El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is an unusual name for a game, to say the least. Some basic research revealed that El Shaddai is a Judaic name for God and is often translated as God Almighty. Metatron is the name of an Angel in Judaism, and he’s mentioned sparsely in medieval Jewish texts. I guess that’s why I hadn’t heard of him. Since my interest in esoteric religious stories isn’t quite as strong as my interest in games, I set aside my research and picked up a controller.
As Enoch, I was tasked with making my way through a fallen angel’s tower with the intention of ending his unsanctioned adventure on earth. I was aided in my quest by Lucifel (an archangel, among several) and causally informed that failure would result in a Great Flood that would cleanse the earth of everything.
The first thing that leapt out at me was the acid trip artistic design. There were many different visual styles and generally they were great. The initial trip to the tower looked a bit washed out, but once I was inside, I found myself running on winding red and blank platforms with city lights spread out below and African singing in the background. It really was impressive. I also made my way through 2D silhouette levels, icy mountains, rocky cliff top paths, a hand painted level in the sky, a high tech city and a number of other memorable environments. The excellent music was just as varied as the art.
The actual gameplay was where I began to have problems. While traversing the generally linear levels I encountered the same pattern over and over again. I would run along a path and where it widened or a circular area appeared, I would enter battle mode, fight several enemies, and then continue on my way. While the camera angles did change, I had no control over them. This was particularly annoying during some the 3D sections. I can’t remember the number of times I missed a leap because I couldn’t accurately judge the distance between platforms.
Two sequences were particularly irritating. The first involved geese with bags or boxing gloves or something on their heads (don’t ask me) dive bombing me while I tried to jump between floating rocks. Unfortunately the camera was fixed at a point too close to the action so I could never tell where these stupid birds were coming from. The second was a 2D vertical platform section that demanded absolute precision on several consecutive jumps. If my leap was marginally too shallow, I’d slip off the edge. If it was slightly too deep, I’d hit some spikes get knocked back. This could in turn push me into spikes opposite and below and result in an annoying trip to the bottom of the level.
The combat was better, but not by much. My piecemeal armour would fall off bit by bit as I accumulated damage until I had to face enemies in my jeans. Getting floored wasn’t a problem as I could mash buttons to get a new lease on life. I could engage my enemies in hand to hand combat or assail them with one of three weapons. The Arch (which looked a bit like a Klingon Bat’leth) was a fast melee weapon which also allowed me to float, which made some of those difficult jumps a little easier. The Veil was slow but powerful. It looked like a shield that could split into gauntlets. In its shield form, it could block almost any attack which made it handy for the boss fights. Finally, there was the Gale, the one ranged weapon in El Shaddai. It traded relatively low damage for speed.
Combat involved a single button to attack and another to block. Jumps could be combined with attacks and I had the ability to purify my weapon to get evil gunk off it so it was more effective. Some special attacks were also available and combos relied on rhythm and timing. When I compared the combat to games like Bayonetta and God of War, El Shaddai just felt too simplistic.
There wasn’t much in the way of enemy variety either. I encountered little shadow creatures (goblin things), floating fireballs, and those stupid geese. Other than that, I faced armoured humanoids equipped with one of the three weapons types along with the occasional big troll-like brute. Bosses (and mini bosses) thankfully added a bit of variety and forced me to mix my use of the three weapons.
I found the plot quite confusing. I was never certain of what was going on or where I supposed to be. Part of the story involved four flying geese archangels who were there to protect and guide Enoch, but I’m not entirely sure what they did. I also couldn’t tell you why Lucifel needed to report my progress to God on a cell phone. I get that it was saving my progress, but it didn’t really make sense. Perhaps someone should look up the meaning of ‘omnipresent’ or ‘omnipotent’, or better yet, both.
Some parts of the game had me s-l-o-w-l-y walking into the distance in a screen that was featureless apart from a light in the distance. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t good gameplay and I had to do it about eight times on one level. While I had no choice but to walk forward (or turn the game off) the voice over droned on about making choices. As a final gripe, when the game eventually ended, I didn’t even realise I was fighting the final guy.
Despite the points outlined above, this is not a terrible game, but after my experience with it, I don’t think it’s a good game either. Apart from the amazing, standout graphical design and sound, there are better examples of combat and platform titles out there. Know what to expect before you pick it up, and you may enjoy El Shaddai more than I did. Or, perhaps you may want to buy it for someone else and then enjoy the audiovisual experience from the sidelines.
