It is probably my most wanted game this year, I have had it preorded for quite some time now.I had not played the first until it came out on the VC and I found it fun as hell and very addicting. I am curious as to what others thoughts are on this game at the moment Also, if you are not sure here is the IGN's Hands on.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/108/1086179p1.html
It takes a long time, but sometimes dreams come true. It was over a decade ago, in the last gray days of the N64's lifespan, that Treasure released the first Sin & Punishment. It was a game that merged the bullet bonanza and sword slicing of Radiant Silvergun with the relentless forward thrust of a third-person rail shooter. While the original was never released for the N64 in America, its virtual console sales were so strong Treasure decided to gamble on a sequel, which Nintendo is finally bringing to North America after its Japanese release last October.
In Star Successor you choose to play as either Isa or Kachi, two youngsters caught up in an apocalyptic mutant invasion. The game presents itself identically to the first, constantly scrolling you through massive 3D levels whose orientation regularly shifts. One moment you'll be in an old school side-scroller and the next you'll be running up a highway, while other times you'll be spiraling around crumbling skyscrapers. Unlike a traditional first person rail shooter, the camera movements are always dramatic, swooping in and out of the buildings and narrow corridors with flair.
The controls are straightforward. You can move your character around the screen with the left analog stick while aiming with the Wii remote. Holding down the B button fires a steady stream of bullets at enemies, while a single tap performs a melee move that clears away nearby bullets or sends projectiles back towards enemies. The Z button is used for a dodge, while holding down the A button charges up a power shot that can be directed at multiple targets. It's a simple setup that you'll get used to after just a few minutes of play.
I jumped in midway through the game's first mission, a trip through a decaying metropolis replete with half-fallen skyscrapers and a legion of marauding turrets and strange spermatozoa-like aliens attacking in droves. The section opened with a side scrolling sequence where dozens of small gray probes flooded the top and bottom of the screen while larger pink robots streamed from the background into the foreground. Even in this relatively early stage of the game, there was a sense of visual chaos and urgency that few other games match. The probes didn't put up much firepower, but their sheer numbers were enough to keep the aiming reticule busily flitting around the screen, with each kill producing a big orange explosion.
Star Successor has a chain meter to reward players for kill streaks with point multipliers, and reaching certain highs in the multiplier will produce silver coins that can be collected for extra points. Midway through the section I came to a mini-boss fight against a hovering alien ship called an Ironbat, and the orientation changed to a head-on perspective. The Ironbat fired missles and glowing laser orbs at me while I was able to fire a charged power shot to target its multiple moving parts and take its health down fairly quickly.
Later on, I was running down a dilapidated highway with more drones swarming when a giant chicken suddenly attacked and the camera reoriented again to a head-on perspective. This was another boss fight against a space chicken called the Phoenix Keeper. This was a much more challenging fight, with the Keeper first sending out screen-filling waves of bullets until, after absorbing enough damage, its attack pattern shifted and it started hurling waves of smaller chickens as if they were bowling balls. A well-timed melee attack sent one of the smaller chickens back towards the Keeper. This netted a special silver ribbon, a version of the game's achievements that appear as actual tokens in-game and not the standard checklist-based notifications you'd see on PS3 or 360.
I also got to try out a section from the game's third level called "Sky Fortress." The level opens with your character spiraling around a giant floating castle in the sky, shooting your way through debris and rubble. You'll then switch to a side-scrolling perspective and dart into one of the castle's hallways where circular robotic sentries stream at you from top and bottom. There was a section that used both foreground and background to set up some light tactical variation. Rat-tailed robots in the foreground needed to be melee'd to death while a row of turrets sniped at me from the background, requiring gun fire to kill.
Later on, large enemy vehicles rolled into screen from the front and the back, while enemy probes attacked on all sides. A later section had red ninja robots hovering with giant shields while big, slow-moving missiles came towards me. With good timing the missiles could be swatted back into the robots. Later these same red robots swapped shields for what looked like giant bladed stilts that could slice my character from a distance. It was a chaotic stream of new enemies, attack patterns, and variations on what I'd thought would have been familiar enemies. In typical Treasure fashion, Star Successor appears to be rigorously inventive, and unwilling to recycle old set pieces. Every enemy encounter was different somehow from those before it, with little breathing room in between.
Star Successor will support international online leaderboards using Nintendo's Wifi service. The game also supports two-player co-op, though in a slightly different way from the original. While only one character will appear onscreen, there will be two aiming reticules so a friend can help you blast your way through the robot swarms. The game also supports every conceivable control scheme you could imagine for a Wii game. The Wii remote and Nunchuk are set to default, but Wii Zapper support is included. You can also play using a Classic Controller or a GameCube controller.
I left the demo of Star Successor positively impressed. The game is as hard as anything I've seen on Wii, and Treasure seems to have invested some serious love and meticulous attention in keeping the formula fresh and rewarding for multiple play throughs. Likewise, the visuals are wonderfully vibrant and chaotic to the extreme. With the amount of enemies drawn onscreen at once, and the fact that you get to fight a giant chicken, Star Successor is beautiful both technically and creatively. The game will feature seven levels, with each divided into several segments of progressively increasing length.
Sin & Punishment 2: Star Successor will be out in North America June 27.
