Pure Platinum

Out of all the goodies at this year’s Eurogamer one of the most pleasantly surprising titles was to be found nestling in the over 18 section. Compared to the mile long queues of Modern Warfare and Battlefield 3, Anarchy Reigns’ half dozen or so screens seemed a meagre offering, but as one of the few titles at the show that didn’t extend an already commercially successful franchise it was an inviting prospect.

Developed by the dream team that is Platinum Games (made up chiefly of Clover Studio’s Atsushi Inaba, the creative force behind the excellent Okami, and Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil fame) Anarchy Reigns is multiplayer arena brawler with a vicious streak a mile long, reminiscent perhaps of the ill fated Playstation title Thrill Kill, with perhaps a dash of Platinum’s own brawler Mad World (from which protagonist Max makes an appearance) thrown in. Players duke it out in a series of arenas utilising a variety of heavily stylised and ridiculous wrestling moves and power ups. My friend Adam was impressed, saying it brought to mind his much loved Dreamcast game Power Stone.

Platinum continues its efforts as one of the world’s most daring studios; taking tired genres and giving them a life giving adrenaline shot of excessive style and energy. Having already brought the action adventure game back from the brink in the form of Bayonetta and delivered a sturdy creative kick up the arse to the third person shooter with Vanquish, the studio’s attempt to rearm the old school brawler is admirable. I would suggest here that I can’t wait to see what Platinum do to the driving game, but I feel that they may have already been beaten to the finish line by Burnout Revenge (but I would certainly be happy to be proved wrong).

The incredible thing about this studio is, despite their efforts to eschew the modern trend of patching up proven franchises rather than taking a leap of faith and developing a fresh IP, despite their eclectic approach to genre and their inability to stick to one style of game almost like a kid at Christmas with too many toys, Platinum’s games have an undeniable stylistic cohesion that marks them unmistakably apart as an auteur studio.  This unity is partly in terms of style – Anarchy Reigns shares with Bayonetta a wonderfully perverse randomness (where else would you find a pimp, a ninja and a robot amongst the roster of playable characters?) – but also an incredible polish in terms of execution. Additionally Bayonetta and Vanquish each employ a game changing mechanic that is so well executed that it succeeds in elevating the game to the top of its genre, in Bayonetta this came in the form of ‘witch time’ and in Vanquish that incredible sliding manoeuvre. Platinum Games’ ambition is little short of taking the excitement and intensity of the mid nineties Japanese arcade and bringing it to console.