El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

At first glance, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (which has nowt to do with Transformers) appears to be Devil May Cry for the kind of people that discuss their favourite iPhone apps over nouvelle cuisine and mineral water. Eschewing the schlock employed by the likes of Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta, it’s an elegant, dazzling looking game, not unlike Studio Ghibli features like Spirited Away and Legend of the Overfiend. It’s based on The Book of Enoch, and rather than clumsily shove plot points down your throat like so many games do, it subtly drip-feeds you the story through snazzy presentation and trickery.

Your man Enoch has been tasked by God to recapture 7 fallen angels, and as you can guess he isn’t going to do that by asking politely. He’s assisted on his journey by Lucifel (voiced by perennial English bad guy and official ‘man who should have been James Bond’ Jason Isaacs) who acts as Enoch’s save point throughout and reveals plot hints through phone conversations with the almighty himself. As you do. You’ll also get hints from the archangels Gabriel and Michael who are disguised as geese, so that’s the furries catered for. What ensues is a kaleidoscopic 8 hours of what we’d imagine Thom Yorke would hazily daydream about while he’s watching Takeshi’s Castle with the kids.

El Shaddai will be wildly misunderstood. People will moan about its combat you see, as you can’t go in wailing away like a PCPed up sociopath, as you do in the aforementioned Devil May Cry. You’ve got to plan your attacks, decide which weapons work best on which bad guy and chip away. Eventually you’ll get the hang of it and start to feel like the proverbial celestial bomb, as you take out all the bad guys on offer, that range from typical scary Japanese ghosty things (that’s the actual description in the manual) to armoured rhino bastards. The combat’s fine, but legging it about the world is where the real fun lies. It’s all nicely linear, meaning there’s very little frustration pissing about, although you can go off the beaten track a little if you want for pickups, but it’s not essential.

In some games it can be boring as hell running about, wondering where to go and what to do next, but El Shaddai mixes things amazingly. It flits around from 3D to 2D with no fuss and Christ on a motorbike, it really does look swell. Environments range from minimalist watercolour landscapes to bastard hybrids of Tron and Lord of the Rings to religious stained glass backgrounds and oh God it’s all so beautiful we could cry. You probably wouldn’t feel ashamed about playing this in front of other people really, unlike Bayonetta or God of War, which as good as they are are so flat out embarrassing and virginal you’d want to kill yourself with shame in case normal people saw half the shit in them.

You’re probably asking yourself ‘shaddai get El Shaddai (grooooan)’ and that’s a good question. It’s admittedly a pretty niche title and it’s really not for everyone, but should you give it a shot there’s a good chance you’ll get a hell of an experience. Ironically. It’s pretty much destined to be another God Hand, in that no fucker will buy it, but people will rave about it like crazy for years to come, so if you get it now you can feel like a right gaming clever clogs. If you’re going to dismiss it offhand though, then you can just (wait for it) shaddaipa ya face (applause).