Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies

Treasure have always delivered when it comes to shooter, in which the primary goal is to dodge showers of colored shots while frantically fight to escape death and lose points. Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun and of course Ikaruga give most shooterfans a dreamy look in their eyes.

Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies is not different. But at the same time it is. This time itreally feels like a shooter on rails, and my thoughts quickly goes to Sega's classic Space Harrier. If only for a moment. Compared to the original you move around both the X- and the Y-axis with your jetpack (or hoverboard), you'll meet tons of memorable bosses and before you know it, it's over. Not because it's pretty short, with its five hours, but because it is a so filled with colors, impressive environments and bossfights. Time flies when you're having fun.

Every section of the game is about twenty minutes long, and your primary goal is to get through it without getting hit, or dying, for one simple reason: points. The more enemies you hit, the more points you get. The more times you're hit, you lose points. If you die, say goodbye to your score. When you've finished a level you can always go back and try to better yourself and rank higher on your personal high-score list.

You can beat the whole game without any major trouble, if you don't go point-hunting. But if you do, you're not really the demographic for this kind of game, and you might as well stop reading now, safe in the knowledge that this game has no place in your collection anyway.

Because it's all about those points. You can of course share your high-score with the whole world, or the part of the planet that you choose to share it with, and here's the great charm of Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies: despite the fact that the game is pretty short, it's the hunt for high-scores and the different difficulty levels that make you (and a friend) return to it, over and over.

Just like in Muramasa and Monster Hunter Tri, this game also proves that you can get some amazing graphics out of the small Wii-machine. Because it looks beautiful. And the varied environment are all divided by really cool boss fights and some sections even feel like they're nothing except a long series of bosses. Just like a Treasure-game should be, in other words.

The perspective shifts between three and two dimensions, and when it does I'm completely sold - the game suddenly feels like a mix between Forgotten Worlds and Gradius. All of this combined with controls just as perfect as one would hope, where you aim with your Wiimote and control your character with the Nunchuck. You can lock on targets, swipe at enemies that gets to close and even send shots back at the shooter with a well-timed melee hit.

There's a ton of options, and buttons used, and if you'd rather play the game with your Wiizapper, Gamecube- or Classic Controller you can - you are able to fully control what functions go to which buttons. Terrific.

So far it all sounds like a piece of Paradise, and in several ways it is. But if you look at the score above, you can probably sense that some things are not what they should be.

Because there are a few things to pick on: first of all the characters are horrible. Their animations are terrible and sometimes look close to grotesque. The music is the same old arcade-crap: midi-guitars, bad melodies and lame instruments and completely lacks the memorable pieces from some of the other games in the genre. And if you play the game in co-op with a friend, that friend will only control a cross-hair. These things detract from the end result.

But if you love everything that Treasure does, and want a piece of Japanese arcades in your game collection, just forget that last paragraph and run out to get Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies straight away. It's a solid shooter, just as you'd come to expect from Treasure, and if you miss an old school game for your Wii (that doesn't have the words "Mario" or "Party" in its title), this is it.