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#Simple2000


So recently, Hilltop released a translation patch for a PS2 game called THE Maid Uniform & Machinegun. It's a low-budget game, from a long series of miscellaneous low-budget PS2 games called the Simple 2000 Series. The Simple 2000 Series was also where the first Earth Defense Force game was made, so that should give you an idea of what kind of games were being made there.

I decided to finally pick up Maid & Machine Gun today, and played through most of the game. While I would love to be the kind of person who goes "everybody needs to play THE Maid Uniform & Machine Gun right now," honestly I found the game itself... pretty okay. It's a low-budget PS2 action game that very much feels like a low-budget PS2 action game.

I might have been missing something, but the entire counter & combo system in the game didn't feel very good to me at all. Spamming the machine gun button is the easiest way to get through a fight, but also the least efficient. It's a game that feels like it wants to be a fancy character action game, but just isn't there. I was able to get to the final(?) boss rush in about an hour though, so it's certainly not a game that wastes your time.

It's kind of neat, but I wish there was more there. Even if just more time-traveling maid shenanigans.



Now with an unofficial translation, this wacky time traveling robo-maid adventure is here! It's a bit of a clunky game, with aggressive lock on firing, a melee attack that requires you to be standing completely still, and a dodge counter that feels pretty unintuitive, but you can probably clear the game in under a couple hours so it doesn't overstay its welcome. There's also a fair amount of variety; among its eight stages there's a sniper level, and an on-rails level to break things up. You'd expect a clunky action game to be difficult but weirdly most of the game's enemies feel like they can't do anything to you until the final boss, and there's a reason for this, which I'll get into in a little bit.

The dodge counter system is very strange. You need to press the triangle button right as an enemy's attack reaches you, and if successful, the maid will do a pirouette. If you quickly press square as she's spinning, she'll warp to the attacker, whip out a submachine gun and autofire at her target. Thing is, if you press triangle in any other situation, it does nothing at all so you might not even be aware it has a use. This is a game where you absolutely should look over the manual that comes bundled with the English patch because the game will not explain anything to you!

So you've dodged with triangle, and countered with square, cool. You took no damage but actually the reason you want to do this is that the submachine gun doesn't cost bullets to fire, allowing you to conserve ammo. Remaining ammunition is one of the ways the game grades your score, so if you want to afford even a single upgrade over the course of the entire game you'll need to get used to it quickly.

Waiting around for an enemy to attack so you can save ammo sounds annoying, but they kinda have you covered with this ridiculous ability mapped to R3 called Maid Style, which makes you taunt the enemies (?) letting you mash triangle during the animation in hopes that you'll pull off a dodge. The amount of successful Maid Style dodges you pull off in a level also contributes to your score. According to the manual, you need to do five in a level to S rank that category.

So I think that the general difficulty of the game is so low because they expect you to learn how to dodge counter aggressively, meaning lots of missed inputs, taking lots of hits from enemies. The side effect of it being so easy though is that I just kinda plowed through most levels with the sword attacks, occasionally shooting trickier enemies. I could not afford a single upgrade, nor did I unlock anything, but the biggest drawback is not being prepared for the final boss.

It's three fights back to back and by now they really expect you to know the dodge counter. The difficulty spike is real. Now, the dodge counter isn't the difference between a good score and a bad one. You won't have enough ammo to beat these fights, and I don't think the clunky sword is gonna bail you out of that problem. My strategy was to conserve ammo on phase one, be a bit more liberal on phase two, and spam the L2+R2 bazooka special move for all it's worth in phase three.

Overall it's a neat little game. I think its brevity makes it an easy enough recommendation even if there are far better action games out there. It has a miraculously self-contained time travel plot and no filler at all. The patch was created by Hilltop and his team, and you can find it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/74280694