Gaming & Culture —

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom gives you a monster and a mission

A surprise game that seems to have come out of nowhere, Majin and the Forsaken …

What do you get when you cross one of the creatures from Where the Wild Things Are with Ludo from Labyrinth? The slow-speaking, good natured Majin. You team up with the creature early in Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, and even though you have slightly different goals, it's a good friendship to have when you're trying to save your land from the oddly oily, evil forces of darkness.

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom

You team up with Majin within the first hour of the game, after being helped to find the legendary creation by a number of talking birds and what appear to be sewer rats. Going into the game cold, it took me a second to figure out if the character, or the rat, was providing the exposition. No matter. When you bring Majin a fruit that restores some of his power and allows him to break free from his 100-year captivity, he considers you a friend, and the adventure begins. Using the right trigger and the controller's face button, you can tell him to interact with different objects, fight enemies, crouch so you can climb on his back and reach higher landings... it's a co-op game where your partner is controlled by the AI, but the friendly brute is easy to control and interact with using a series of contextual commands.

Majin speaks in broken English, and it can sound somewhat contrived at times, but it's hard not to be feel protective of the great beast as he talks about a woman he needs to save. You begin to explore his memories to learn the secrets of his past. The game is also heavy on the puzzles, and clever use of both characters—as well as a variety of walls to push over and levers to throw—will keep you moving forward. The world is lush and colorful, but the graphics can also be just a little bland in places.

Majin is a terror in combat, slamming into groups of enemies. You assist by running into the battle and keeping a few busy so he doesn't get overwhelmed, and you can finish off enemies with a combined attack that seems like it shakes the ground. Majin is also given the ability to roar, stunning enemies before the battle.

Fighting with Majin is a thrill, and his ability to magically refill your health is likewise interesting; even with his speech patterns sounding more written than created he's a character you'll want to spend time with. This isn't a game that will blow you away instantly, but the more I play the preview code the more I'm interested in the story of how this world fell, and what these two characters will discover about their own pasts. If you'd like to give it a try, there's a demo available now on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom comes to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 23. The game wasn't on our radar before, but this has been a very pleasant surprise

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Channel Ars Technica