DEMON HUNTER

POSSESSOR(S) is a stylish and atmospheric Metroidvania with little friction

- By Shaun Prescott

Possessor(s) is a quiet game by most measures, but it starts all whips akimbo. It's set in a walled corporate city in the aftermath of a mysterious cataclysm. Teen protagonist Luca loses her legs during the calamity and is left for dead, but fortunately it's not long before she's possessed by a demon called Rhem, who grants her some new insectile legs on the proviso they collaborate on an escape from the ruined city. As far as pacts with the devil go, it's pretty rational. The 20-odd hour Metroidvania that ensues has a lot to admire about it, but doesn't buck nor create any trends.

Before the fall, the corporate doyens of this walled city, Agradyne, siphoned a resource called Chroma from captured demons, which was used to power the batteries they sold. In the wake of the cataclysm, demons have escaped their vats and possessed everything from angsty teens through to pot plants.

That means Luca must fight against demon-possessed witches' hats, demon-possessed security cameras, demon-possessed filing cabinets and more, usually with a baseball bat or a hockey stick. It also means that she's in constant dialogue with her possessor Rhem, who looks like what would happen if Astarion played in Type O Negative. These demons aren't fantasy demons: they're hipster demons, whose insouciance hides an undercurrent of trauma born of their status as sites of resource extraction for greedy corpos.

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