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Indiana Jones must spend long hours off-camera trying half-baked solutions to insurmountable ancient riddles - but his death-defying successes make for more thrilling fiction. The whip-wielding protagonist of La-Mulana, Lemeza Kosugi, has a lot in common with Indiana, except his own story is told via a series of gruelling failures.The original 2005 La-Mulana was Nigoro's 16-colour tribute to the unforgiving difficulty of 1980s-era MSX games, as well as the exploration-based environmental storytelling of 90s games like Super Metroid. The recent remake for the PlayStation Vita offers some additional content - hence the "EX" in the title - such as a Monster Bestiary, which catalogues the various manticores and serpents that Lemeza encounters in the course of his scavenging and tablet-scouring. The remake does not alter the original resolution or implement any touch-screen functionality on the Vita; the game appears in a letter-boxed square at the centre of the screen.
The unapologetic difficulty and repetitious die-try-die-again nature of La-Mulana lends itself well to a handheld device. Playing in short bursts on the go helps make the game feel more rewarding, even though progress is slow and the puzzles are punishing. The PS Vita version, designed by Pygmy Studio, also claims to include more sign-posting and player direction than the original game did, but La-Mulana still has many mysteries that can only be understood by players willing to search online for a digital copy of the manual.
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