Say what you will about tablet and device games (or the devices themselves as gaming platforms), but once in a while you get to see something that’s just plain flat-out awesome enough to make you want to change your mind completely.  For me, that would be EA and Chillingo’s spectacular He-Man: The Most Powerful Game in the Universe, a classic side scrolling action game from GlitchSoft that’s going to shock many with how good it is. Despite being developed in a relatively brief time (it was started a few months ago), the dev team has managed to make a game that looks fantastic (you really have to see it in motion in person to appreciate this) and has a great sense of humor about itself while being a blast of nostalgia older games can enjoy with their kids as they introduce the character and his friends to a new generation of gamers…

Everything clicked in the build I saw at EA’s Naughty or Nice event yesterday and I’m betting real money here that the game sells like gangbusters upon its launch. While it wasn’t hands-on to press at the event – watching a producer take He-Man through his paces made for a more than convincing selling point. Sure, the entire game is touch-based, but everything from movement to the combo-based hack and slash, platforming and special-move-packed gameplay worked flawlessly.  A physics system adds a nice additional layer of depth to the game as He-Man can use parts of the environments to take out enemies or even pick up a bad guy and toss him at others coming his way.  The story doesn’t even pretend to be “serious” here – Skeletor whips up a trap for He-Man in the form of a tablet game and musclehead takes the bait, showing up at Castle Greyskull only to end up having to fight for his life aganst a horde of minions and a bunch of bosses.

I got to see most of one early level, a bit of a boss fight and small portion of a later level where the challenge ramps up pretty fiercely, so the game is definitely not a dirt-simple one-note affair. In addition to a number of great (and necessary) special moves purchased at the Eternia shop with coins earned during play, He-Man can also call for brief assistance from some of his fellow Eternains such as Man of Arms, who will appear onscreen to blast enemies with a laser cannon before disappearing. The game’s 25+ stages will feature familiar locations from the show, a bunch of gameplay goals to accomplish, plenty of unlockable bonuses (toy packages, comic covers, original art reproductions from the show, game production art and more) and overall, is one of the best device games I’ve seen to date.

As noted above, the HD visuals are amazing, as is the quality of the animation.  Sure, all the characters are a great deal more stylized than they were in the original show, but you’ll actually see some of the early production are that shows the dev team went with a more “normal” look at first before going through a few different models before choosing the lovable lug you see in these screenshots. He and everyone else in the game looks closer to toys than ever, but everything is fluidly animated and manages to look very close to a playable cartoon. Fans of WayForward Technologies outstanding 2D stuff will be impressed, as should those who love sprite-heavy games with nicely done parallax backgrounds that look hand-painted. While this is only an iOS game, I can see big things on the horizon for this one should Chillingo take it to PSN, Xbox Live Arcade and Nintendo’s WiiWare (for the Wii U, of course).

Nitpickers will most likely note the lack of voice actors from the show, but personally, I could care less for a few reasons. If the talent wasn’t available or the cost to hire them would have added unnecessary costs to the development budget, it makes not too much sense to bulk up the cost of any iOS game just to gain the approval of a smaller audience of nostalgia freaks. Hell, if you’re as old as I am, you’ll probably have stepped away far enough from some memories that it’s perfectly acceptable to see them rebooted under the proper conditions. For this game, it’s pretty much perfect timing (Happy 30th, He-Man and company!). The game should be out before the end of the year, so keep an eye peeled for it. Hopefully it won’t be buried in the App Store under a pile of rubble (or Piggies), as this one deserves to be a mega-hit. You’ll have the power soon enough and you’ll definitely want to show it off to others so they can get some as well…