Puppeteer
For: PlayStation 3
From: Sony
Three and a half stars (out of five)
Puppeteer is just nuts. As in, ridiculously insane. I'm serious. It's ... it's just ... crazy. You know?
So you control this little character that is sort of stuck inside a play, and the theatre is full of dark corners and strange beasties and freaky things, and your head keeps coming off, but that's OK because you discover new heads, so you can collect and interchange them, and soon you get these scissors that allow you to fight enemies and get to out-of-reach places and ... take a deep breath.
In simple terms, it's a side-scrolling platform game, set in a variety of interactive environments with theatrical themes.
Your little bloke is called Kutaro, who has been turned into a puppet. A headless puppet.
But don't worry, kiddies, it's the funny sort of headless. And you can find new heads!
The key to your exploration and battling skills is a pair of magical scissors - Calibrus - which can cut (well, duh) but also be used for movement. They can slice through anything made out of fabric or paper, and allow you to skip up and down levels at great pace.
A neat control system allows you to use the right stick to move around your friend, Ying Yang, a ghostly cat, who can explore levels and find goodies for you.
Puppeteer is many things: quirky, whimsical, fantastical, occasionally quite dark. Above all, it is fresh.
There really is nothing quite like it, even if comparisons with LittleBigPlanet are inevitable.
It occasionally tries too hard, and some of the cut-scenes are painfully long and oddly placed, but for the most part, it's a delightful romp.
What's interesting, of course, is the timing of the release of a game like Puppeteer.
The next generation of consoles is just around the corner. It is a time when hyper-realism is king in gaming.
But this little title reminds us that magic can be found in many virtual forms.
