This is such a wonderful little game. Treasure just takes a simple mechanic and sees how many different boss fights they can make out of it. No levels, just a dozen good old boss fights (well, there are the filler levels with the giant-breasted women you can snap for extra points, but those are only handy when you’re running low on points, and not even necessary if you’re really good at the game because you can get points from the bosses, too, it’s just harder). For all its light-heartedness, it also contains the most disturbing scene in any videogame I’ve ever played, including the Silent Hills, Resident Evils, and Fatal Frames (when you lose to Demonika, the “haunted room” boss).

In case you’ve never heard of Stretch Panic, the title comes from the fact that the lead character is a little girl with a possessed scarf with a hand at one end, that she can use to grab and stretch enemies and the environment. Hurting enemies primarily revolves around stretching and “snapping” them, or grabbing onto them and wiggling the right stick until you send yourself flying through the air to headbutt them. Each boss has a different, secret method of scoring points, and points are used to unlock further bosses and also to use “scarf bombs” by pressing both analog sticks and then madly wiggling them, which do a lot of damage and are also the only way to exorcise the evil spirits from the bosses (who are all actually your sisters) and beat the game.

I think this game gets less love than it deserves because it’s so nice and simple, and because the controls take a little getting used to. Overall it’s just wonderfully creative, though, and oozes Treasure-y ingenuity.

It can also be found most places for $8 new, so if own a PS2 but you’ve never played it you really don’t have an excuse.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 1:28 pm and is filed under video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.