Karous: The Beast of Re:Eden (Nintendo 3DS) Review

It's hard to imagine a modern game being more stripped-down than this. Karous: The Beast of Re:Eden gives control of this Gundam/Transformers-type thing that has a sword, a gun, and a shield, and then presents a series of timed missions wherein a certain number of enemies have to be killed, or destroyed in a certain way. In earlier stages, this involves destroying a certain number of enemies with particular weapons, but later stages remove these requirements—and they don't get any more interesting.

Throughout this experience is a cacophony of music that will drive virtually everyone to turn the volume down completely, because it's so relentlessly hyper-modern. Everything about The Beast of Re:Eden, as can be guessed from the title, is hyper-modern. The palette consists almost entirely of grey and blue, and the background variety is far too limited for a contemporary game.

Nothing is ever explained, either. Nearly every piece of equipment has a level attached to it, and using that equipment will gain levels, but what effect this has on gameplay is a mystery. There are ten different gun and sword types, six different shields, four bombs, and fifteen secondary items to choose from, but unlocking them all is a tedious process because of the timed missions.

Every mission is timed, and there usually is exactly enough time to complete the mission and make one or two very minor mistakes. These all involve some variation of "destroy things," and the standard options involve shooting slowly or whacking everything with the sword. Some enemies are coloured blue, quite inexplicably, and drop little things that rush off the stage, which makes them impossible to pick up if enemies are shooting projectiles that have to be dodged. It's okay, though, because these drops don't appear to do anything, anyway.

The Beast of Re:Eden is difficult. In and of itself, this isn't a problem, because masterpieces like Super Meat Boy have proven that difficulty isn't a bad thing. However, the difficulty here is unfair. Enemies appear in alarming numbers that simply can't be eliminated with the slow gun before they release a spray of projectiles all over the stage, and that are far too dangerous to approach and use the sword. Compounding this is the fact that the shield is activated not by pressing one of the unused shoulder buttons, but by simply not attacking for a few moments, which means the shield can't be triggered on demand.