M URAM ASA: THE DEM ON
Who wants a Wii game with great
graphics and no motion control?
The single-player adventure or action
game genres are not as popular on the
Wii as mini-game compilations. But an
increasing number of publishers and
developers seem undeterred, making
games designed to please the
hardcore, like MadWorld, Dead
Space Extraction and The Conduit. If
that's not bold enough, then this
game, Muramasa, does it
without the aid of motion control,
which the developers thought
would not allow for the precision
gameplay needed during the most
frantic 2D crowd-fighting moments.
Avoiding the shakes, the game's creators
are hoping other elements will sell
gamers on Muramasa.
Wh at Is It ?
Muramasa The Demonblade is
published by Ignition Entertainment and
is one of those rare third-party Wii
exclusives made for traditional gamers.
It's a side-scrolling scored beat-em-up
featuring two playable characters with
two occasionally overlapping runs
through the game's story. The stronger
boy hero, Kisuke, and the speedier
female warrior Momohime, are each on
quests to find the
Demon Blades. Each
hero has dozens of
swords that the player
can choose to wield.
The game's hook is that
it looks gorgeous,
exhibiting the museum-ready painterly
style seen in developer Vanillaware's PS2
cult classic, Odin Sphere.
Wh at We Saw
I played through the easy-mode E3
demo level for Momohime. She can
jump and swing her swords, three of
which she can carry at a time and all
of which have unique secondary
attacks. As with Odin Sphere, the
character 's progression is paced
across discrete side-scrolling
stages barely wider than a
screenshot. Clearing the enemies
out in one of them will cause a
scoreboard to appear, ranking player
performance and adding experience
points to unlock new swords.
Wh at Needs Im pr ovem en t ?
Separate Lives: Even though the game's
two protagonists adventure through 20
of the same levels out of a total of 40,
there is no overlap between a player 's
progress playing as one or the other ?
no shared experience points, no traded
items... nothing. In fact, the player can