El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron preview: No problem
When I playedEl Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron at last year's Tokyo Game Show, I was told I was playing a toned-down demo version, the difficulty mellowed to allow the public to make its way through the demo.
That was not the case in the version shown during GDC this week. In fact, my avatar Enoch got his ass -- well-appointed in limited-edition Edwin jeans -- handed to him. But as he says in the event of his (near) defeat, "It's okay. No problem."%Gallery-118277%
What hasn't changed since TGS is the pure visual weirdosity. No game looks like El Shaddai, and none is likely to try to in the near future. The first level I played was a sort of sumi-e inspired area, with a swirling background that blended perfectly into the floor, solid black pits dotting the landscape, and occasional pearlescent oases. Sometimes, a giant hand-drawn face would appear in the sky and blow wind across the screen.
This super-abstract presentation occasionally led to problems. It can be hard to tell which dark circle is a bottomless pit and which is a harmless puddle. Enoch won't walk straight off the side of a pit, but he will certainly jump down into one.
The enemies included three types of monstrous thugs, each carrying a weapon of some kind -- a sword item, two shields, or a projectile weapon. After sufficient beating, Enoch can steal the weapon, "purifying" it. He'll need to purify the weapon again by pressing a shoulder button after periodic use (or just steal a new one), so that it keeps damaging enemies.
Each of these items opens up not only new attacks, but alters Enoch's movement. For example, the "Gale" projectile weapon (which fires homing shots in response to button presses and holds) enables Enoch to dash and air dash across great distances; while the shield item makes him heavier, weighing down his jumps into hops. The projectile weapon is super weak, of course, but that's the trade off for being able to cover a lot of distance very quickly with it. And, like everything else, it looks really cool. Laser beams just kind of swirl around directing themselves into nearby enemies.
The addition of these weapons makes El Shaddai's combat system surprisingly complex for a game with only one attack button. All the combos are based on rhythm or timing -- tap, tap, tap, tap will execute a different combo than tap ... (pause) ... tap, tap, tap, for instance. In the TGS demo, I wasn't able to get a sense of the nuances of this system, because the enemies died too quickly, but now that the difficulty's been cranked, it seems that the team has done something really interesting. The combat is easy to understand, but still skill-based and varied.
I'm still not sure about the whole El Shaddai "thing" -- a hardcore action game with pretty boys (one of whom is the devil) and outrageously abstract visuals could either appeal to everybody or nobody. Ignition intends to extend its marketing of the game to casual players and women, which is a bit unusual for the genre. But it might actually work! At least this weirdness is all predicated on what appears to be, actually, a good game.
