Rising Star Blog

I have finally got round to playing Sin and Punishment 2. In case you haven't heard of it, it's the latest unfashionably on-rails shoot ‘em up developed by Treasure - perhaps the most niche development boutique in Japan (and perhaps the world). It is the sequel to one of the greatest games of all time. And it is also one of the greatest games of all time. It is probably the most fun I've had playing games all year - better than Bayonetta, better than Demon's Souls, and a whole different universe of better compared to all the boring identikit firstperson shooters that dominate videogames in the west.

Technically, it looks a bit... well... rubbish. I mean, it looks like a Nintendo 64 game or something. But within those apparent limits, it manages to look a bit amazing in its own right simply because of all the stuff that's going on: robotic crabs crawl all over skyscraper walls while distant soldiers send missiles your way through clouds of tiny flying robots in one early stage, for example, while one of the later bosses plays like a demented fusion of Tetris and Bomberman. One level has you start out by piercing the darkness with a torch to spot the relentless waves of attackers; by the end you are scything through deep grass to flush out lurking alien assassins.

One boss reminds me of a boss in Gunstar Heroes, the first game created by Treasure; as in Gunstar Heroes, this boss is made up of several different stages, with the boss changing his appearance randomly between each one - so on one playthrough you might find yourself up against a weird floating tree root thing; another time you might find yourself up against a massive pod of aggressively aquabatic dolphins.

Gunstar Heroes was created by Treasure just after the company was founded by a handful of ex-Konami employees, many of whom are still with the company over fifteen years later. In those fifteen years, the company has remained just a handful of employees in size as it has single-handedly established itself as an entire cottage-industry of Japanese quirkiness, responsible for such criminally overlooked classics as Radiant Silvergun, Bangai-O! and Ikaruga. More than just making amazing games though, the people at Treasure are just really nice.

A few years ago I wrote a book about videogames with some chums (it seemed like a good idea at the time - Ashley Cole had just got half a million quid for his biography. I wouldn't like to mention how much we got for ours, but as I write this I'm sitting on a massive yacht getting an oil massage from a harem of supermodels). When we got in touch with other videogame companies to ask them for permission to use their screenshots, it mostly involved lengthy email exchanges with PR departments and lawyers etc. When we got in touch with Treasure, we got a reply almost straight away from the CEO himself, who had thoughtfully and kindly enclosed an abundance of screenshots and artwork.

And yet, in a fit of karmic spite, Sin and Punishment 2 bombed in Japan. When it came out last month, hardly anyone bought it. After all, when games like GTA give you the freedom to go anywhere or do anything, and games like Modern Warfare let you shoot REAL terrorists in the face, why would anyone want to play an old-fashioned on-rails shooter, even in Japan? The answer is that this old-fashioned on-rails shooter packs more amazingness into its short duration than most other games can manage in an entire bloated franchise. Let's hope it's got a long tail, if only for the sake of the nice people at Treasure.

Please login first to write a comment for this blog or click here to create an account.