Kagero II: Dark Illusion Hands-On

TOKYO--Tecmo is showing off the latest entry in its Deception franchise on the Tokyo Game Show floor. Kagero II: Dark Illusion is the fourth entry in the unique series, which began on the original PlayStation. The core of the game is equal parts action and equal parts puzzle game that revolves around the time-honored tradition of setting traps and murdering folk--which is always a good thing. Although the TGS demo was brief, we took it for a spin to see what new trouble we could get up to on the PlayStation 2.

The two-level demo was laid out simply and followed the basic flow of the previous entries in the series. You'll start out with an enemy in a room. Your goal is to kill it using the various traps at your disposal. To make that happen, you'll have to familiarize yourself with both the layout of the room and the best ways to lay your traps. You'll be able to take a good amount of time by switching to a pulled-back strategic view of the room and rotating it to be able to determine the best places to lay your unpleasant surprises for your foe. The array of traps at your disposal will include several different options for doling out pain and death. Some will be tied directly to the room you're in, such as spiked sections of wall that shoot out and impale, while you'll lay others, such as bear traps and explosives, yourself. As with every game in the series, you'll lay out your traps in a room and then hop into the game to spend the rest of your time coaxing your foe into specific spots to trigger the mayhem. Once you start to get the system down, you can get fancy and perform all manner of painful and deadly combos, such as holding foes in place with a bear trap and then bringing a spiked gate down upon them. Although the demo we played only involved two rooms, it seems as though there haven't been any significant changes to the familiar system.

As far as the look of the game goes, Kagero II: Dark Illusion features a new graphics engine that's high on detail. The character models are looking good and animate well, while the environments are equally well done. The two rooms we saw offered a good contrast to each other and showed some of the variety in the game. The first room is your standard brightly lit castle interior with suits of armor, large columns, and an ornate tiled floor. The second room was a dingy sewerlike locale that was much darker and featured running water down the center of it.

Although the demo was brief, we're liking what we saw of Kagero II: Dark Illusion. The series is still one of the most unique around thanks to its refreshingly evil premise. Sure, other games let you save a princess or keep the world from being destroyed, but how many actually let you catch folks in bear traps so that you can drop pots on their heads? Kagero II: Dark Illusion is currently slated to ship sometime in the near future for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. A US date has yet to be announced. For more updates, be sure to check GameSpot's coverage of the Tokyo Game Show 2004.