Tech.Wapline

Speed is an essential quality in driving games. Without it, you might as well be taking a Sunday drive in the family Yugo. However, with the Burnout series, developer Criterion Games has added another ingredient that has become just as important as eye-bleeding speed: crashes. The Burnout series has set new standards for snarling, metal-bending, explosive crashes over the years, and the upcoming Burnout Paradise is no exception to that rule. In fact, apart from its open-world nature and seamless online experience, Paradise will be aiming to bring crashes to the next level thanks to the new crash-anywhere, -anytime “showtime” mode. For more details on this fun new way of experiencing Burnout, we contacted Nick Channon, producer for the game.

GameSpot: Let’s start off with crashes in general. Cars wrecks are spectacular in Paradise, thanks to what looks to be some incredible deformation physics and some excellent camera angles. What did you want to accomplish with wrecks in the game, and how did you go about making it happen?

Nick Channon: Obviously crashes have always played a major part in the Burnout games. As we moved the franchise to these next-gen consoles, we had to make them look amazing. The added power of the consoles allowed us to do way more than we could in the past, and the initial goal was to deform the cars as much as possible. When the cars hit a wall or barrier, we really wanted to show the energy of the crash being pushed through the car. We spent a lot of time previsualising how this would look, and when we were happy with it, we moved what we had learned into the game engine. Obviously deformation is only part of it; with the addition of particle effects, smashing glass, debris, and some incredibly impactful sound effects, the results are pretty amazing and something we’re incredibly proud of.

GS: Tell us about the creation of showtime mode. How did the decision to make this an “anyplace, anytime” mode come about, and what were the technical obstacles to get this mode to work anywhere in Paradise City?

NC: The goal for Burnout Paradise was to create a completely seamless experience. So we had to carry this over across all aspects of the game, including what we’ve previously known as “crash” mode. We could have created crash junctions as we have in the past, but this would have broken the dynamic of the whole game. Showtime was created to allow the user to crash anytime, anywhere. This feels truly next-gen to us, as it doesn’t give the user any restrictions, and they are able to do what they want when they want. Also, creating a specific number of junctions means that once you have completed them all, that’s it. With showtime, every time you play it’s different. You determine the route you take and what you try to hit, and you can continue to get better and better.

GS: You can enter showtime mode at any point in the game, even when taking part in a challenge such as road rage or a stunt event. The question is: Why would you want to? Are there any challenge events where doing so would help you complete your goals?

NC: The answer is simple: Why not? Most games prescribe what you do next, and in what order. Burnout Paradise is about complete and utter freedom. You might be in sixth place towards the end of a race, see a bunch of traffic and think, “I haven’t beaten the showtime road rule [challenge] in this area, so why don’t I do that now?” The choice is yours. Again, in road rage you might be about to get totaled, ending the event, so why not go into showtime? We really believe we shouldn’t stop you from being in control of your experience; hence you can go into showtime anytime you like.

GS: How does the game’s online options extend to showtime mode?

NC: Showtime online is awesome, it allows up to eight players to compete in the same gameworld at the same time, so you are all competing to create as much damage as you can.

GS: How about a tip on maximizing our showtime score? Beyond keeping the boost meter filled, what other tips can you give us to make the most of showtime mode?

NC: There are a couple of things that will really help you maximize your scores. First, before you go into showtime look for areas of traffic, and start showtime when there’s plenty around you. This will get you off to a good start. Second, watch out for the static buses that have been placed around the world when you are in showtime mode. Buses give you multipliers, and we have placed parked ones at the sides of the roads, so if you learn where they are and change your route to find them, you will really rack up the points.

The Kingdom Under Fire series experienced a renaissance with the release of the excellent Crusaders on the Xbox in 2004, and Circle of Doom takes even more chances with the franchise. Unlike its predecessors, though, the game eschews strategy elements in favor of a pure action role-playing experience, albeit with uneven results. The action devolves into tedium, the story has no obvious bearing on the gameplay proper, and a number of unnecessary hindrances break up the rhythm of the gameplay. If you take things online with friends, the pace picks up, but not enough to overlook some noticeable and annoying drawbacks.

Like much of Circle of Doom, the story guns for sophistication but ends up being relatively inconsequential, simply because there’s no strong narrative thread to tie the action together. You’ll start the game controlling one of five characters that fall into the usual hack-and-slash archetypes (a sixth can also be unlocked), and each experiences a slightly different story, though the manner of storytelling is the same for all of them. Within dungeons, you will find idols (which also function as vendors and, occasionally, quest givers) that provide a safe place for sleeping and dreaming. Once asleep, you enter a dreamworld where you can talk with characters that provide quests and serve up bits of cryptic dialogue that may lead fans of previous Kingdom Under Fire games to nod their heads with understanding, but will confuse most anyone else. There are no cutscenes within the gameplay proper, and none of the action seemingly relates to the tale that so slowly and quixotically unfolds in the reveries of sleep. The resulting disconnection between the game and its fragmented parables keeps you from getting engaged, because you’re never quite sure why, exactly, you need to be fighting legions of skeletons and lava monsters.

Luckily, you’ll hack and slash your way through crowds of far more enticing enemies than those action-RPG standards. Circle of Doom has no shortage of monsters, often tossing many dozens of them at you at a given time. Many of the enemy designs are remarkably imaginative. Grunting, crawling zombies called flesh men swarm around you; invisible lizardmen will attack you without warning; and giant statues and their sculptors clog passageways, waiting for your sword and bow to wreak havoc. When the game is running on all cylinders, slicing your way through the hordes is as compelling as you would expect from the genre–not because the game is anything special, but because the formula on which it’s based is a proven one.

In fact, the same formula that provides the majority of the game’s entertaining moments is what ultimately drags Circle of Doom down–at times because the game is nothing but formula, and at others because the basic ingredients of the familiar recipe lack depth and refinement. Even with a good number of melee and ranged weaponry, the action gets incredibly repetitive, particularly because to accomplish certain quests and get the most out of the magic system (more on this subject later), you’ll revisit the same six dungeons over and over again. One quest that required us to collect pure gold called for multiple visits to the same area, while another forced us to randomly fight through dungeons until the quest giver felt enough time had elapsed. While some of the dungeon aspects generate randomly, the basic elements of the dungeons rarely change, and as creative as some of the monster designs are, it gets tiring to mash your button through the same ones ad nauseam. To make things even more monotonous, while dungeons are broken up into multiple levels separated by loading times, should you need to return to one, you have to fight your way through the entire dungeon, since the game won’t let you travel directly to the level you need to visit.

The pacing problems brought about by the vague, disengaged story and constant repetition are further exacerbated by other issues that break up any forward momentum you’ll begin to feel. While many enemies don’t seem to be trying very hard to strike you, their attacks will frequently (if not usually) knock you back, stun you, or cause a confusion effect that inverts your control scheme until the effect has worn off. At times, particularly in the frustratingly confined dungeon called the Hall of Arrogance, these effects can string together into a horrible, infuriating cycle of inescapable damage, as stone statues knock you down or stun you while drillers spew fire at you and hovering spirits electrocute you. It also doesn’t help that the environments, as interesting as some of them look, are constricted and highly linear, which is at odds with the huge number of fiendish foes that rush you. The aforementioned “damage loop” wouldn’t be an issue if there were room to move about, but it’s relatively easy to be cornered. Additionally, if you string together a number of combo attacks, your character will have to finish a long animation sequence that you can’t escape from. The result of these and other prevalent issues give the action a halting and awkward feel that never hits the smooth, quick stride that exemplifies the best games of the genre.

The game’s inexcusably jittery camera is also a guilty accomplice to these crimes, because it never seems to know how to arrange itself. Its usual position is a little awkward, since it feels too low to the ground and too close to your character, but it’s workable provided there is enough room to move. Alas, the cramped levels confuse the camera, causing it to get stuck behind every object it can find, change angles at inopportune times, or even zoom in so close, all you can see is a jumble of geometry. The camera has been an issue in the prior strategy-action games in the series, so it’s disheartening to see that the camera control here is actually a step backward.

You can also perform special attacks, though the method of earning them is certainly an interesting and unusual one. When you visit the dreamworld, you can take quests that open up new skills to you when completed. Learning a new skill or spell generally involves killing a certain number of particular monsters, at which point you can turn in the quest and add the spell to your repertoire. The system sounds nifty, but in actuality, it’s highly problematic. Until you choose which spell you want to acquire, you aren’t even sure what monsters you will need to defeat, so you can’t choose missions that fit in with your current main quest progress. In some cases, it means returning to a dungeon you’ve already slogged through a number of times, while in others, you may need to visit an area you haven’t been to yet. In the end, earning new spells can often be more trouble than it’s worth, and many of them are so ineffective, it’s not worth the extra 30 minutes of repeated dungeon-crawling it takes to earn them. Furthermore, you can take on only two skill quests at a time, which means you may go many hours without learning a single skill at all. It simply isn’t worth it, unless you have returned to the game to play on a higher difficulty level. On the standard difficulty, however, you could reasonably play the entire game without ever needing a single special skill at all.

Outside of the action proper, there are some interesting ideas at play, but again, they sound cleverer on paper than they are in practice. When you level up, you can spend attribute points in one of three areas: hit points, skill points, and luck. Hit points are the only straightforward aspect of the three, and spending points in this area increases the size of your health bar. Skill points contribute to your stamina bar, which is possibly the game’s most interesting feature. In Circle of Doom, just the act of swinging or firing your weapon diminishes your stamina bar, and each weapon diminishes it in various degrees. It’s fairly quick to fill up, but a weapon that uses a lot of stamina will deplete the bar relatively quickly, which means you need to either wait for enough stamina to swing again, or use a white potion to completely replenish your meter. It’s another aspect of the action that can often contribute to even more awkward pacing–but it’s also relatively strategic, because you can’t just rely on the speed and attack prowess of the weapon to determine how effective it will be in battle. A relatively weak weapon that doesn’t deplete your stamina can actually be more effective than a stronger weapon that diminishes it quickly, because you can’t swing it continuously and will need to frequently wait for your stamina to recharge.

Luck is the third attribute on which you can spend points, though it is the vaguest of the three. According to the game manual, spending points in luck increases the frequency and quality of item drops, and we can certainly attest to finding better loot after spending attribute points in that area. Luck also increases your chances of success at synthesis. You can enhance weapons, armor, and accessories by visiting an idol and using an item and/or special ability to increase their effectiveness. The result isn’t always an improvement, and guaranteeing 100 percent success on the synthesis attempt can be tough on your in-game wallet, but it’s a perfectly reasonable method of item enhancement that benefits from some trial and error.

Circle of Doom can be played offline, or you can join up to three other others cooperatively; and like many similar games, the gameplay benefits from the addition of others. This is most apparent with some of the wearisome, often torturous boss characters, which aren’t all that challenging but are certainly time consuming if you’re on your own. Because some of them are obviously tailored toward certain characters over others (the first boss, which requires a ranged weapon, is an obvious example), a well-rounded party of four can increase the entertainment value significantly. Sadly, co-op play isn’t available offline, so you’ll need to play online via Xbox Live to use this feature. We didn’t any experience any major lag or other glitches, so you should expect online play to be a relatively problem-free experience.

There is some occasional eye candy to check out, and Circle of Doom’s art direction is consistently attractive, if not exactly stupendous. This isn’t as obvious in some dungeons as in others–after all, ice caverns can only be so interesting. However, some levels are nice to look at, featuring colorful foliage, appropriately arid-looking deserts, and library corridors filled with bookcases and wardrobes. The game engine isn’t a technical powerhouse, and you’ll notice plenty of pop-in and a few frame rate jitters here and there. Yet slaughtering your enemies results in a nice spattering of blood and some nice, subtle visual effects. The sound design is also subtle, but to a fault. Many sound effects are oddly muted, while the soundtrack mixes orchestral swoons with metal grinding for varied but forgettable results.

In short spurts, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom can be reasonably amusing, though even the most resolute hack-and-slash enthusiasts will likely grow tired of the nebulous story and monotonous battles before reaching the final boss. Considering the number of character-specific quests and multiple story threads, the campaign is obviously meant to benefit from multiple play-throughs. The problem is that the actual act of playing it isn’t very rewarding, so while there are some good ideas at work, these erudite ideas are overshadowed by a good number of design flaws that keep Circle of Doom from delivering any dependable sense of fun.

Though its NBA franchise gets plenty of attention, 2K Sports’ College Hoops series has flown under the radar of many sports fans, despite being quite good in its own right. Like 2K7 before it, College Hoops 2K8 isn’t tremendously different from its predecessor, but it’s the small changes, like new gameplay mechanics and an improved legacy mode, that make this year’s installment great and one sure to please college basketball fanatics.

There are plenty of ways to stay busy in College Hoops 2K8. You can create your own chants, players, schools, sound clips, and highlight reels, and new this year, you can create your own plays. The interface isn’t particularly easy to use and requires a lot of sometimes frustrating trial and error. But you get out of it what you put in, and all the work pays off when you’ve created the perfect play. If you’re the sharing type you can share all this content online, or you can hoard all your knowledge and use it to crush your foes.

There are more ways to play the game than ever. You can set up your own conference tournaments and even the NCAA Championship in the Pontiac Tournament mode, or take part in the College Hoops Classic. Coach mode lets you call the plays while your players execute them, and new this year are the All-American training challenge and tutorial modes. Here you’ll go through a number of drills against well-known former college ballers designed to teach you the ins and outs of 2K8’s somewhat convoluted control scheme. Going through this training mode still doesn’t make the new passing control any less complex, since you still have to decide what type of pass you want to throw by pressing a shoulder button and then a face button. But it does a good job of introducing the controls–an area in which previous 2K Sports games have been deficient.”

Online play lives up to the high standards of other 2K sports efforts. A real-time ticker shows the latest sports news, and the online front page shows college hoops news as well as upcoming games and current scores. Once online, you can take part in a quick match, custom match, or unranked play against a buddy, or join or start tournaments and even leagues. Our online games suffered from a bit of lag here and there as well as the occasional jerk that does nothing but shoot three-pointers with the same guy over and over, but for the most part the games ran fine and were enjoyable.

All of these modes are solid, but college basketball fans tend to head straight to legacy mode to lead their favorite team or alma mater to glory. Once again, you can play an open legacy, where you’re able to take over the school of your choosing, or career legacy, where you start at a small school and either lead the school to prominence or do well enough to use the school as a stepping stone to a better coaching gig. The mode is quite similar to last year’s, right down to the cumbersome menus. Frustrating menus aside, there’s a lot to legacy mode–even more than last year. Amateur Basketball Leagues (high school teams) have been added, giving you unprecedented access to scouting high school players before the season starts–you can even play their games. The recruiting process has seen some changes, but they’re mostly cosmetic and have little impact on how you actually recruit. You’ll find some players that have at least a passing interest in your school and then request game tape, watch them in person, e-mail or call them, set up campus visits, go to their homes, and hopefully get them to sign a letter of intent. This process is fun for a few weeks, but it quickly gets repetitive and there’s no way to automate the process. An odd glitch causes some talented junior college players to not get recruited by anyone, thereby letting them fall right into your lap. This makes it easier to get good players if you’re at a lousy school, but it sort of defeats the whole purpose of such a detailed recruiting process.

On the court 2K8 plays almost exactly the same as 2K7, with a few exceptions. Lock-on D makes its way over from NBA 2K8 and allows you to really shut down an opposing player. But as in NBA 2K8, this feature can be abused, as it’s possible for slow centers to pretty much blanket smaller, faster point guards. Also new this year is the sixth man advantage, which lets your team play better when the home crowd is going nuts. It doesn’t seem to affect gameplay much, but it’s a lot of fun to get the meter full and throw down a big dunk just to see and hear the crowd go wild. The rest of the gameplay feels just like last year’s: The controls are responsive and allow for great freedom once you learn them, and there are a wide variety of animations. The game just feels good. But there are some negatives, too: Players don’t move much on offense unless you call a play, there are too many missed layups, point guards go over and back too often, and there’s a bit too much goaltending. Small nagging issues aside, though, the gameplay is very strong.

And so is the presentation. Cheerleaders and mascots patrol the sidelines, fans go berserk in the stands, and coaches stalk the bench yelling at their players. As was the case last year, the arenas look fantastic, and even the ones that aren’t exact replicas of real courts look quite good. Players move realistically, and the transition from one move to the next is typically smooth. The one area in which player models are lacking is their heads, which just aren’t up to the same level of quality as in NBA 2K8.

Amazingly, College Hoops 2K8 sounds better than it looks and plays. Vern Lundquist and Bill Rafferty do a nice job calling the action and are able to get excited about the play on the court without going overboard. Bonnie Bernstein is out as sideline reporter, replaced by Tracy Wolfson, who actually delivers some worthwhile information about what the coaches are doing. Most impressive, however, are the sounds of the games. The fans are lively and deliver some great chants even if you don’t take the time to create your own. The number of real fight songs is staggering; even smaller schools are well represented with accurate songs from their respective marching bands. Toss in Dolby Digital support and you’ve got one fantastic-sounding game.

While there isn’t a whole lot of fresh content in College Hoops 2K8, what is new almost universally makes this version of the game better than last year’s. It plays better, there’s more to do, and even the presentation, which was already great, has been improved. If you’re not a diehard hoops fan and you’re still happy with last year’s game you could probably take a pass on 2K8, but if you love college basketball and you want the latest and greatest, College Hoops 2K8 won’t let you down.

The annual King of Fighters series is more than a decade old, and originates on arcade hardware that’s older still, though the series’ solid and varied gameplay has continued to bring the faithful coming back for more each year. Although many hardcore followers consider 1998’s The King of Fighters ‘98 to be the best game in the bunch–and some feel the series has gone downhill since then–the 2D fighting series has finally returned in style with The King of Fighters XI, a fast-paced game with a huge, well-balanced character roster and a lot of gameplay depth. Even though the game originally appeared on the Atomiswave arcade platform (arcade hardware with the embarrassing distinction of having noticeable load times), the game traces its roots, and most of its art assets, back to developer SNK’s NeoGeo platform, and this reliance on older graphics is hard to miss. However, if you’re a bona fide 2D fighting-game fan, there’s a good chance that graphics have always taken a backseat to gameplay for you, and if that’s the case, you’ll get all the great gameplay you can handle in this extremely well-crafted fighting game.

The King of Fighters series changed up the standard one-on-one style of most fighting games by introducing a unique team mechanic that lets you choose a group of characters to control across a series of rounds, and teams are back again in KOF XI, along with a new “shift” system. Shifting lets you call in another member of your team in the middle of a match, either to escape a severe beating or to assist in a few different ways to one you’ve been dishing out. The shift mechanic seems to work just fine and favors aggressive play; it’s not a safe way to escape punishment (given that there’s a slight delay on it), and it adds some good variety. If you’re an ambitious sort who likes to string together huge combination attacks, you can use the shift mechanic for this purpose as well, though you can get through most of your matches with little to no use of it.

Regardless of what you think about the shifting system, the game’s teams are quite solid because you can select from a huge, well-rounded group of characters. Most of them are old favorites from previous KOF games, and there’s a few transplants from other SNK games. In addition, you can unlock several more hidden characters both by completing the single-player arcade mode, and by playing the “challenge” mode, which has a series of odd, puzzle-like requirements (such as defeating an enemy using only a certain type of attack). By default, the game offers a solid roster of 33 characters to play (divided among 11 teams of three apiece), though you can unlock 14 more characters, which brings the roster to a whopping 47 characters total. With the exception of the unlockable bosses, all of the game’s characters seem balanced pretty well; just about any team of characters can take down any other team. And because there are so many characters choose from, there’s a good chance you can find at least a few that you like. But you’ll probably find a few that you don’t care for, either, such as the extremely powerful sub-boss Shion, and the extremely unimpressive final boss, Magaki, who has an annoying voice and doesn’t look terribly threatening, but is so absurdly overpowered that your final battles with him will be a chore rather than an exciting challenge.

The whisper-thin Magaki will be a bit hard for most players to look at, but depending on your experience with and expectations of fighting games, you might have some issues with the rest of the game’s presentation. No, you’re not going to get a game that looks as impressive in motion as a Virtua Fighter 5 or even a Soul Calibur 3. However, if you’ve played these types of games before, you should easily be able to look past the dated graphics and appreciate the game’s artwork for what it is. This is truly a 2D fighting game with character sprites that have been retouched and tweaked countless times over the years, and they look just fine in motion. Many of the characters have plenty of personality and lots of different voice samples that play when they attack, get hit, or recover from being knocked down. The game’s voice acting is all in Japanese, but it’s all delivered decently well, and the menus and dialogue screens (for between-match cinematics and victory screens) are all in decently translated English. However, KOF XI’s music isn’t quite as impressive. Much of it is pretty generic high-energy techno and electronic stuff that’s easy to forget.

The North American PS2 version of KOF XI seems to be a straightforward conversion of the original Japanese PS2 version of the game, minus support for online play. Both versions have one-on-one multiplayer, a single-player arcade mode, an alternate single-player team mode, a survival mode, a challenge mode, a practice mode, and a gallery of unlockable artwork. Likewise, the character roster is both big enough and deep enough (every character in the game has his or her own set of fighting maneuvers with special properties you’ll want to experiment with) to keep you busy just playing the game in single-player mode against the game’s fairly challenging computer-controlled opponents. However, like most head-to-head fighting games, KOF XI really doesn’t really come into its own unless you have some good human players to take on.

KOF XI brings together some decent extras in the form of additional play modes and unlockable art galleries, a unique twist with the shift system, and a surprisingly good single-player experience. Each of these elements is a good addition, but taken together with a fighting game that offers solid, fast-paced gameplay and a huge roster of interesting and well-balanced playable characters, you get a very compelling package for any players who consider themselves to be 2D fighting-game fans.

In the past year, we’ve had plenty of hands-on time with Capcom’s Devil May Cry 4, but most of that has been in non-linear chunks that haven’t really allowed us to get to grips with the storyline and how newbie Nero gets to replace veteran Dante as the series hero. But we recently got an early Christmas present in the form of full review code for the PlayStation 3 version of Devil May Cry 4, and we can now report just exactly what goes down in first five levels of the game.

The opening cinematic of Devil May Cry 4 shows Nero–hiding his Devil Bringer arm in a sling–running through the streets whilst battling a group of demons. His destination is a large church where the Order of the Sword is having a meeting-cum-recital, with Nero’s beloved Kyrie singing up an operatic storm. But just as Order leader Sanctus takes to the podium, Dante–the hero of the previous three Devil May Cry games–bursts in through a glass ceiling Batman-style and promptly pops a cap in Sanctus’ face. This, of course, sends the Order into a frenzy, and it’s at this point that you get to take control of Nero–apparently a member of the Order of the Sword himself–as he tries to take Dante down.

This opening one-on-one fight serves as a tutorial, where players are introduced to Nero’s various moves, having to perform them properly before moving on (execute three jumps, roll-dodge successfully three times, and so forth). After you’ve dealt enough damage to Dante, the game cuts to another cinematic where Dante flees before reinforcements from the rest of the Order arrive to help Nero. It seems poor Sanctus is well and truly snuffed out, and the Order’s second-in-charge Credo orders Nero to track down the assassin, who is apparently heading towards Fortuna Castle.

The end of the first level was also our first glimpse of Devil May Cry 4’s level-up system. Just as in previous games in the series, red orbs collected throughout a level can be used to buy items such as health stars or even increases in Nero’s life bar. Proud Souls–allocated at the end of each level–are what are used to upgrade abilities for Nero and his various weapons (the Devil Bringer arm, the Blue Rose revolver, and the Red Queen sword).

The second level of the game is the same one which has been demoed several times already in the previous year, and is the one which sees Nero traversing city streets, a wharf area, and finally ending up in a boss battle with a massive fiery boss named Berial. This boss battle is a great example of the effectiveness of Nero’s Devil Bringer arm, particularly the Snatcher ability which allows him to grab enemies from afar as well as launch himself at distant targets. In general gameplay, the Snatcher worked best when staying away from mobs of enemies, grabbing one from a distance, and pummelling them before repeating the process with another hapless opponent. In the first boss battle, we found using the Devil Bringer arm to propel Nero to the back of Berial’s head in order to avoid his sweeping, long range attacks an extremely useful tactic.

Glimpses of the third level have been seen previously, including the snowy mountainside where Nero takes on two ice wolf-like creatures and his first meeting with the butt-kicking (not to mention extremely anatomically enhanced) Gloria. After this, Nero heads inside Fortuna Castle itself, which serves as a hub area of sorts for the next few levels of the game. The interiors of Fortuna will be familiar to veterans of the Devil May Cry series, and features the same dark hallways, open cathedral-like spaces, and gothic look which has become a hallmark of the previous games. After dispatching a few enemies, players will run across the first “puzzle” of the game, a large torture chamber with spikes on the ceiling that Nero has to fly through using the Devil Bringer arm’s Snatcher. The puzzle is more difficult than it initially looks–quick reflexes are needed in order to glide from one snatch point to the next, as even a second’s hesitation will steepen the angle of Nero’s approach to the next point and send him crashing into the ceiling spikes. At the end of the third level, Nero squares off against a large, armoured opponent with a wicked-looking shield and lance. This One Winged Knight is practically invulnerable to head-on attacks, so players will once again need to use the Devil Bringer arm to quickly propel themselves behind the enemy to do maximum damage.

Defeating the Knight will earn Nero the ability to move large statue-like objects called Gyro Blades around the castle. Most of the fourth level of the game requires players to find and move these Gyro Blades to a certain spot in order to open up the door into the next boss fight area. The blades–which are moved by punching them with Nero’s Devil Bringer–can also be “charged up” with a few sword strikes, which then does greater damage to any foe that touches the blades. The boss that Nero squares off against in the open courtyard is a large toad creature named Bael. As opposed to Berial, Bael uses mainly ice-based attacks, and also has two rather unique “lures” which are used to confuse players.

After the intense Bael fight, the fifth level seems a little more sedate, and essentially has Nero exploring the castle further before uncovering a new ability which allows him to jump to high, out-of-reach places. Acquiring the Wing Talisman will activate special jump pads scattered throughout the castle, an ability Nero uses to jump to a high chandelier in the castle’s main entrance, which he then swings into a wall to reveal a hidden area: a secret laboratory.