Sumioni: Demon Arts

Acquire Corp, PS Vita, Android **

Acquire Corp, PS Vita, Android **

Sumioni Demon Arts has been a long time coming to Europe. It’s now here and has brought some rather nice art with it. In fact, the visuals are the best part of the game. It’s based on Japanese ink ash art, or sumi-e, and certainly stands out from the crowd of Vita titles. It’s more memorable than the plot, which is a run-of-the-mill battle against the usual bad guy. You control ink demon Agura, who is tasked with defeating evil. You’ll probably be too busy gawping at the visuals to criticise the plot too much. The game also uses the Vita controls really well. The touch screen is a far more intuitive way to control Agura than the physical controls on the Vita. You draw on the screen to cast spells to defeat enemies and, in general, manipulate the world around you. Some levels are more challenging than others, but the game gets a lot of leeway because of the visuals and the controls. Take those away and it’s fairly mediocre, though playable.