MediEvil is the game that wouldn't die
Sony continues to pick the bones of this cult favourite
The existence of the MediEvil remake was brought to my attention fairly recently by the venerable Mssr. Parish, with the exultation that it seems like "a very Stu kind of thing". He's absolutely right, of course. It certainly seems like one. You would think I would be all over MediEvil, what with my twin obsession with skellingtons and slightly crap platform games.
But you're wrong! Ha ha ha, you're wrong! Because I don't like MediEvil! I never have! I thought I would, but I didn't! And I've tried, believe me. I've owned it on PS1, bought the first PSP remake and downloaded the original to my PS3 because surely I do like it, really. But I've just never quite been able to get into it.
Describing it as a "slightly crap platform game" is a little unfair, I suppose, but in my experience there isn't a whole lot of platforming. Mostly, you just walk around hitting monsters with an admittedly broad selection of weapons. It feels imprecise, throwaway, a bit cheap. It's fun, but it's not "remake this twice" fun, you know? It doesn't have the art game prestige of Shadow of the Colossus, but even that didn't deserve two remakes, he said iconoclastically. MediEvil has a following for sure, and I've seen it described as appealing to people who like "quirky British humour". Well, I like quirky British humour, and MediEvil's idea of such seems to extend to "voices that sound a bit posh". Not exactly The Wrong Trousers, is it?
Honestly, if they're going to remake PS1 games, I'd like to see someone take a run at Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. We need more games like Croc. That is, games with hilariously small environments that nonetheless link together in a way that makes them really methodical and satisfying to navigate. In fact, I want this more than anything I can imagine. I'm genuinely angry. Medievil gets two remakes and Croc doesn't even get one. Remake Croc twice, you cowards.
Anyway, erm, Medievil is out tomorrow. Again.
