Rascals!

We’ve all heard about The Last Guardian, right? It’s from the same team that made ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. If you haven’t heard about it, the “Official E3 Trailer” is here and, lemme tell ya, it looks *AMAZING*.

Indeed, the only problem I have with this game is that, from watching the trailer, I know that the griffon is going to die at the end of the game and I’m going to be sitting there snuffling while the kid is holding the griffon’s head in his lap telling him that he did a great job and he saved the world or something. I mean, seriously. Do you *NOT* see that happening?

Well, The Last Guardian has had, as Terry Gilliam says, “Production Problems” and is still somewhere in its programming cycle somewhere. (I’m hoping that the writers have said “you know what? We’re not in an economic boom anymore… let’s give them an upper.”)

So it’s with those thoughts in mind that I’m currently playing Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. It’s a bargain title… Amazon has it for under 8 bucks… but it looks like it has a somewhat similar idea behind it. You’re a dude, you’ve got a magic guardian, you have to use the magic guardian to solve puzzles in a magical world where the dark forces have pretty much entrenched themselves for the last hundred years.

But it’s much more lighthearted (and pretty straightforward if not formulaic). You start off with a pretty weak dude who meets up with the pretty weak Majin. As you progress from area to area, you get stronger and you find fruits that make your Majin stronger and give him more powers that allow him to open more areas that have more enemies to give XP and who are guarding more fruit that could give the Majin more powers… It’s similar to Metroid/Zelda games. It’s got a cute personality, a lot of heart, and, for eight bucks, you can’t beat the price. If nothing else, it will help tide you over until The Last Guardian comes out and makes you make sure that you’ve got a box of tissues in the basement.

So that’s my recommendation for you this week.