Avenging Spirit - a ‘dead’ good strategy game
AVENGING SPIRIT Switch. Also on PS4/5 & Xbox ★★★★
MANY videogames involve a hero trying to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend. Few involve the protagonist being dead.
This twist on the familiar patriarchal set-up is what makes Avenging Sprit interesting, as your ghostly form can inhabit any of the characters you must battle through to reach your beloved.
Slipping inside a gruff gangster lets you take on foes with a machine gun but possess a ninja and you can leap higher and deliver a shower of shurikens or take control of a slow but steady firebreathing lizard and torch your way through.
It means every encounter offers an opportunity to try a new strategy and the imaginative level design and tricky boss battles will require you to think as well as fight.
The arcade original, known as Phantasm, came out in 1991 but had a very limited release outside of Japan, which means I can unashamedly use the videogame cliché of ‘lost gem’ by way of recommendation.
HELL PIE PS5. Also on Xbox and PC ★★★
THIS takes me back to the glory days of the Playstation 2 duo-based 3D platformer, recalling such fine titles as Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank and the Sly Racoon series.
Except this time with added smut and satanic imagery.
Hell Pie puts you in charge of demonic minion Nate and Nugget, an obese cherub chained to our antihero, and tasks the pair with collecting various unsavoury ingredients to make Beezlebub’s birthday cake.
Now you see what they meant with that title.
It’s an entertainingly tasteless treasure hunt and the chain-swinging mechanic adds some skill to negotiating the varied and sometimes challenging levels.
If you can cope with the jittery in-game camera and relentless puns, there is much to enjoy here, the only caveat being you’d probably have more fun playing any of the old games mentioned in paragraph one.