SolSeraph
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE ALEX SPENCER
PUBLISHER SEGA / DEVELOPER ACE TEAM / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £11.99/$14.99
Disney’s Moana or Hercules from,
um, Disney’s Hercules.
The game starts, of course, with a
creation myth. Turns out Earth Mother
and Sky Father made this world, but
decided not to stick around and
see how it all panned out, leaving a
second wave of younger, surlier gods
to step into their sandals. Jealous
of mankind, this petty pantheon are
taking revenge in the form of floods
and plagues of demons. Which is
where you – Helios, Knight Of Dawn,
Basher Of Assorted Nasties – come in.Raise hell
In the more earthbound sections,
Helios rocks a sword, a shield and
a bloody great pair of wings that
aren’t good for anything more than a
standard double jump. You move from
left to right, slashing and occasionally
hopping, just as you’ve done in action
platformers since time immemorial.
There’s a charge attack, a backward
dodge, a selection of ranged spells
that let you fire arrows or lightning
bolts... and that’s about it.Once upon a time –
so the legend goes- there was a game
called ActRaiser. This
was the SNES era,
so long ago now it is
remembered only by the ancients, but
the scrolls tell us that ActRaiser was a
title unlike any other at the time.
Because, really, this was two
games in one. A side-scrolling action
platformer and a top-down city-
builder, all tied together by a story
about a deity fighting back demons
and helping early man along the path
to civilisation. A literal god game.
A thing about mythology, though?
It always moves in cycles – and so
once more we return, with SolSeraph.
The name might have changed, but
don’t be fooled: this is as close to a
modern ActRaiser remake as Sega can
manage without risking the wrath of
some immortal copyright lawyer. Once
again it’s half hack-and-slash and
half build-and-defend, and once again
you’re playing a god. Or, technically,
a demigod. You know, like Maui from
SolSeraph struggles to fill the
controller with actions, but this
simplicity isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The problem is that combat lacks any
sense of impact. Hits don’t interrupt
enemy attacks, which means it never
really feels like you’re putting steel
to flesh, and your heavenly arsenal
doesn’t fare much better. The charge
attack doesn’t differ hugely from your
basic sword strike, while calling down
a bolt of lightning isn’t enough to kill
even an overgrown spider. Godlike
power, this ain’t.
Things get more interesting at
the end of each platforming section,
as Helios decides to actually use
those wings for something, zooming
up into the skies and a completely
different genre. This is SolSeraph’s
biggest departure from its inspiration,
transforming the city-building of
ActRaiser into a more simple tower
defence game. You build up a
village – houses first, then farms and
lumber mills and, finally, defensive
fortifications – and help it withstand
wave after wave of enemies.short
cutWHAT IS IT?
A spiritual successor
to Enix’s 1990 sleeper
hit, ActRaiser.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Enix’s 1990 sleeper
hit, ActRaiser.
WHO’S IT FOR?
Really dedicated fans
of Enix’s 1990 sleeper
hit, ActRaiser.078 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE