Gamesugar

The demo for El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron has been available on Xbox LIVE for a while now, though you may have overlooked its strange offering, as I initially did. In my capacity as an official Sugar Human, I recommend you reconsider.

The demo takes place in what might best be described as a bizarre drug induced hallucination; a world made of shadow and glass, laced together like a spider’s web. At one point, the perspective shifts to that of a side-scroller, where I leapt across rolling waves of clouds and flying rocks as the sun rose and fell, replaced by some ominous face in the background, again and again.

The demo is strange and dreamlike; sheathed in angelic armor that breaks away to reveal what appears to be some kind of surfer bro in jeans, the protagonist platforms through areas that seem only tangentially related, finding demons to fight in glassy arenas made of light and dark.

I challenged a boss, only to suddenly find myself somewhere else, platforming again, as in those strange dreams where you walk through a door to find the nature of the dream has completely changed.

It’s going to be a pretty thin summer for games this year, so it may be worth your time to check out this bizarre action entry; I played for half an hour, and though I’m not entirely sure what it is that I played, I can tell you that it was awesome. El Shaddai will arrive in North America on August 16 for the PS3 and Xbox 360.