Nothing here is as it seems, and Hyper Light Drifter catches you off guard, presenting to you its beautiful, melancholy world before shocking you with its brutal, all-encompassing combat. As you pass silently through their camps they mutely inform you, through comic book cells, of the violence they have survived at the hands of an unknown enemy. Some terrible event has left the most of the inhabitants of this world dead and those who remain are haunted by the terrible things that have happened to them. There are echoes of Studio Ghibli, most notably Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind here, nature and machine are mashed and mangled together in this post-apocalyptic setting. Heart Machine’s action RPG is a breathtakingly beautiful alien world where enormous sun-kissed water temples, deserts, snowy mountain paths and lush jungle are intertwined with mechanical remains. Hyper Light Drifter achieves the same deception. Zatoichi throws his enemies off balance by disguising his true nature, his sword and his skills hidden out of sight, there’s no reason to suspect this shambling figure could, at any moment, release a devastating tide of death.
He silently moves from fight to fight, protecting the innocent, drawing danger and evil his way. Playing Hyper Light Drifter reminded me repeatedly of Zatoichi, the wandering drifter travelling a lonely road for reasons not entirely clear. A deer darts across his field of vision and stops, for the briefest of seconds they lock eyes what are we doing here? Where are we going? The deer disappears into the storm as our hero gathers himself and trudges forward, slowly up the steps, sword at the ready, on to the next fight. He pulls his cloak around his face, sword tucked out of sight. He sits, rests a moment, a trail of blood dotting the snow behind him. Stumbling through the blizzard after a particularly violent battle, our hero limps to the bottom of a set of crumbling steps.
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