If Viewtiful Joe and Gregory Horror Show weren't enough, Capcom have made yet another unique game that isn't attached to any of its other long running franchises. It’s good to see developers doing this instead of just churning out sequel after sequel, and even though you could argue Capcom do make a hell of a lot of sequels from their various franchises, they also create fresh games like Under the Skin too.
You are Cosmi, a three-year-old inhabitant of The Mischief Planet. As part of a tradition, and presumably to make him some sort of king mischief-maker, he has to travel to various planets to do some mischief making as part of his training. This time he chose Earth.
The aim of the game is to go into 7 different levels, and collect coins. There are only a few different objectives for the whole game, and the most common one is to collect 500 coins within a 10-minute period. To obtain coins, you have to go up to humans and cause panic. Cosmi is equipped with a special ray gun which when fired at humans, sucks them in and duplicates their appearance so he can turn into them. If you press 'circle', you change from Cosmi into the human, so you can walk around the level and people will think you are one of them. You can only change when you are standing under a little green UFO type-changing zone that hovers above the ground, and there are many of these dotted around the levels (they constantly change position too). Once you are in human appearance, you go up another human and panic them by performing a move on them. Each human in the level has a selection of skills (there are many in the game), varying from shotguns, fireworks, karaoke singing and big dinosaurs (no, really). To perform an attack using these new skills you go up to another human (or group of humans) and press X (after choosing your attack via the OSD). They will drop coins when they’re scared by your attack, and then you can go and pick them up (and they don’t hang around for ever, so you have to be fairly quick). When you have run out of attacks (each human has five), or if there is none left you like, you go and suck in another human and start again.
You can get hit by enemies or the rival CPU character, and when this happens the first time, your human appearance is stripped of clothing, leaving you running around in your underwear (which causes much frowning), and if you get hit again in this state, your true appearance is revealed and you’re returned to Cosmi’s alien form. Humans are scared of little blue aliens with a gun, and as a result of being seen, you lose a chunk of your collected coins, and you must quickly find a human to suck in, and then a changing zone to go and turn into a human again – it can be quite frantic.
Every so often there is something called "Panic Time!" which gets activated, and during this you can obtain (and lose) many more coins. Humans spill out many coins when you panic them, but you can also lose coins either in the traditional method, or by one of the themed attacks. For instance one level is set in an ocean bay with a huge pirate ship in the distance. During panic time, unless you are disguised as a pirate (not all the humans in the level are pirates), you will get attacked by cannons. A target cross hair appears on the floor and you must escape it. This is pretty hard, as even if you are well away from the target when it locks, more often than not the cannon ball’s explosive spread will you when it impacts. This can get frustrating, and sometimes you get the feeling you're being pick-pocketed as you lose just enough coins to keep you under the 500 requirement just as the time runs out. Thankfully this doesn't happen too often, and it can quite easily go the other way in your favour, and you can pick up hundreds more than you need to.
The levels are themed nicely, ranging from a busy city and a casino type level, to one set in a certain Raccoon City, with zombies lurching around, and Nemesis chasing you! In this level, the rival CPU character helps you out, and it’s none other than Jill Valentine from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - nice touch, Capcom!
Under the Skin is cell shaded like Viewtiful Joe and Gregory Horror Show. However, just like those two games, Under the Skin has its very own style, which works beautifully with the theme of the game. Colours are bright and solid, and the thick (but not too thick) black edges around the characters and the levels give a distinct feel and look to the game. The music is very good too, with a typical Japanese feel to it. Although the cell-shaded style is used a lot these days, this game suits the style perfectly, and it isn’t just used for the sake of it.
Unfortunately part of Under the Skin's problem is its size. There are seven areas in the game, and bar a couple of them you can beat each one on your second or third attempt. As a result of this, the game is very short indeed, and you can finish it within a day quite easily. There is a two-player mode to help stretch the length out, but it doesn't really hide the fact that the game is short. To be honest though, as the game has very simple mechanics and is relatively basic, you probably wouldn't want the game to be much longer than it is. The game is retailing at £29.99, which is nice to see, but I can't stop myself from feeling that Under the Skin could almost be a mini-game from another, more ambitious game. If it was retailing at £19.99 then it would be much more appealing, but then it might suffer the curse of the budget game whereby people might think it’s cheap because it’s not very good. This isn't the case as it’s a fine title that is enjoyable to play and will genuinely make you laugh – it’s just rather small and in my opinion not quite worth the asking price. Definitely worth hunting down when it’s cheaper though.
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