Xseed may not be a company that many of you are overly familiar with, but they’ve delivered some of the more interesting handheld titles over the last few years - titles such as the unique Half Minute Hero, the addictive Ivy the Kiwi?, and the nostalgia-tastic Retro Game Challenge. The latest of their adventures to grace our pockets is Sumioni: Demon Arts, a downloadable PS Vita game that casts you in the role of an ink-swinging demon who must rid feudal Japan of a great evil.
It’s essentially a 2D platformer, the catch being that you can paint along the screen with your magic brush - creating platforms, unleashing the elements, and conjuring demons. Wait a minute - paint with your brush along the screen? Didn’t we already do that in the excellent PS2 adventure Okami? Well, yes, we did, but it turns out Sumioni actually has very little in common with its most obvious comparison game, and unfortunately, that’s not really a good thing…..
Okay, so let me explain a little how the game plays out. After sitting through an eternity of scrolling text explaining what the hell’s going on (which I had a really hard time staying focused on after the first few minutes), you are ready to begin your journey. Anyone who’s ever played a platformer will be familiar with the basic mechanics - run along here, jump over these spikes, slash a few bad guys with your sword etc… You have a few other moves, such as a charging attack and downward thrust, but overall the combat mechanics are pretty basic.
Of course, it’s not all about sword slashing, as there’s always your magic brush to rely on. Basically, you’ll be using this power to initiate a few moves (all of which are unlocked at the beginning, I might add, meaning no awesome abilities to discover as the game goes on): You can create platforms to stand on, getting you out the way of ground-based danger, you can erase enemy projectiles, and you can conjure fire and lightning to destroy your enemies. On top of this, you can summon two large beasts to help you fight - a giant bird, and some kind of dog. If these powers seem a little underwhelming, after playing with Okami’s robust selection of brush moves, well, they are. I soon felt as though as I was doing the same things over and over again, and with nothing new to unlock, there didn’t seem to be much to look forward to.
One small solace lay in the branching level paths that present themselves as you battle onward. Achieving a high rating on certain levels sends you along a different leg of the journey, and the story sections change accordingly. Failing to do so keeps you along the easiest path, which ends in the shockingly-quick time of about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, even if you manage to advance yourself along these alternate paths, the game still feels very repetitive: Every level is just a straight walk from left to right, possibly with a big tower to take down at the end, and not much to see in the meantime. Sure, the game mixes things up occasionally with a survival challenge or creature chasing you, but this doesn’t hide the fact the the level design is just so uninspired.
I also felt as though the story sections were rather badly done. Every update on the plot is delivered with scrolling text, which usually goes on for far too long. Even if they’d used comic-style panels with dialog beneath it probably would have been more interesting, but instead we’re expected to stay conscious during long, boring text that simply scrolls up the screen. Oh, and by the way, the game neglects to tell the Vita not to enter standby mode during these sections, so every couple of minutes the screen turns off if you don’t press a button. I can only assume that the developers did this on purpose so anyone who falls asleep doesn’t miss anything!
I could probably write more about Sumioni: Demon Arts, but I’ve learned today that a lot of dialog isn’t necessarily a good thing. If it hasn’t been clear, I didn’t hate the game, and still had a little fun, but overall it’s just not very good - the levels are repetitive, the story yawn-inducing, and even the desire to achieve a high score and unlock new pathways is quickly destroyed once it becomes obvious that each path is much like every other one - just a bit harder. It’s a shame, as the semi-unique premise could have lent itself to a far more interesting title, and I was excited to see a game that made use of the Vita’s touchscreen, but there’s no hiding the fact that Sumioni just isn’t worth the money. Now where’s my copy of Okami? I have the strangest desire to play it right now…..
