Afro Samurai Review: Nothing Personal, It’s Just Bad

Samuel L. Jackson is something of a mythic figure, legends abound that the actor picks script by playing eeny meeny, miney moe and without reading more than the title. If that myth is true, then apparently there’s something to his method if it led him to the manga inspired Afro Samurai series. The original story of Afro Samurai and his quest for revenge is told in a manga series that was later adapted to a five episode series that is as astonishing in its masterful storytelling as it is for its action and gore. The Samuel voiced Afro and his fast-talking cohort Ninja-Ninja are seeking revenge against the gunslinger, Justice, who murdered Afro’s father when Afro was only a boy. The pursuit is complicated by the fact that Justice is the current holder of the “Number 1 Warrior” headband, a rank that can only be challenged by the “Number 2,” the problem being that the Number 2 can be challenged by anyone, and usually is. Surge Developed the Afro Samurai game for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 as a retelling of the five episode series’ events, with some reinterpretation (to expand for gameplay) and plenty of rehashing of the show’s major scenes as well.

In reviewing a game like this though, there’s the problem of whether to interpret it as simply fan service or acknowledge its flaws purely objectively without regard to how awesome Samuel L. Jackson is for being a part of this project. The game looks gorgeous and is animated with a style that feels right at home to fans of the show. Even people who simply have a basic familiarity with anime/manga style can appreciate the game’s aesthetics. The game has some loading issues, I found the load screens to be a bit long considering how simple the level designs were. The levels are all extremely linear, with some encouragement to explore and be aware of your environment in searching for “mementos” of Afro’s father, but the game is incredibly formulaic. Special moves, like wall running and wall kicking are locationally sensitive. So you can’t just use a wall run in any situation, only where the game calls for that specific platforming. In a day and age where Devil May Cry and Tomb Raider are giving gamers those kinds of freedoms as basic rights, I found this to be a major stunting flaw in Afro Samurai.

Taking a page from Hideo Kojima’s book, the loading screens offer their own bits of entertainment and exposition, even if they are a little creepy. One positive, is that once you sit through a loading screen, should you fail a level it can reload almost immediately, which is probably going to happen to virtually anyone who plays this game. This is because there’s one enemy in the game who’ll always be taking cheap shots at you and contributing to your failing objectives and losing battles: that enemy is the game’s camera. The camera is extremely jumpy and unresponsive, and will continually allow enemies to get cheap shots in from off screen before you can see them, and those enemies will typically get two or three more shots in by the time you swing the camera around to face them.

The game lacks a quick target lock button, or camera auto center button, which makes the 20-1 brawls (which are 95% of the game) more difficult than they should be. Even without the camera centering ability, the God of War method of zooming the camera out to see the whole “arena” would have been better (it would have showcased the gorgeous environments better). The game’s camera does do some things well: When you use Afro’s “Focus” ability, the camera does center behind Afro and color drains from the screen so you can focus your swing and cleave your enemies in two properly. There’s tons of gore in this game, and bad language: the developers embraced the game’s M rating. You’ll make regular work of the basic enemies cutting off arms, legs and heads. The game’s engine is even designed to dismember bodies as they’re cut, not just in pre-cut models, so you’ll really get a nice sense of being a part of the action.

This is where I start warning in earnest: Afro Samurai is a button masher. You have two sword attack buttons (light and heavy) and a kick attack. No combos need be learned, just tap buttons as they feel right, use your focus when enemies glow red and show they’re susceptible, block ever so often, and you’ll be fine. The game is trying to have a Prince of Persia feel in terms of Afro’s movement, and a God of War combo style, but the camera, level design and battles aren’t intuitive to getting in depth in either the combat system or in the platforming segments. The most perplexing thing about the game system though, is the levelling system: throughout the game, Afro will earn experience and level up, but you can neither return to areas to gain extra experience (as you can in any RPG or even God of War), nor can you be lazy and try to skip enemies, which means you’ll wind up leveling up at a standard rate regardless of your ambition or obsessiveness, thus trivializing the level up system, which also made no discernible difference in Afro’s abilities and characteristics.

The story is what will bring most fans in: getting to have a more interactive relationship with a character they may just have fallen in love with through the show. Ninja Ninja is as hilarious as ever, and because of the interactivity of the medium, the developers altered the story somewhat. In the show, Afro is a complete villain who is only out for revenge, he admits to it in the first episode of the series. However, because of the fact that you, the gamer, are in control of Afro, and you’re the one fighting the numerous bloody battles that make him a villain in the show, the developers altered certain dialogues and events from the show to give Afro more leeway moralistically, which was a bad choice in my opinion. The battle against the sword master for the Number 2 headband is a full boss battle, not just Afro cutting down his master who does not move to stop Afro as it played out in the show. Thus, you’re given the leeway of having had to fight against an old coot who was trying to kill you in the game (which he did to me a couple times thanks to the aforementioned camera), and Ninja-Ninja’s speech after the fight ends sets the player up in that comfortable moral ambiguity that is much safer than what Afro treads in the original story. The point and beauty of Afro Samurai is that the titular character is not a hero, he’s not admirable, just incredibly devoted and you find yourself admiring him for that and nothing else, even when it turns out you find that you may just have been rooting for the villain all along.

One thing really shines in the game though: the RZA inspired soundtrack (even thought the ads I saw claimed the RZA did the music, the game’s credits say otherwise). It sets the mood of Afro just as perfectly as the score from the original show and gives you that wonderful sense of your “playing the show” as you chop people to the awesome tracks (I’m listening to “When the Smoke Clears” as I type this). It makes you almost forgive the flaws of the gameplay and mechanics as you get immersed in the experience and are taken away by the hip hop beats.

Closing Comments:

My final appraisal of Afro Samurai is two fold. For those who are fans of the show, I’d recommend at least a rental, but cannot definitively encourage anyone to buy this: you’ll have fun for an hour or two hacking and slashing as Afro and listening to the masterfully voiced Ninja Ninja, but it’ll make you want to watch the show more than continue playing beyond that. For general gamers not interested in the fan service and original material (although I unreservedly recommend the TV series to any and everyone), I’d caution them that this game has little depth, is frustrating and ultimately a poor game that stands unfirmly on a few very nifty ideas.

Score: 5.5/10

Video Game Reviews 101

Back in the day when I was a fat grade schooler, I used to relish the third friday of every month. For some reason, that was the friday where a) I’d always manage to have $25 in my pocket, and b) Toys ‘R’ Us would release it’s budget game deals of the month. What these were, were games for the SNES and Genesis that were sold for 20 dollars. Back then, paying anything more than $30 for a game seemed criminal to me. What’s great is, I still played some of the best games for the SNES on this budget: Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, F-Zero, Mega Man X, Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island, Mario Kart, etc.

Nowadays, I generally walk away from game aisles cursing myself for being stupid enough to think twenty dollars can get me anything even remotely worth playing. Games are crazy expensive. No, I’m not questioning production costs and all that, but still, games aren’t cheap. at $59.99 a pop (plus tax depending on where you live), you’ve got to pick your games carefully, unless you’re one of those kids who can buy everything that comes out, in which case I hate you. Please stop reading my site now if you are.

If you’re not though, then you’re like me. You try to pick a select few games to be excited about before their release, then you try to be careful in your following through on that excitement. Which is to say, you check reviews and plan your purchase based on what trusted sources (hey, like me!) have to say about a game. How do you know you’re reading a trustworthy review? What telltale signs can you count on that you should take as a sign to cancel your Amazon preorder? Well there are a couple points you should keep in mind that have served me well.

Developer history is always key. There are very few developers that are brand new working on major console games these days, even if individuals retire or move on, the team in general is experienced and brings that experience to their future projects. That said, take a look down the developer’s history: have they had a line of duds? Developers sometimes try new things, which don’t always turn out well. FPS shooter developer Infinity Ward testing their mettle as a platformer developer for the Spider-Man movie game? Not such a good fare. When they moved onto the Call of Duty series? Great times were had in Modern Warfare.

Previews will always talk up games, it’s the assumed role of every previewer (even though journalistic ethics doesn’t dictate such) that they feel the need to trump up every game they preview as the next best thing. I’ve found the simplest way to test the true feelings is generally in the conclusion. Is the previewer saying something to the effect of “we’ll have to wait and see how it comes out” or are they already willing to just out and say “I can’t wait.” Search for doubts akin to the former and those’ll point a game that’s shaping up to be just decent, if not mediocre. Previewers know that if they come out and call a game the next best thing in a preview without some kind of caveat, the game had better look like it, and if it doesn’t, they’ll cover there asses with a few choice phrases.

The best indicator I’ve had for a flop is probably the most last minute of them all. How soon before a game is released do reviews start cropping up? http://www.gamerankings.com is the best for this I find since it’ll compile all and any reviews from major sources for any given game automatically. A good game will generally have reviews up earlier rather than later. Killzone 2, in spite of not being released for a month, already has several; and they cry that the game is spectacular. The most recent “bad” game I can think of is Haze, which didn’t have reviews post up until the day of its release, and the same for the Hulk movie-based game.

Why am I so sure of this method? Simple, developers can’t work the way I do on an essay for my journalism class: they don’t finish a game the night before release date. A finished build of the game has to be ready weeks before the shelf date so they can be produced and sent to the stores. Thus, if developers have a finished build, and are confident it’ll be reviewed highly, they will often send finished copies to major media sources (like IGN and OPSM) to get some legitimate good press and publicity for their games (since reviews are a final judgment in favor of, or against a game). Whereas a developer who isn’t so sure of their final product will withold it from review as long as possible (until release date in most cases) so the reviewers won’t dissuade their consumers from buying their product. Let’s face it, there aren’t too many developers who would argue a shitty product they made is awesome against consumers other than that tool who made Too Human.

I’m fairly confident in these methods, if your previews are harping on the hotness of the lead character and patiently waiting for “kinks to iron out” and to “see how it comes together” then the game may not be a blockbuster (Golden Axe: Beast Rider is the example in mind). If reviews for a given game aren’t popping up before the release date (I’m very bracing myself for the Afro Samurai game at this point, it releases on 1.27 and no reviews have gone up yet for it as I write on 1.26), and if the developer’s resume doesn’t favor a game of a given genre or if their track record is simply in making bad games, these are things to watch for so you don’t waste your money. Or maybe you thought Haze was worth $60? Well, my last proof is this: Haze is now $28.99 on Amazon, and it definitely isn’t being sold as a Greatest Hit.

Prince of Persia Review

Photo courtesy of: http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/877/877054/prince-of-persia-20080527114820938_640w.jpg

The Sands of Time have been blown away to make way for a new Prince in a new world and adventure. The new Prince of Persia sees a Prince who is only such by name, and a new challenge with a new (gorgeous) ally: the Princess Elika. Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia comes at just the right time of year for its adventure. I’m not talking necessarily about the ideal market time for the Holidays during gift shopping, but the spirit of the Holidays. The holiday season is just the perfect time for a game with this much heart and personality.

Prince of Persia falls into that strata of games that many of the hardcore may find too easy. It’s very approachable. As every other reviewer has touched upon already: you cannot die. If you miss a jump in a stretch of some platforming, or are overpowered in combat, your magic infused assistant, Elika (more on her later), will rescue you and take you back to a safe are to regain your footing or your health. A lot of people have cried against this practice, but then again: in what game does your protagonist truly die anyway? If you lose to a boss in any other game, you reload from a checkpoint. Elika is just a physical manifestation of thet Video Game world magic that we’ve come to accept as normal. It displays a great understanding and clever manipulation of the medium to work an ally into seamlessly filling a role that we have innately just expected the technology to do for us. It’s this kind of affinity with the medium the developer displays that pushes Prince of Persia as close to art as can possibly be, if it isn’t art already.

The environments are gorgeous when you cure them of the darkness you’re trying to save the world from, and they are astounding even when they’re overrun with the “corruption” of the dark Lord. There are hardly even a few graphical issues to speak of as you move through the game, and the game renders environments far off into the distance to give you a true sense of scope wherever you are. Everything from the enemies and the environments are well designed and you’ll never feel like anyone or anything you encounter in the world is out of place or was rushed in any way. The cel shaded approach to the design and characters really makes the world a living artistry that, while a risky decision, winds up pulling you deeper into the heart of the game as you run through the gorgeous tapestry of the world Ubisoft has made for you. In short, this world you’ll inhabit in this game is one you’ll feel privileged to explore.

The combat is given similar attention, and this is where I’ll begin pointing out the flaws of Prince. To be sure, the battles are all incredibly cinematic and encourage experimentation to discover the various combos and variety of attacks and strategies to take in your battles. Your battles will always be one on one allowing for constant evolution of your skills in the combat system. They are also crafted with a requirement of elegance rather than random button mashing. The key to victories throughout the game is by landing combos at the right time, the key to getting combos is to timing your attacks properly throughout the combo. Just mashing buttons quickly is the way to screw up a combo and getting yourself mauled by your opponents. Eventually battles can feel repetitive but that doesn’t make them any less of a pleasure to partake in or simply watch as someone else plays. The problems begin with the repetition and continue with how easy things can begin to feel, not just in battle but in the platforming: the Prince never adds any new powers to his repertoire, so the Pr is the same Prince you end with: except for the connection you;’ll form with him and the affinity you’ll inevitably develop for Elika as her powers grow and you help her.

Elika is your ally through your journey to cure the cursed lands in which the game is set. Because of her link with the Prince, she is able to use him as a guide to follow his platforming prowess to reach the cursed areas she needs to cure with her magic. Elika not only fills the aforementioned role of revivalist, but she also allows the Prince to perform the heretofore nonsensical “double jump” with her magic. So now, instead of your character inexplicably jumping again in midair, Elika will use her magic to hoist you into a boosted jump. Elika is filled with personality that shines through in the requisite cutscenes you’ll have to watch in between your action, but Ubisoft also threw in optional interactions you can trigger between the Prince and Elika at will. The conversations that develop the characters and their relationships further are clever, cute, and full of heart you have to appreciate. While the Prince has an inexplicably American accent, the voices still fit even if they do catch you off guard at first. You believe the chemistry the two characters have in their conversations because you believe in their teamwork through the platforming and battles in the game. It’s a small thing, but the Prince piggy backs Elika up vines and ladders, and will do a nice little dancing spin to get past her when they stand together on a narrow beam. Regardless of that flaw, you see the relationship and characters develop wonderfully because Ubisoft synced their gameplay, presentation and story in ways that stand firmly in contention of those who would still claim video games cannot be a medium for artistic expression.

The heart and artistry is where Ubisoft’s current gen Prince of Persia scores its points and really roped me in and could really rope everyone in if they give it a chance: heart. From Elika and her relationship to the Prince and you, to the spectacular environments and fun, challenging yet forgiving gameply: the new Prince’s world is filled with a wonderful heart you’ll inevitably get enveloped in and have fun with. In the end, that’s what these games are about, not scores, achievements and proving you’re “hardcore,” but fun. Prince achieves this with flying colors in the face of its minimal shortcomings. If you give it a chance, even if it isn’t a ‘blockbuster’ this is a game you’ll take with you for years to come and may remember the same way you remember fairy tales from your childhood.

Score: 9/10

Fallout or Get Out: Fallout 3 Review

Bethesda studios can call this one their masterpiece, Fallout 3 has been surpassing gamers’ wildest expectations of what open world gaming can truly be and mean in this generation of console technology. Forget GTA IV if you haven’t already, this one is the true king.

Fallout 3 is set in a not-so-distant future in Washington D.C. where nuclear war has ravaged the land and country itself. You begin the game as a member of an underground Vault community until your father disappears from the vault and you escape in his pursuit. You then emerge to the outside world, a ravaged landscape filled with all sorts of dangers and detail of an obliterated wasteland.

Detail is what defines this game: from the moment you emerge from the vault, your camera slowly comes into focus (since it’s the first time you’re seeing sunlight) and the arid landscape slowly takes form. The land is vast and rife with all sorts of secrets that make exploration worthwhile for both aesthetic and pragmatic gameplay reasons. The landscape is littered and filled with not just scenery, but life also: mutant wildlife roams ready to attack you, super mutants, ghouls, raiders and scavengers can be found all around. On occasion you may even pass on the periphery of them encountering and reacting to one another in a display of how truly realistic this world is.

The game looks gorgeous, and you’ll find yourself marveling at the scenery and character models and designs of the various monsters and other inhabitants of the wasteland in your adventure. While the PS3 version does have some texture lag problems, they’re usually the sort of thing you’ll barely notice out of the corner of your eye before the game catches up and corrects the issue. In short, the game is gorgeous, and may just be too pretty for its own good.

More than just the aesthetics, the gameplay itself is what pushes this game beyond all common bounds. It begins with your character; your first act in the game is design your character (choose a gender, name and design their face to the most minute detail). After that the real customization of your character (and subsequently the game you’ll play) begins. Your character, like any person, has a number of personal attributes (Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, Charisma, Perception, etc) and these inform natural affinity towards specialized skills (Repair, Medicine, Guns, Speech, Lockpicking, Sneaking and about twenty others).

By choosing to distribute your skills towards a given characteristic or skill, you’re leaning your character towards a certain style of gameplay, and thus changing the entire game you’ll be playing and the experience you’ll have. Devoting attention to Strength and Guns, for example, makes you a bit more prone to simply plodding along and getting into fights to solve problems. If you’re a loquacious Odyssean like I made my character (devoting points to Charisma and Speech primarily) you gain special options and ability to convince people of certain courses of action and are led to a completely different experience. Each time you level up you’re given access to numerous skill perks to choose from (one per level) that allows you to increase your skill and truly develop an affinity for a particular style of play.

That leads to the other great part of this game: the true depth. In every conversation you have with Non-Playable Characters (NPC’s) you are given a series of options of how to respond and lead conversation to a unique end. Charisma can lead to options that might not be available to a more Strength inclined player, and Intelligence can offer its own unique options, as can Perception.

This depth goes from the conversation to the game world itself. My friends and I have each logged about the same amount of time on our respective games at this point, but the missions we have discovered by talking to people and traveling around have us facing completely different challenges, areas and experiences. In short, you’re a truly free man(or woman) in this world and you control your actions in this world almost as much as you do in this one. It’s a classically annoying moment when playing games like Grand Theft Auto IV I’d tell my non-gamer friends that it’s an open world game, only to show them a mission briefing cutscene and have them ask me: “Why can’t you kill that bitch?” and having no real answer other than the game needs you not to for the sake of the story. Not so with Fallout 3, at any moment you are free to be polite and negotiate and be the good errand boy, and you are just as free to pull out a gun and cap the person who was trying to use you in the face. Just be aware that you’ll face consequences for your actions. In short, this isn’t just open world, it’s damn near real world gameplay, if the real world were a post-nuclear holocaust wasteland, but hey, stranger things could happen.

While this depth and gameplay seems to push this game to the level of godhood, it is humanized with some flaws and hiccups. First, do not come into this game expecting a First Person Shooter just because of the presentation, it’s primarily an RPG and thus allows for automated fighting and aiming if you so elect. Although this can be circumvented and you can play it as a traditional FPS, the controls are a bit slow and clunky for it to really encourage this and you’ll be challenging yourself more than you probably should.

Besides, the auto-aiming system in the game (V.A.T.S.) is limited by regenerative AP, so you can’t rely on the system. The V.A.T.S. system does make for some cool slow motion kills (I defy anyone reading this not to blow a super mutant’s head into four pieces in slow motion and not be astounded). The game can be a lot to take in at first, and the average gamer will need to be ready to absorb a lot very fast when they’re dropped into the Wasteland, but a challenge is always a good thing and this challenge is worth it. I played the Playstation 3 version of the game and found the presentation gorgeous, but not without its stumbles: textures were occasionally a little slow to catch up and render (especially in the Wasteland) and there are some framerate stumbles and stutters that may raise an eyebrow, but nothing damning of the experience by any means.

Fallout 3 is by no means perfect, but what it gets right is what any game should get right to construct a memorable and immersive experience for its players. Its wrinkles are more than endurable for the sake of such an experience. Beyond the base qualities of core gameplay that Fallout 3 gets right though, is its superlative creation of a world for you to explore and the sheer freedom and depth of possible experience you can have with this game, and this is one experience that any gamer who owns a console or capable PC should be sure to get a hold of.

Score: 9.5/10