4cr Preview – Hudson

I imagine that most readers know of Hudson as the Bomberman company, maybe even as the guys that made the TurboGrafx-16 ages ago. I admit, I know that they publish all sorts of games, but I usually forget about anything beyond that little bomber.

It turns out that they have all sorts of games up their sleeves, and I got to see a few of them during our E3 appointment. I’d like to narrow in and focus on two in particular – Lost in Shadow and Deca Sports: Freedom.

Lost in Shadow is, frankly, one of the coolest games that I saw at the show. At its heart, it’s a relatively simple game. It’s a side-scrolling platformer. You walk left and right, and swipe at foes. The interesting, and artistically brilliant, part comes from the high concept. Your character has had his soul ripped away from his body. He is left as a shadow, and must regather his mass and memories as he climbs a massive tower (as your mass grows, so does your health bar).

As a shadow, you can only walk in the shadows of other objects. This creates an interesting relationship between the foreground and the background, which is where the action takes place. To aid progress, you can use the cursor (your “sylph” companion) to manipulate certain foreground objects. For instance, you might be able to loosen a girder to the point that it falls, creating a shadow bridge for you to cross. There are also these side-rooms where you can adjust the light itself with a slider. You have to quickly adjust the room’s lighting to move the platforms around.

The heavy focus on shadow-manipulation puzzles definitely appeals to me. Most of the puzzles are obvious, but I encountered a number of clever, non-trivial teasers. Not every situation can be solved through violence. In fact, many can’t. In one situation, hanging spider-like shadows prevented my progress. To move them, I had to find a way to shift a barrier that stood between the spiders and a series of arrow guns. I then had to remember to slide that barrier back into place before climbing up the shaft. Another level pitted me against this massive, grotesque ball of shadows. There was no possible way to fight the ball, so I had to run. Every so often, I could stop and turn on a light, which would stun the shadow-ball. Even with these lights, running from the shadow monster was a terrifying experience, with certain death constantly on my tail.

Lost in Shadow is an incredibly cool take on the platformer genre. It is clever, fun, and looks beautiful. I can’t wait to play the full game when it launches for the Wii this fall.

For those unfamiliar with Deca Sports, the series is basically Hudson’s version of Wii Sports. Each entry has had a collection of new sports-based minigames, played by Hudson’s version of the Mii avatars. The series has been a crazy hit for casual gamers, selling millions of copies. Deca Sports: Freedom is the first entry in the series to launch on a high-res system, and is fully compatible with Microsoft’s new Kinect peripheral.

Freedom was my first experience with a Kinect game, and it was a fascinating one. You see, Kinect games don’t use a controller. Instead, you have to make all of the correct motions with your own body. Going into this – as uncoordinated as I am – I was a bit nervous. Fortunately, I didn’t completely embarrass myself on stage.

There were three minigames to demo on the floor: tennis, archery, and paintball. Archery was the simplest, you’re just shooting arrows at a target, with the distance and wind speed changing over time. You hold out your left arm, as though it is holding your bow. Then you pull back your right arm – drawing the string, right? You then aim the cursor and swing your arm out to the side to fire. It’s a pretty simple motion, and it felt natural to pull off.

The second minigame, tennis, felt just as natural. You toss the ball up with your left hand and smack it with the “racket” in your right hand to serve. You then run left or right and smack the ball back at your opponent. It’s a fun game – pretty exhilarating – and it feels even more like actual tennis than the Wii Sports equivalent. Of course, this also meant that my uncoordinated ass was pretty bad at it.

The paintball game is where this goes wrong. This minigame is essentially a full-blown first-person shooter. You actually hold out your right hand in the shape of a gun and fling it upwards to shoot. You move your feet in the direction that you want to walk, and you can crouch and sway to dodge shots. You’re trying to take out every member of the opposing team before they can do the same to your’s. I definitely appreciate the ambition that went into this mode, but it just didn’t work. Movement felt awkward, and the cursor movement was way too unresponsive for something that fast-paced. While they have time to work on it before launch, I’m still not quite convinced that something like a first-person shooter should rely on Kinect control.

Still, Deca Sports: Freedom seems like a pretty cool collection of minigames. If you want a sports-based showcase for your Kinect, you might want to pick this title up this fall.