The Scorpion King: Sword of Osiris (2002)

 

Scorpion King: Sword of Osiris was released to tie-in with...The Scorpion King movie that spun off from Stephen Sommers's Mummy films. Often this means death for video games, but Sword of Osiris had the good fortune of being developed by WayForward Technologies, which around the time of the game's release had begun to distinguish itself by creating games that hearkened back to the glories of 16-bit console gaming in an era where 3D game design was still finding itself.

The game is meant as a sequel to the film and begins with the player controlling Kelly Hu's character, Cassandra, who is lured to a temple only to find that the villains, the wizard Menthu and his partner Isis, have tricked her into thinking they were keeping the Scorpion King Mathayus prisoner. 

It's one of those fake-out levels video games sometimes use, where the player controls a side character who's meant to be killed/lose the big boss fight at the end of the level. Menthu and Isis defeat Cassandra and kidnap her while the real Mathayus enters the temple to rescue her, so the player repeats the same level but in a slightly different way because Mathayus, being the Rock, plays differently than Cassandra. He can switch between a sword (strong but more limited range) or dual sickles (weaker but covering more area), and he can use the sword to walljump to get to higher platforms. Once completing the introductory level, the object of the game is laid out: Cassandra mentally contacts Mathayus and directs him to uncovering a magical gauntlet called the Hero's Gauntlet, which will help him find the Sword of Osiris, the only weapon that can destroy the Scorpion Stone, which the villains are planning to use to conquer the world. The Hero's Gauntlet, similar to Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet, has four notches in the knuckles that are unlocked after the Mathayus defeats the boss enemy for each level. Picking up fire jewels sometimes dropped by enemies powers up Mathayus's weapons, lighting them up with flame and dealing double damage with each attack but taking hits from enemies depowers them until more jewels are found.

Sword of Osiris isn't a particularly difficult game. Enemies tend to have easy patterns to recognize and adapt to and the game generally avoids the sort of dirty tricks that were common in 1980s and 90s games; e.g., blind jumps leading to instant death. The main thing to grasp in terms of overcoming it is knowing which weapon to use in which situations. It's also not a very long game, with only seven levels, but ultimate victory could be delayed in that gaining the Sword of Osiris, needed to defeat the final enemy and unlock the true ending, can only be done by locating six runes that lie within treasure rooms hidden in each level beyond the opening. Being thorough will allow the player to find the runes but it's easy to miss one or two before you know what to do and that means restarting the game and going back through earlier levels. The game does have a simple password feature to note progress, so it doesn't have to be completed all at once. 

WayForward's game are generally not very ambitious in terms of design, but they tend to be very competent and reliably fun meat-and-potatoes action games while sporting excellent pixel art and animation. Sword of Osiris was one of the first games that showed what the company could do - the next game it released after was Shantae, which is now known as a classic Gameboy Color title and the foundation of the company's signature franchise. Sword of Osiris is vibrantly colorful and adequately scratches an itch one might have for some classic side-scrolling hacking, slashing, and platforming. It's superior to any of Rastan's home ports, for one thing, and if it was released today with the license scrubbed off of it, it would probably be welcomed as a quality entrant in the retro game design scene. There's also an argument to be made that it might be better than its source material. The Scorpion King movie was serviceable but it didn't spark a sword-and-sorcery revival despite somehow spawning four more direct-to-video sequels. Sword of Osiris is probably more well-crafted as a game than The Scorpion King is as a movie, although neither is essential.