Review: La-Mulana Ex

Originally released 10 years ago for the computer, La-Mulana was a 2D side scrolling platformer out of Japan that payed homage to those classic video games that were brutally hard. Now known as La-Mulana Ex, the game has been remade and localised for release on the PlayStation Vita, hoping to draw in a new audience.

You take control of an Archaeology professor who’s been tasked with exploring ruins and uncovering the treasures that lay within them. You’re basically Indiana Jones; the main character model even looks like him. Throughout your adventures you’ll need to solve puzzles and defeat a variety of monsters and bosses as you work your way between each daunting screen within the game. When you begin the game you start off with your main weapon — a whip — and from here, as you progress and earn money, you’ll be able to buy new items and more powerful weapons in order to further your adventures.

The updated art style for La-Mulana Ex looks great; they’ve kept that old school pixel art appearance while still making it detailed enough to come across really nicely on the PlayStation Vita display. Unfortunately the art style is one of the only areas that has been brought into today’s age of gaming. La-Mulana Ex controls like it’s a game from 20 years ago – it could have used some improvements.

There’s no sense of momentum when trying to control your jumps, so you’re often finding yourself missing the mark of where you are trying to land the character. This can quite frustrating as a simple mistake like this can easily lead to your death. Dying in this game prompts you back to the title screen where you’ll have to reload your last save, losing any progress that you just made – which can be quite a decent amount of time.

My biggest problem with La-Mulana Ex comes in the way of how it handles its difficulty. There’s a difference between making a game that is hard, and then there’s bad game design. From the very start you are given no clear direction of where you should be going or what you should be doing. You’re just thrown into the deep and just have to figure it out for yourself… or look on the internet. I spent a few good hours not known if I was even in the right area of the game — or if I was even progressing further – because there isn’t much of a story.

In some sections I would look at elements on the screen and didn’t know whether they were part of a puzzle that needed to be solved – maybe I didn’t have the special gizmo yet to crack the riddle? Or if this thing I was looking at on the screen was just part of the games background art. The game just completely lacks in providing the player with any sense of direction.

Some of my favourite games over the past few years have been games that are very challenging; Dark Souls 2 was my Game of the Year for 2014. While the Souls series has this tag of being a hard game, they have some amazing game design behind it which drives the player in the right direction. Just because you have a difficult game doesn’t mean it will be a rewarding experience for players. Is the game difficult because it’s actually quite challenging, or is it difficult because the game lacks good design?

La-Mulana Ex fails to reward players for its challenge because at times you’re just guessing and hoping what you’re doing is the right thing. If a difficult game is what you want, you can definitely find a better one elsewhere without the frustration that La-Mulana Ex offers.

La-Mulana Ex was reviewed using a promotional code of the game on PlayStation Vita, as provided by the distributor.