El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron held my interest for months leading up to its release. With just a few screenshots filled with color and artistic direction, it captured my thoughts and had me incredibly excited to play it. It looked like it was designed to be the polar opposite of the bland modern shooter, a brawler that uses the play screen as a tapestry instead of just a way to convey game data. Now, having played it, I am amazed at the visuals it managed to show me, and utterly bored to tears by the game it put in front of me.
I really wanted to like
El Shaddai. I argued with myself about it for some time before I sat down in front of the computer to write this. I read interviews with the developers and looked up the stories that made up the game's narrative, all in hopes of telling myself that I was wrong to hate this game. I had to have been playing it in the wrong way, or focusing on the wrong things.
Whether my attention was on the wrong aspects of this game or not, it doesn't change the fact that the game itself is terrible. It's a straightforward brawler at its heart, with a single-button combat system. The way this works is that you press the button with a specific timing to do different attacks. Tapping and pausing executes a different attack than just hammering away at the buttons. It almost seems neat until you realize that every single other brawler does this as well, except throwing in a heavy and weak attack to the mix, so it's already far duller than
Bayonetta or
Knight's Contract. To spice things up a bit, they threw in three weapons you can steal from enemies, giving you a few more combat options. That's better, right?
The thing is, it's the equivalent of having to steal your heavy attack and long range attack every time you need it. If the enemies in the area don't have the attack you want to use, then too bad. Also, while dealing very little damage, the ranged shot is the obvious winner, since you can just jump in the air and spam shots until everything on the ground is dead. You might say that you're missing out on the fighting, but with only three enemies that have minor variations on their design, I don't think I'm losing much. If you did feel the need to stick with the melee weapons, all I have to say is that the shield is way, way too slow to hit almost anything, and the sword-arc is good, but its combos always leave you open to being hit. Always.
That's because combat on the ground is a tortuous thing. For one, every once in a while you have to either purify your weapon, which is essentially forcing you to reload a sword, or steal a new, clean one from enemies. It forces a bit of tactical thought on you, but my thoughts never steered farther than wondering who had the ranged weapon out of the group. Blocking adds another tactic, as you can execute a staggering block by defending at the last second, but it doesn't feel as intuitive as it did in
Bayonetta. Not that I didn't need to practice in that game to get good at it, but I still felt like there was a logical moment to block. In
El Shaddai, I always felt like that moment came too soon or too late to be natural.
On top of that, many of the bosses have attacks that are downright mystifying in how to defend against them. I know some of them are unblockable, but sometimes you had to do something weird just to avoid them at all. The first Nether boss was like that, where I had to jump toward him when he did his lunging and lifting attack. When I did that, it sort of froze him to the ground, locking him in his animation instead of avoiding him. I felt like I was breaking the game rather than doing what I was supposed to do.
When you aren't fighting, you're doing jumping areas, and while the fighting might be uninspired, the jumping is downright stupid. This game showcases a series of problems that weren't present since
Super Mario 64, with the camera spontaneously deciding to change position in mid-jump, altering where you need to be pushing toward to make your landing. It won't make you die, but it will send you back to the last checkpoint, which in some levels is quite a ways back. It won't take long for this to drive you nuts, as they've thrown in some decidedly Mario-like contraptions to have to move on, ones that need a steady camera to get by.
But you don't come to this game because of how it plays. If you were excited at all about this, it was because of how it looks. After all the wait, I can tell you that this game isn't disappointing in the slightest. From the first screens alone, the game has a sweeping, hand-painted look that is just amazing to look at. One moment that really grabbed me was in the second stage, when you walk through a dark world with trees blowing in the wind. They concentrated on making the motions look incredible with a waving splash of color symbolizing the leaves, and it really is something to see. Every background in the game seems to be experimenting with color and movement in game space, making each new area far more interesting than the game itself.
The only time game play and art really comes together is in the 2D sequences. In those, you are given huge backgrounds with your character only taking up a small amount of the screen. During them, you are treated to some of the nicest, and most varied, backgrounds in console gaming. When scaling one area, you move in front of what look like a gigantic stained-glass window covered in angels, and it is literally beautiful. Another area has a battle between two main characters done entirely in shadow behind you, and while it looked cool, it definitely wasn't as well done as the earlier places.
I can't express enough how different and striking this game looks, which makes me wish that I could actually recommend it to people. I want to show it to developers who have lost the feel that games should have a visual personality as well as a storyline. Unfortunately, I can't, as the game is just an absolute chore to play. I know there are a lot of artistic games out that that aren't exactly fun to play, being more concerned with their message than in core gameplay. In games like that, though, even the weak gameplay mechanics serve some purpose to the greater work, and even simple games like Don't Look Back (which I got heavily distracted by while writing this review) manage to make jumping easy and pleasant.
I know that some conflict had to be added to make this story into a game, and that the chosen story involved conflict, but it could have been conveyed in a way that was at least kind of entertaining. I know the main focus of this work wasn't the combat or jumping, but if it was going to be included at all, some attention should have been lavished on them. As it stands, they mar what could have been an amazing artistic experience with clunky and unnecessary things that take away from what you were trying to do with it. Just watch some videos of it, guys, and move on. Especially those trees.
If You Liked El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, You Might Also Like...Bayonetta – Oozes charm and creative direction in almost every way. It's entire aesthetic can be summed up with the word 'excess.' This was the natural direction the Devil May Cry style of game was going, with fights on top of exploding buildings that are falling off of cliffs. The enemies and locales all managed to be unique and beautiful, and were contained in a tight action game that was a blast to play and look at.
Don't Look Back (PC) – An action/platformer done in a minimalist style, only concerned with telling a story through the action itself. It is frustratingly difficult despite constant checkpoints, but each room can easily be overcome with some practice. Music and silence are both used to make up for the primitive artwork, turning this simple game into an overall experience I enjoyed far more than the countless hours it took me to slog through
El Shaddai.
2.0