Developer Ignition Tokyo Publisher Ignition Entertainment Format PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Release 2011
The tale of Enoch, as told by Sawaki Takeyasu, has the quality of a parable. Time and space are malleable: hundreds of years can pass by between levels, while the voices of angels can conjure translucent staircases out of mid-air. El Shaddai’s characters feel mythological, a cast of aloof and distant archetypes, all the way down to Enoch himself, a near-silent messenger of God who says little beyond an optimistic mantra: “No problem. Everything’s fine”. The world itself shifts and contorts like a half-remembered dream, prioritising form at all times over function. It feels like the natural conclusion of a fascinating experiment conducted by Ignition Tokyo in what would be the studio’s sole release: what happens if you hand a character designer the reins of a character action game?
Even though this was a change of disciplines for Takeyasu – remains his only director credit to this day – the genre at least and . The result is a game that doesn’t bother with a lengthy narrative intro, literally dropping you from Heaven to Earth to round up the souls of fallen angels within minutes of hitting Start. There’s no time to hang around: the game is too eager to introduce its adrenaline-fueled carnival acts, with you cast as ringleader.
