Knights Contract (Xbox 360)

In knights contract you play as Heinrich. A man cursed with immortality. He ages, he still feels pain, his body can still be broken, but the poor bugger just can't die. Old scarred and seeking an end to his torment he meets gretchin a witch who promises that she can put an end to his suffering if he'll protect and aid her in ridding the world of her corrupted kin ressurected by the manicacle Dr. Faust first.

This is the simple premise behind Knights Contract. Save the witch, save the world. Although this is no ordinary Escort mission. Gretchin being a witch is able to summon fantastic spells to aid Heinrich as he does battle with all manner of beasts with his huge sythe. The combination of attacks is incredibly satifying and there's some incredibly viseral fun to be had cutting a swaythe through enemies before executing them in ways similar to the brilliant bayoneta.

The main hook of the game however is the protection element. Heinrich is immortal but Gretchin isn't. If Heinrich takes a substantial enough amount of damage he will fall and be revived by mashing the a button untill he gets back up. However if gretchin's life bar runs out it's game over.

This would not be an issue, in fact it sounds quite a good idea. If only Gretchins AI didn't border on suicidal and there is, short of litterally having Heinrich pick up and carry her which thankfully recovers her health. No way to control Gretchin. That's not so bad you may think, but you have to realise that if gretchin dies at any point you will be thrown back to the last checkpoint. Which are few and far between and appear non existant in boss fights.

Which leads us onto the next tragedy of this potential classic gone awry. The Witches ie bosses you are tasked with killing look amazing, there has obviously been a lot of care gone into thier design. Each twisted by whatever form of torture killed them with in thier previous lives and every battle is a feast for the eyes. The problem is, that every last one of them are so frustrating you'll want to throw your controller through the tv at times. There's so many attacks which will leave heinrich flat on his back and Gretchin dead in seconds, that the fun is quickly sucked out of the preceedings.

However should you manage to slog through the fight any feeling of fufilment will quickly disolve as you are tasked with completing some of the most unforgiving QTE sequences ever. Something which should be the interactive coup de grace they are in games like God of War almost instantly becomes nothing more than an incredibly annoying memory game where one false move results in instant death and you'll be sent straight back to the beginning of the fight.

I fel a lot of the frustration could of been taken away if the game offered some kind of cooperative multiplayer element but it doesn't. short of leaderboards there are no online features at all. Which is probably the biggest shame of all. The game is about two people cooperating so why the developers didn't ear mark this as a two player game is baffling to me.

However, despite these collosal missteps I found it incredibly hard to stop playing Knight Contract because the characters and world were so easy to invest in. Heinrich and Gretchin's quest for redemption is such a compelling one, the relationship so well written you want to see what happens next, which kept me pushing on to its conclusion despite its flaws.

Potentially there is a lot to do as well your first playthrough will clock in at over 10 hours and then you can still go back to improve your rating on various sections as well as unlock new costumes wepons and magic for heinrich and Gretchin through successive playthroughs. However for most one playthrough is quite enough.

Knights Contract is a tough game to love. Your relationship with its characters and gameplay are at time incredibly rewarding and other times outright absusive Which is a crying shame because beneath the frustration of cheap boss fights and dimwitted AI is a fantastic narrative with well designed characters and an incredibly clever ending that you'll want to see.