Style over Substance

Afro Samurai is a gorgeous looking game, with an excellent soundtrack, that is oozing with style. I’ll admit the only reason I was interested in this game to begin with was the art style, but I hoped it had more too offer. As it turns out, it was a fun romp, but it could have been so much more.

What Afro Samurai does so well is aesthetic. It made the transition from the anime to 3D flawlessly, and the way enemies fall apart after a swift slash never gets old. The music even managed reignited my long extinguished interest in hip hop. It always started at just the right times to make the battles that much more epic, and I rarely heard the same song twice. Sadly, that is in part due to how short the game is.

The gameplay on the other hand is lacking a bit. It is fun, but even within six hours the combat starts to get old. Lots of times I was pitted against several enemies at once, but attacking forward left my back wide open. The combat system does little to allow protection from all sides. Separating the enemies is fairly difficult so I found myself relying heavily on a slow motion sweep kick move followed by a horizontal slash. Slashing multiple foes at once into small pieces is rewarding and hilarious, but after the 200th time it started to feel stale. The camera is also atrocious; I was constantly fighting it to see what I wanted. It seemed to think I wanted to see my enemies back from an angle where he covered 60% of the screen.

The story was also kind of confusing. It seemed to be a series of vignettes that were loosely related. Afro is trying to get the number one headband so that he can avenge his fathers’ death. He can only fight the guy in possession of the headband if he is in possession of the number 2 headband. The game starts off with him trying to get the number 2, but once he gets it, the next four levels seem fairly irrelevant. My neighbor who has seen the movie seemed to follow the story better than I, but from a standalone experience it needed a little embellishment.

The game did do some things right however. The combat while repetitive is still entertaining. The focus attacks allow you to slow down time to perform a deadly slash or a crucial dodge. It is a fun feature, but is used so heavily throughout the course of the game that it gets tedious. The game does some cool things with the health bar and focus meter as well. The more damaged Afro and the other enemies get, the more splotched with blood they appear. As for focus, Afro has a dangling gem that glows as when it is usable. I applaud their efforts for removing the HUD entirely, but I was constantly having problems deciphering how much health and focus power I had left.

Afro Samurai had everything it needed to be a great hack and slash game, but it fell just a little short in a few crucial areas. If the combat was a little tighter and a bit more robust and the camera wasn’t constantly fighting player input this game could easily rank among God of War and Devil May Cry. As it stands now, it is a fun six-hour slash fest that is definitely worth a rent. I just wish the game played as good as it looks and sounds.