El Shaddai is an action-platformer for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It is based on Judeo-Christian myth. You play as Enoch and your mission is to track down and purify (kill) some fallen angels who came down to Earth.
Background
Enoch is featured in the book of Genesis and lived for 365 years before he was taken to heaven by God, being one of two humans noted in the Bible that never died.
There are apocryphal works that indicate Enoch eventually ascended to archangel status, where he was known as the Metatron--"he is appointed guardian of all the celestial treasures, chief of the archangels, and the immediate attendant on God's throne." (wikipedia.org)
Plot (no spoilers)
Enoch eventually tracks them to a tower set amidst a distortion in space-time. This takes him several hundred years. (Although he is human in the game, he is immortal.) Within the tower are various floors, each ruled by a fallen angel and each its own little world. This is the backdrop in which the game takes place.
The plot is largely incoherent, but no worse than many other games--particularly the very "Japanese" ones. (e.g. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta) It somehow works in context, which is the most important thing. Just don't try to explain the entire story in a single go, your brain will commit seppuku rather than be exposed to that experience.
Art and Soundtrack
This is where the game truly shines. The backgrounds are *gorgeous*. I don't mean just graphically, the art direction itself is astounding. It's obvious a lot of care and attention went into the artwork in the game.
The soundtrack is also very good, and mesh with the artwork--it creates a synergistic effect that's very engrossing. Just looking at and listening to the game was very enjoyable--and that's not counting the gameplay itself.
However, similar care was not given to the character models for Enoch and his foes. While the art direction was still superb, the graphical implementation was not. They resemble upscaled PS2 characters--full of jagged edges, poor shading, and low-res.
Unfortunately, the artwork was also intrusive--in action games and platformers both, the background can be pretty, but it must not interfere with the gaming experience. El Shaddai made the backgrounds so busy it became difficult to accurately gauge your position and the position of platforms you were meant to jump to in places.
Combat Basics
There are 3 weapons, with a Rock-Paper-Scissors dynamic. The weapon inflicts more damage to the type it's strong against.
1) Arch: a bladed weapon, it's fast and agile, and is strong against...
2) Veil: a pair of heavy gauntlets. Strong and slow, with strong defense. It's strong against...
3) Gale: a halo that generates and fires projectiles.
It primarily uses one button for combat. By altering the pacing or combining it with RB or jumps, it makes a variety of moves possible.
1) Basic attack: Hit X. if you mash it, you'll get a combo of several consecutive strikes.
2) Heavy attack: Hold X then release. A strong but slow hit.
3) Guard break: Hit X, then pause, then hit X. It is what it sounds like, to be used to pierce a guarding enemy's defense.
4) Special Attack: Hit X and RB. It varies by weapon.
5) Aerial attacks: Basic, Heavy, and Special attacks can be performed in the air, Guard breaks cannot.
Combat
The rock-paper-scissors mechanic applies to every enemy in the game--even the bosses are strong to one weapon and weak to another. Sometimes this will change mid battle, several times. This adds an element of strategy when fighting groups of foes--you can stun and steal weapons from enemies so defeating them in the proper order is critical. Sometimes it's necessary to continually adapt your weapon and tactics during the course of the fight. This makes combat dynamic and enjoyable.
Unfortunately, this only true when you have access to all three weapons. In the beginning of the game, you only have access to the Arch. The dueling mechanic on its own is average and you only fight enemies with Arches in the first couple chapters. This makes for an extremely dull experience where you just hammer X until their overly large health pool is depleted. You can use heavy attacks or guard breaks, but there's no real point--it doesn't get them dead faster and serves no purpose unless you absolutely need to stagger or guard break a foe.
The situation doesn't improve noticeably when you get the gale. Then you can dispatch arch-wielding foes quickly, but still have to hammer away at gale-wielding foes.
It's not until the end of the 3rd or 4th chapter (out of 10.5) that you get the final weapon, and they don't explain the RPS mechanic until a chapter after that. So it's very easy to get stuck using a weapon that's weak vs a nameless enemy and having to pummel them for minutes until they finally fall over.
Once you have all three weapons, however, the game is really fun.
The game only uses one attack button, which is a stylistic choice. It's one I don't like, but I won't call it bad design. My issue is mostly using separate buttons can afford more fine-grained control, and they left Y, B, LT, and RT completely unused. Moving guard break to Y and Heavy attack to B would have actually enhanced the ability to generate combos, as it would be easier to perform them on demand.
Combat _feels_ like it's all connected (and has a so-called flow) because you're varying the pacing of a single button. But much like the Wii's waggle controls, unless you really deeply integrate it into play, it's just another button. Steps 2 and 3 of Tap X, pause, Tap X are the functional equivalent of hitting a different button. It's not deep, it's just _different_. It just feels deep because you expect less from a single button. You're actually just pounding on enemies repeatedly--and they can take quite a few hits.
You can vary the moves, but for the most part there's no merit to do so--and options for the sake of having options are meaningless. Choices are only meaningful if they have a context in which the choice must be made. There are cases like that in El Shaddai, but for the most part using different abilities is just doing it for the sake of doing something different.
It shares Fable III's weakness of having a combat system relatively focused on 1v1 combat but mostly throwing one in 1v many combats. It makes many of the tools useless because giving a single foe that much attention invites reaming from his 4 buddies.
The fights varied from repetitive to highly original, and while I found myself irritated with fighting
certain foes over and over, others were so inventive I couldn't help but forgive the game.
Nevertheless, the flaws fall away when you find yourself frenetically dashing into combat, stealing weapons, slashing foes as you jump over their head or rolling between their legs and giving a good punch in the butt.
Voice Acting
I generally hate English voice actors because many of them are talentless hacks, but the voice acting was quite good in El Shaddai and I left the English track on the whole way through.
Platforming
El Shaddai had 2D and 3D platforming segments.
The 2D platforming segments were quite good--very solidly designed with a fair amount of variety. The 3D platforming segments were moderate to bad, however. The artsy backgrounds, inability to move the camera, peculiar camera angles, and invisible walls in the jump paths made it extremely difficult to gauge the position of yourself relative to the objects you were jumping for.
Overall
The art and sound alone are worth trying this game. While it has a handful of problems from a mechanical standpoint, they're minor irritations and easily overlooked for all of the things they did right. I would highly recommend this game and consider it a good game overall.
8/10
