Box Copy
Blood. Sacrifice. Fire.
You are the Voodoo priest
Akuji. Claw your way through the vast 3D underworld to exact your
revenge on your murderous brother. Savage your enemies with razor sharp
claws. Incinerate them with primal voodoo spells like hell blast and
spirit strike. Sometimes death is only the beginning.
Discussion
Crystal Dynamics, a company who was behind some of the most beloved
characters and story arcs in the PlayStation era brings a very mixed bag
of goodies and problems to the table with Akuji the Heartless.
You are the title character Akuji, a Voodoo priest who is murdered, his
fiancé captured, and most of his tribesmen killed off by his evil
brother. Taken into the care of a curious underworld demon, you are
given the chance to exact revenge on your brother from beyond the flames
of hell, but with certain prices to be met.
Let me start of the review by getting one thing out into the open –
Akuji really is a fun game to play, with some great level design and
good variation on the boss fights. That said, the game suffers from a
severe personality disorder that hinders an otherwise well-told story.
Essentially the problem comes not from the levels themselves but from
what you do in them. Before each stage, Akuji delivers a soliloquy that
brings his grief, torment, and hunger for revenge to light in the same
way that Raziel did in Soul Reaver. The problem surfaces when you take
your first steps and realize that this dark, violent game is more about
item collecting than soul searching and revenge. In Soul Reaver, you
were in this empty, abandoned world that painted the right amount of
bleak to coincide with your puzzle solving and enemy encounters. With
Akuji, your quest for revenge suddenly takes a back seat to collecting
100 of this for a free life, collecting that which opens up boss fights,
and then collecting various power-ups. Every time you try to brush this
glaring fact aside to enjoy the game, it’s brought right back into your
face by your demonic guide.
With that off my chest, the only other faults are purely technical, most
of which can be forgiven except for the glaring mistake of forgetting
invisible walls. Essentially, unless you’re actually in a four-walled
room, any open environment is quite literally floating above an eternal
abyss. Take one wrong step anywhere near the edge and you plummet to
your death. This small problem suddenly turns into a very large one when
it’s constantly happening during blind or poorly angled jumps higher in
the level. When you die, everything is reset including any family souls
you have collected. Were the skulls easily obtainable and not off the
beaten path it’d be fine. Several of them are placed on precarious
cliffs or thin ledges, which means lots of hit or miss adventures.
The sound and voice-over work are very well done. I’m usually wearing
headphones during game play sessions to not wake up / disturb the
roommates, and it comes in beautifully. Akuji’s voice actor brings in
just the right amount of cynicism to the role, as our ‘hero’ begins to
unravel his job in the bigger picture. He is a weapon, a tool, a fool,
and at all times a desperate entity that will literally do whatever it
takes to get back his love. I especially like the voice of your
underworld guide; the small hint of glee that drips off of his demonic
assignments is a delight to listen to.
Control is about what you could expect from the game, though I wish
Akuji’s last minute ‘hang’ animation would have a higher percentage of
succeeding. In two of the later levels you must jump from a 45-degree
angle and catch the ledge, then pull up. You literally have to turn
mid-air to ensure you get him to stick. Combine that with the bottomless
pit problem mentioned earlier and you can understand why curse words
were invented.
Overall I got about 3/4ths of the way through the game for this
discussion. I plan on finishing the game eventually, but there’s only so
much one can take of missed jumps and re-run collecting before you
really do say, “To Hell with it.”
If you can grind your way through the minor technical issues, Akuji
really is worth the investment and time.
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Trivia
- Using only 1
Save Block, the game allows for 4 total Save slots.
- Included on the disc
are playable demos of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Tomb Raider
III.
- If you let Akuji
stand still for a few moments, he'll do a somewhat mock Wolverine
tribute by clanging his claws together like Marvel's guy does.
- Speaking of
Wolverine, Akuji has an upper cut move that actually looks almost
like Wolverine's same action in X-Men: Children of the Atom.
- Akuji's guide
through the underworld wears sunglasses, despite having no eyes and
being inside a darkened tomb.
- If you're into outthinking level designer's this game has some pretty wicked
placements of the various family souls you must find. One is located
above the very door you enter the level from, except you can't see
it until you are returning to the locale from the other side.
Another is hidden behind the exit door - you simply need to walk
around the exit portal to snag an other wise 'hidden' soul.
- Akuji's voice is
none other than Richard Roundtree - Shaft!
- The staff page in
the manual is listed as "Baron Samedi's Minions"
- Be careful of your
combo attack! Our hero can sometimes move forward ever so slightly
as he swings. If you're on a small ledge or too close to the outer
rim of a stage, you could accidentally slash yourself right off the
field!
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