Afro Samurai Review

Title: Afro Samurai
Available Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: Atari
Distributor: Megarom
Genre: Action
Age Rating: 18+

Review By: Geoff Burrows | NAG Magazine (June 2009)

DO YOU KNOW WHAT cool is? Samuel L. Jackson. I say “what” and not “who,” because Samuel L. Jackson is an entity. He’s ‘cool-in-a-can’. If Samuel L. Jackson can make Snakes on a Plane watchable, he can make any game playable. By that token, surely a game featuring the voice of Samuel L. Jackson (shortening his name is forbidden), more blood than a leech farm could handle and visual style to challenge Tarantino’s greatest works should be fantastic, shouldn’t it? Sadly, this is not always the case, as Afro Samurai sets out to prove. No matter how cool your game is, it still has to have a good dose of actual game to keep its head above water.

The setting, as you’ll no doubt figure out, is that of the anime (which is based on an older manga series) of the same title. The game runs alongside the show’s story, ducking in and out of its narrative for a few bouts of combat in between cinematic sequences. The thing is, without having seen the anime (or, I assume, reading the manga), it’s almost impossible to know what’s actually going on in the story. It feels like the game’s missing a good hour’s worth of footage that should explain the transitions between levels, or who that group of bearded guys are, or why on Earth Afro would want to do any of the fluff between starting the game and claiming the Number One Headband. The manual does its fair share of explaining, introducing a few characters and the setting established in the show, but it simply doesn’t do enough to make up for the complete lack of logic you’d expect stringing things together.

Thankfully, if you enjoy beat-‘em-ups and can look past the lack of character motivation (heck, many of us spent the best part of the early nineties doing this quite happily), you’ll discover an action game that boasts a complex combat system, incredibly stylish visuals and a rich, varied soundtrack. As the young, out-of-place samurai, Afro, players will journey to a variety of gorgeously detailed scenes. Quaint Japanese towns, training academies, underground volcanoes and even the Ark (at least, we think it’s the Ark) will lie before you and the onslaught of foes just dying to keep your blade dripping with blood.

Combat is handled with a mix of two attack types, kicks, jumps and parries. While button mashing certainly has its place here, and will likely get you through the first few chapters with ease, the real beauty of this system lies in its flexibility. Players are free to mash to their hearts’ content, but the speed at which they dispatch their foes and the ease with which they defeat the (sometimes rather challenging) bosses will be determined by their use of more advanced combinations and manoeuvres.

What this boils down to is having the ability to play the game exactly how you want – making the combat system only as complex as you desire. Should you need the depth, it’s there in bucket loads. This complexity, you’ll soon find, is quite necessary to keep the game interesting, as Afro’s enemies literally pour down in waves. I have a painfully distinct memory of fighting five waves of separate attackers at one stage, only to be followed by four identical waves of ‘big guys with big swords’ whose deaths served only to lower the invisible barrier around the arena so I could drop a switch.

Monster boxes, repeated boss opponents and all manner of doneto- death beat-‘em-up tricks make an appearance here. While they’re certainly frustrating (especially when separated by cut-scenes that can’t be skipped) in their repetition, they have this uncanny knack of reminding one of games like Golden Axe – something that might appeal to the old-school crowd.

When Afro’s not ‘amputating’ Japanese peasants in straw hats, he’ll spend his spare time zipping around the levels in search of his next challenge. Unfortunately, Afro should have spent a little more time at the Prince of Persia School of Awesome Level Navigation and a little less time working on perfecting the infinite cigarette. Movement through the levels is handled in a mostly ‘jump here, fight these guys, now jump over here’ fashion, interspersed with tacked-on wall runs and similar gymnastic feats and a couple of levers to flip or ropes to cut. These parts of the level are so false and so poorly integrated into the regular game dynamic that they’re better off just staying at home, although they do at least provide a brief reprieve from simply running to your next slaughterhouse.

The HUD – or lack thereof – needs some special mention here. Plenty of games have shown us their approach to an HUD-free system, but Afro Samurai performs this task particularly well. Whenever an enemy is slain, a small pendant dangling from Afro’s sword glows red. Regular twinkles indicate that Afro is ready to unleash his Focus Power to dive into bullet time-like slow motion to perform devastating attacks and take evasive action. Charging up the pendent can also be performed by unleashing extensive combinations (the longer the combination, the more blood splatters on the screen).

It’s tough to discredit a game that is, at its heart, entertaining. The combat is fast and flexible, the visuals ooze style, and Samuel L. Jackson’s voice combined with Wu Tang Clan member RZA’s soundtrack come together to deliver a game that is slick enough to slide up hills and is genuinely fun to play, but frustrating. You’ll find yourself repeating sections a number of times, annoyed by cut-scenes you can’t skip and, if you’ve not watched the anime show, completely and utterly confused as to what exactly is going on. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.

Afro Samurai is fun to play for the 15-odd hours of game time, but will probably be long forgotten by the time the next mindless beat-‘em-up comes along. It’s a pity, really, because it brings some interesting mechanics to the table and does so with real class. If only there was more underlying substance.