Azure Striker Gunvolt (Hands-On) (Nintendo 3DS) Preview

Clearly Inti Creates is not shying away from its Mega Man heritage with even Nintendo's booth attendants at EGX 2014 stating right from the off that this is 'from those guys that did Mega Man before'! Fair enough, since this does not pale in comparison to the venerable Capcom line of platform action shooters in any way.

The early stages started off very slow, easing players into the experience and introducing the main lightning bolt feature that can be used to zap enemies from anywhere on the screen. At first it seemed like the radius of the energy ball around Gunvolt needed to actually touch any oncoming threats, but it quickly became apparent that this was indeed not the case, something that came in very handy when eventually reaching a large boss battle where getting within a close proximity was almost impossible. A balance must be struck, though, between dodging incoming fire, shooting back and using the lightning ability, though, or else Gunvolt will overheat.

Although the Nintendo attendant could not comment, Azure Striker Gunvolt definitely has the feel of a game that requires online leaderboards, since it actively encourages repeated playthroughs of stages in order to rack up the highest score possible. Sure, this is an action platform outing akin to Mega Man, but it also rewards gamers with more points for combination kills and ramping up levels of attack by stunning enemies with a pistol a few times first (changing the colour of the target circle around a foe) before unleashing the lethal voltage strike. Miss something or forget to level-up an attack? A quick replay of a stage is not tiresome at all, since each one is jam-packed with action.

Story details have since been revealed in an official trailer, but sadly the story elements needed to be skipped over in this hands-on due to time constraints. However, for the purposes of the demo, the story was not actually required to get a feel of how good this is turning out to be. It was merely enjoyable enough to get into the swing of blasting bad guys in groups and then frying them all at once with the lightning ability for the maximum score. This certainly has the makings of a must-have eShop download, if the first taste is anything to go by.