Now for the problems. While the music blares, the rest of the sound effects seem to be pushed to the back somewhat. There are occasional odd quiet moments, and not all of the actions performed by characters on screen are audible. Brother 6 laughs at you after he burns you with his flamethrower, but you don’t hear that laughing. That’s also a shame, because the laughter is an indicator that he is vulnerable, something you may just want to know while in a boss fight with a guy more than twice your size. This is tolerable though, by itself.
The camera will take some getting used to. You control the camera with the right stick, and it is inverted left to right and up and down. While you can change the latter, you cannot change the L/R inverting. This will make some people angry, because not everyone likes to game that way; in fact, it’s the first thing many gamers change when they turn on a new game and find their view inverted.
It would be far easier to deal with the camera if the reset button wasn’t mapped to the pressing of the right analog stick. As stated, battles in this are quick, and require you to be constantly mashing on different attacks buttons. In order to reset the camera, you need to quickly stop mashing to readjust but get back in time before the enemies slice you to pieces in your realigned viewpoint. Sounds easy, but enemies have their own combos to perform on you, and if you get stuck in one and can’t get out; being able to see straight in front of you isn’t going to make you feel any better about dying.
Again, this is an issue, but it’s not game breaking. You just need to have some patience to put up with it in order to experience the game hiding behind the hurdles. What is a glaring issue with the game though, is the story. Or lack of it. Afro Samurai is based off a well-established story, and if you are familiar with that tale, you will not feel like anything is out of place.
If you happen to be new to the series though, and happened to pick up the box in the store, see that Samuel L. Jackson was in it and decided that, “Hey, maybe I do want to slice countless bad guys in half with my katana while listening to The RZA” you will be lost.
Sometimes Afro is in the present, and sometimes he’s in the future. The game doesn’t really tell you which is which (or why) and you have to find out based on how many lines are in your character’s gentle/stern stare, depending on where you are in the Afro Samurai time line. Characters are introduced, then disappear, or are introduced and soon killed off, with little in the way of story to explain just why these things are happening. I understand that this is the kind of game that could be described as “fan service”, but it’s tough to lure in new fans when you build these kinds of walls in your story.
When you take that one major error in storytelling-an important component in a brawler, especially considering how many other there are to choose from on the market and the need to differentiate yourself-and combine it with a problematic camera and the occasional weird technical issues, you find that Afro Samurai is not without some major warts. The game is also on the short side, coming in around six hours, though you do unlock a more difficult mode upon completion.
The good news is that the positives shine bright enough that you can forgive and forget for the most part; people being introduced to Afro Samurai may not be as forgiving though, because they will have no idea what is going on. If you’re looking for something to play, give this a spin, but if you’ve only got money for one game and are looking forward to the heavy release schedule in February, you may want to sit on your cash for now.
This review is for the Xbox 360 version of the game, but the title also appears on the Playstation 3.
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