Sin and Punishment was one of the best-kept secrets on the N64. It never received a North American release until it was put out on the Virtual Console a while back, whereupon a whole lot of people who'd done some deeply unwise things to their Nintendo 64s got to feel a little silly.
Sin and Punishment 2 is a shooter from Treasure, and like the original game, it is set in a parallel universe where a post-apocalyptic city - I want to say it's Tokyo, but I may just be assuming that it is - is being invaded by aliens and the only way to defeat them is by being as ridiculously goddamned awesome as you possibly can. It is a game about detonating massive groups of aliens while dodging their return fire with your hover skateboard, or perhaps deflecting it with your laser sword.
Of course, it's not an easy game, but then, Treasure games usually aren't. If you're unfamiliar with the studio, they're responsible for handing out some truly memorable asskickings to the hardcore crowd over the last few years, such as Ikaruga, Gunstar Super Heroes, and (the exception to their usual trend of making challenging games) Wario World.
I got to play through a few minutes' worth of the game at E3, and it's pretty easy to start with. One of the new playable characters, Kachi, is the game's "easy mode"; she has a charge attack that allows you to lock onto multiple targets and blow them all away at once, which lets you focus most of your efforts on dodging their attacks. The stage takes the form of a running gun battle set in, over, and amidst the ruins of a city, leading up to a fight against what can only be described as a giant chicken.
It takes some guts to bring out a sequel to this game, particularly a sequel that's getting a full retail release; this is very much a hardcore twitch shooter, and you have to be pretty up on your gaming to know about the original game at all. Just the same, I enjoyed playing it, and I'm glad to see something like it coming back.
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