Konami Gamers' Day 2005 Hands-On: Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory
Peter Chung meets Chris Cunningham with... interesting results. We go hands-on inside.
Published: January 31, 2005
Rengoku does have the distinction of being the weirdest of the U.S. PSP titles out there, for what that's worth. It's also rather original, at least in terms of storyline and production values. It's a bit hard to identify with the esoteric themes of a self-aware cyborg in a post-apocalyptic world (unless you just click with that stuff), but perhaps we haven't quite delved enough into the story as we know it.
In the far-flung future, we've built robots for war and eventually, they end up destroying nearly everything. Not especially surprising, given the course that we're on these days, but still a fairly simple premise to launch an action game off of. These robots, apparently designed purely for combat in a war that rages without a need or a reason for end, can be outfitted and equipped with weapons and armor on every limb and torso, making them adaptable, configurable killing machines.
When one such machine wakes in the Tower of Purgatory, a multi-tiered, randomly generated series of eight floors hovering above the scorched, desolate surface, it falls to... well, it, I suppose, (meaning you) to guide it to the top to find out exactly why this machine has not only become self-aware, but what its purpose in the bleak futurescape of a soulless husk of a world is all about.
From what we gathered of the mostly-translated demo available at Konami's Gamers' Day event last week, the game is more or less pure action, and geared towards the crowd that like Chris Cunningham videos and an unquenchable thirst for game that involve excessive dodging and killing with multiple buttons. Double-tapping the d-pad (the analog stick isn't used for control) allows swift dashes, while pressing R1 when a reticle locks onto an enemy will allow you to lock on and strafe around them. Tapping the four shape buttons attacks with any of the equipped items on the head (triangle), left (square) or right (circle) arms, or torso (x).
Lest you think we don't dig that, think again. Mapping multiple weapons, be they projectile or melee, to various parts of one's vicarious digital cybernetic body becomes oddly addictive, but for what reason, we still can't seem to figure out. Regardless, the methodic process of exploring every level of the tower, repeatedly returning to a safe room with an arachnid-like multi-tendril-interface access port that allows saves, health refills and equipment changes (important since every time you use a weapon, the health of that part of your body degrades, eventually becoming useless) feels decidedly... Well, Japanese.
In the far-flung future, we've built robots for war and eventually, they end up destroying nearly everything. Not especially surprising, given the course that we're on these days, but still a fairly simple premise to launch an action game off of. These robots, apparently designed purely for combat in a war that rages without a need or a reason for end, can be outfitted and equipped with weapons and armor on every limb and torso, making them adaptable, configurable killing machines.
When one such machine wakes in the Tower of Purgatory, a multi-tiered, randomly generated series of eight floors hovering above the scorched, desolate surface, it falls to... well, it, I suppose, (meaning you) to guide it to the top to find out exactly why this machine has not only become self-aware, but what its purpose in the bleak futurescape of a soulless husk of a world is all about.
From what we gathered of the mostly-translated demo available at Konami's Gamers' Day event last week, the game is more or less pure action, and geared towards the crowd that like Chris Cunningham videos and an unquenchable thirst for game that involve excessive dodging and killing with multiple buttons. Double-tapping the d-pad (the analog stick isn't used for control) allows swift dashes, while pressing R1 when a reticle locks onto an enemy will allow you to lock on and strafe around them. Tapping the four shape buttons attacks with any of the equipped items on the head (triangle), left (square) or right (circle) arms, or torso (x).
Lest you think we don't dig that, think again. Mapping multiple weapons, be they projectile or melee, to various parts of one's vicarious digital cybernetic body becomes oddly addictive, but for what reason, we still can't seem to figure out. Regardless, the methodic process of exploring every level of the tower, repeatedly returning to a safe room with an arachnid-like multi-tendril-interface access port that allows saves, health refills and equipment changes (important since every time you use a weapon, the health of that part of your body degrades, eventually becoming useless) feels decidedly... Well, Japanese.
