CES 2012: Army Corps of Hell Hands On

Developer: Entersphere Co., Ltd. / Publisher: Square Enix / Release Date: February 22, 2012 / ESRB: Mature

Given the game’s soundtrack, it’s appropriate that playing Army Corps of Hell is a lot like listening to metal. At first it may seem disorienting but all of the apparent complexity fuses together to form a pretty straight forward and fast moving experience.

Playing as a king that’s been sent to Hell, you command a legion of goblin minions as you make your way through enemy-filled levels. The set up isn’t dissimilar to something like Overlord or a badass version of Pikmin. Your goblin posse can consist of up to three types of fighters: spearman, magi, and soldiers, each of which provides different combat advantages. The battles I fought through in the first few levels were pretty simple with no more strategy needed than send-troops-at-enemy-enemy-die.

But simplicity isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when your game is on a handheld platform like the PlayStation Vita. Army Corps is super easy to pick up and play in small chucks. The levels are over with quickly and yet still satisfying because you’re always picking up loot. In between levels you can use the loot you’ve acquire to craft speciality items and upgrades for your goblin dudes.

But it’s Army Corps of Hell’s presentation that truly has my heart. The look of Hell and the creatures that inhabit it are almost as metal as the game’s soundtrack. The music has been carefully selected from Japanese metal bands. The full roster of artists has yet to be released but as a huge metal head I can say that what I heard was pretty damn awesome.

Army Corps of Hell seems like a game perfectly fit as a launch title for the Vita. It’s plenty original and will definitely get noticed by those fond of slightly ironic Satanic imagery.