You want Sin and Punishment? You get Sin and Punishment. The masses have spoken and Nintendo have listened – through tiny mics embedded in the Wii remote speaker, we would imagine (your voice is transferred to the Wii, where the blue light blinks it out in Morse code, which Iwata reads from his hot air balloon outside your bedroom window). That, or the fact that you lot leapt upon the Virtual Console release of the original Sin and Punishment like a lion leaping on a gazelle that got great reviews in all the mags, but never actually wandered into his hunting grounds due to waning interest in the format. Or something.

Enough of the why, what of the what? A scrolling-shooter unlike any other, the game plays out with your character existing in the foreground, blasting into the background at hives of alien scum. Pluralizing the enemy is important: Sin and Punishment 2 deals in quality and quantity.

Developers Treasure (the chaps behind legendary shoot-’em-ups such as Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun and Bangai-O) hinted at interest in the Wii remote a good six months before the autumn 2008 announcement of this sequel, so expect a fully implemented pointer-aiming system. We imagine it echoing the original: letting you auto-lock weapons at a weaker power or manually aim with the remote for oomph. Assuming it’s implemented well enough, pointer-controller aiming in S&P2 could be the best thing ever. Perhaps a bit of MotionPlus for added accuracy?

And you’ll need the oomph: just one frenetic ten-second trailer reveals battle tanks, more battle tanks, foot soldiers, a giant battle chicken, rolling alien eggs, soldiers on surfboards, a demonic sea turtle, a similarly demonic eel, aerial gunships and tadpoles. Lock and load: this is going to be the hardcore gem of 2009.

Jan 21, 2009