes the game more intense, and puts a strong emphasis on sneaking up behind opponents. The ruins level is good for this, as the walls are high and you can’t see the entire level. There’s no radar either, so there’s some good opportunities to make your rivals wet themselves as you wet them. The other two levels have lower obstacles and less cover, allowing you to hit opponents from almost anywhere if you’re crafty enough with your angles. Sometimes its fun to just spaz out and aim really high, watching the water go all over the place and your opponents take a few small hits. Not a very effective battle strategy, but at least you’ll hit something.

There’s two modes: one is a basic free for all with 4 players, the other is score attack where it’s one player against a never-ending onslaught of people with much lower health bars than you, and quite a bit dumber – much like Resident Evil Mercenaries, except scary, and with multiple save files. On top of tackling multiple enemies at once in different directions, there’s an additional risk / reward factor in going for combos. You get extra points for every person you knock down without recharging your gun (done by “pumping” the nunchuck). This can leave you exposed at the end of a combo if you get too greedy; it’s quite exhilarating running around with your water gun 11% filled. If you get surrounded then you’re in big trouble. It’s refreshing to see a combo system that actually makes the gameplay approach different. When you need to reload in a pinch, you can do a quick roll with the nunchuck in search for some cover.

Despite being only 2% of the content to enjoy on KaWaWii Island, and only having three stages, I’ve spent a good few hours on this. It’s so good I’d love to see it fleshed out into its own game one day, with a single player campaign, online multiplayer, the works. It’s a good concept and a very fun game, and stands as one of the highlights of Go Vacation, and a good reason to check it out.