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Hands-on / Prince of Persia, MadWorld, Wario Land: Shake It!
BY Matthew Razak Jul. 20th, 2008 More on:

Wait a minute, these games have nothing to do with each other! Or do they? Bum bum buuuummm!!!!!! Yes, yes they do. But what is it, why would I select these three seemingly random games from E3 that I got to spend some time with and put them into a single post? The answer lies within each games phenomenal artistic style. These three games really stuck out to me as artistically visionary; a look at what games can do not only with gameplay but with style and artistry. So I’ve decided to group them together as the top three artistically stunning games of E3.

3. Wario Land: Shake It! I know this might come out of left field for plenty of people and I’m sure many would argue that there were plenty of other artistically stunning games at E3 that might deserve this spot (Ninjatown; LittleBigPlanet; anything at IndieCade, which we’ll have more on later), but let me tell you, the screenshots and condensed video do not do the hand drawn animation of this game justice at all. Neither does the fact that Nintendo hasn’t made the game wide screen, opting instead to put bars on either side of the picture, but I digress. The thing runs like a Saturday morning cartoon from top to bottom. Wario’s movements and actions and beautifully animated and the background and enemies around him seem to have gotten the same attention. Best of all though is that all this gorgeous animation is stuck in an old school 2D platformer style that seems to be so jam packed full of retro style gameplay that it might rival Mega Man 9 for retro game of the year.

Actually, that is a bit extreme. But still, you get my drift. The game plays like the platformers of old with jumping challenges, wandering bad guys and mini-puzzles. Throughout the introductory level I played, I felt like Nintendo had gone back and constructed a game that looked modern but played old school, and that is no small task. One wonders why they didn’t make a bigger deal out of this game at their press conference, since just from the small glimpse I got of it I’m more excited by this than any other Nintendo game entering the scene.

Of course, it isn’t entirely old school stuff flowing out of Wario Land: Shake It!. As the title suggests, players will be using the controller to shake things up a bit. Wario will shake money bags to get loot out of them, bad guys to kill them and pound the ground to destroy floors or launch items into the air. All this is of course done by shaking the Wii remote up and down. In the first level it wasn’t used too much and if they keep it at the same level throughout the gameplay, it will actually be an interesting game mechanic and not a gimmick. But we all know how easily a feature like this can tip into tedium. Even if it does though, I could simply watch Wario run and run the screen - the animation just looks so good. If this sparks a future of beautifully animated side-scrolling platformers on home consoles, please sign me up.

[See also: Wario Land: Shake It! gallery]

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    1. Luke
      July 20th, 2008
      at 8:56 pm

      Saw the G4 coverage on PoP and it looked AWESOME

        Reply
      Rain Anderson
      July 20th, 2008
      at 9:44 pm

      I was surprised no one talked about Shake It! either, from the first screens they released it looked good and like a fun game. Madworld will sell like hotcakes no doubt. But Prince of Persia, god damn the dev walkthrough that was released in video form got me more excited than I was before. Beyond beautiful.

        Reply
      Matthew Razak
      July 20th, 2008
      at 10:10 pm

      Rain you have got to see PoP on a hi def tv as soon as possible. I promise you’ll stop playing every five seconds just to look at where you are.

        Reply
      Rain Anderson
      July 20th, 2008
      at 10:20 pm

      Just saw that a gameplay demo is up on LIVE. Downloading :)

        Reply
      Adam Sandberg
      July 21st, 2008
      at 12:17 am

      Damn, MadWorld sounds like a really cool game. Fun to see developers having the balls to think outside of the box! Also, PoP rocks as usual.

        Reply
      Se Ajala
      July 21st, 2008
      at 11:45 am

      Yo, Matt I f’ing hate you!!! MadWorld and Wario are two of my most anticipated games. I mad you got to see it up and running beyond what the videos show! LoL

      Yeah people need to support MadWorld looks amazing, these Platinum Studio guys know how to do imagenative style. I really hope it does a million+, but I thought NMH would do 500k+ and I’m not sure if it has done that yet.

        Reply
      Ashutosh Chhibbar
      July 21st, 2008
      at 2:52 pm

      PoP looks stunning.
      I hope it can recapture the feel of the first game of the trilogy.

        Reply
      Luke Walker
      July 23rd, 2008
      at 8:52 am

      I’m thrilled to see MadWorld. The Wii needs more games like this to shut the fanboys up. Looks freakin sweet! Loved the Sega and Nintendon’t comment by the way. As for PoP… man, now I’m going to have to actually go back and play the first ones to get ready.

        Reply

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