2005/07/01

Samurai Western

You’re a samurai in the wild wild west looking for a fellow warrior, trouble is, you get drawn into the woes of the town your at and as your code of honor directs, you help out where you see fit. Such is the premise behind this game with an interesting concept. It’s just too bad the execution was a bit off.
First thing you notice is the rather impressive intro where shadowed characters duel it out, but once you get to the actual game, you get the feeling like your looking at an old PS1 game. The characters look very bland and almost stick figure-ish. After playing games like Devil May Cry and God of War, you know it’s possible to do a better job than what was done here. And the music is rather generic too.
And don’t get me started on the voice acting. When the hero is speaking in Japanese, it’s ok, but it sounds just horrible when he starts speaking English as it sounds more like he has a fat lip than a Japanese accent. All the other cowboy voices also can get annoying as they sound like your typical forced John Wayne impersonations.
As for the main game itself, there really isn’t much on offer other than to slash away at everyone on screen. You basically select a mission, equip your character, and after a brief story sequence, you just start slicing away at all the enemies on screen. There isn’t even any point to it. Just attack EVERYONE. And you don’t even know what your doing since there’s no time limit or head count, with the level just ending abruptly that it feels like your just filling in time. During Boss-fights, you fight a boss, but the other levels in between are just pointless. No puzzles to solve, no tricks, no nothing. Just attack and kill every baddie you can find until the game suddenly decides to jump to a cut scene to end the level.
The controls would have been a welcomed change since there are some innovative moves your Samurai can pull off, like actually deflecting bullets and thrown objects with your sword. Problem is, you’d need the reflexes of a real samurai warrior to time it so your sword slashes deflect the bullets. So you’ll most probably find yourself running around and dodging to get to your enemies to slash them rather than use the cool bullet deflection strategy that the intro and cut scenes pride themselves on. Using combo attacks also doesn’t really help you much cause your character always does a brief pause at the end of a combo, which leaves him open to attack. It also seems like there are invisible walls in this game. You see a fence with an open area behind it, yet you can’t jump over the fence to get there, but rather run all the way around to find a opening. And even jumping can be a hassle when you need to jump accurately to get to enemies standing on rooftops.
Overall, this is something your might want to rent or borrow to try out before even thinking of purchasing. It’s good for a once over, but not long term as all there is once you beat a level is to just try it again to beat the record you made the previous time. So this game is not recommended for me, even if the story and concept does sound interesting. You can do much better with the greats like Devil May Cry and God of War.

Ratings:
Graphics – 6
Sound – 6
Gamepley – 5
Lifespan – 5
Overall – 4

UPDATE: While there are some twists to the plotline later in the game, as well as more objectives to each level, it still gets redundant really quick with you having to just take out anyone in your path. You'll only want to finish this game to get the unlockables, such as hidden playable characters and character accessories, but probably won't stick around for much else.

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