Afro Samurai

 

 AFRO! Ah yes, the beautiful sound of Samuel L Jackson's voice work is now available outside of the Japanese anime. Now you can enjoy Afro Samurai in an interactive media for those damn computer-me-bots all the kids are playing. Now being honest, i haven't watched Afro Samurai. Its not to say i never will because the anime fan inside of me genuinely wants to see the greatest person to ever say "MOTHER F**KER!" and a bad ass looking samurai called of all obvious things "Afro Samurai", come together in a blissfully sweet series showered with health production costs and the common knowledge that Jackson does not participate in anything he deems unfit. Ergo, Snakes on a Plane, where the usual Jackson phrases are reworked around snakes... Brilliant. So i didn't think twice to pick this up and give it a play through and pretty much being blissfully unaware myself, its always nice to start with a clear slate. 
 
So lets get to it. Afro Samurai was released on the 27/03/09 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, it was bought to you by the nice guys at Namco Bandai and sports a well appropriated 18 certificate. The object of the game as far as this inexperienced "Afro" viewer could see, was to work your way through the initial plot of the Afro Samurai series, throwing you into the best fights and letting you hack down bad guys. Essentially it is a level based hack and slash game with a few added quirks to keep the game play on its toes. Its a single player game, which when played, really makes a lot of sense due to some game mechanic choices. 
 

The game itself uses the controls nicely, placing your attacks and jump to the 4 face buttons and leaving the fun stuff on the bumper, which is the bullet time feature. The bullet time is a bit sporadic at first but is a worthy addition to the game when you first pull off a cool combo finishing with it. There are two types of bullet time, both assigned to the left bumper and left trigger respectively. The trigger throws you into a slow down in which you can focus your attack on one enemy, when you press and hold a slash attack a shine appears on the blade of your sword and works its way to the tip. If you release your attack when the shine gets to the tip (signified by a rumble of the pad), you proceed to sever off which ever limb the blade path takes on the enemy (represented by a white line). The second type of bullet time it a fast paced one hit kill frenzy, which can only be activated when you have essentially saved up your bullet time. Every enemy becomes a one hit kill and you seem to have increased movement with a homing feature, taking you to the nearest enemy and chopping them down, which is fun but not necessary to use until the end. Fans of the series will be happy to know Ninja Ninja hold a key part in the game, offering laughable humor and guiding you in the right direction to objectives with a simple press of the D Pad. The other thing Ninja Ninja offers to you throughout the game is the ingenious game of "Body Part Poker". This game basically entails you creating the best "hands" you can make by severing different body parts, sever three hands of the next three victims and you get "three of a kind" etc, and though it may not seem like much, i always looked forward to seeing the next one and a new batch of enemies. The health system is a now industry standard of, no health bar, get hit too much and you die. You can drop into a critical state if you barely scrape through an encounter, not to worry though, cause your health can be restored by finding little toy bears scattered throughout the level. 
 
Other than bears to find, there are also five mementos scattered through every level. These mementos are signified by a patch of crows on the floor that when you pass through them, they fly away and a sinister laugh appears from nowhere. Finding all five mementos in one level unlocks a special move, all of which can be found by pressing the back/select button. You can earn more moves through a basic grind of enemies and earning levels, but the game does not seem to really give you the drive for earning levels, they seem to just happen and other than the moves list i saw no significant difference to my style of play or a sudden increase in power. There is a slightly annoying issue with the amount of trash mobs in this game, i phrase it that way because when a door opens and suddenly 10 guys come out wanting to kill me, i wasn't thinking "heres a chance to kick some ass", but more "i wanna get through these as quick as possible". As i said before, whenever "Body Part Poker" was available i was all up for a nicely choreographed fight, its the 10 irrelevant mobs in a place i have already cleared twice thing i am not a big fan of. Though to counter that, the controls did get more enjoyable to use over time and the boss fights did require me to use a level of thought beyond the usual, "im weak here, hit me" mentality. 
 

The graphical orientation of the game is cell shaded, which makes sense due to the source material. The game features no HUD what so ever, giving it not only an immersive interaction with the game, but allowing you to take in every corners worth of environment they could fit in. The animation for the characters are nicely presentable with fluid movements and crisp animation, these transition well into the numerous different cut scene styles they use as its all in game. The cut scenes do sometimes cause a little bit of slow down and sometimes the structure of the characters hasn't really been considered, though all in game footage, i don't forgive a cut scene when someones arm is half covered over by the wooden floor thy lie on. Aside from that the environments are nicely varied, making me feel like i was actually moving to different places and not having to experience the same rehashed set pieces throughout. There are some interesting loading scenes which show a dream that Afro is having from his past, only to be awakened by Ninja Ninja shouting "AFRO!", thus starting the level. The voice acting in the game is above standards of a lot of games these days. There is a real presence of character and emotion with every line delivered, and its not just Jackson doing all the hard work! Every character is thoroughly convincing with a brilliant script to work with, my favorite line being something like "Damn! if every girl i stuck my dick into died, id put that shit on my resume!". I often look out for a good soundtrack in a game, and this one delivers. Its a mix of oriental and hip hop which really takes my back to the Samurai Champloo days, which i can honesty say am still convinced, was where Afro Samurai took its list of things to do. The emotional oriental music is fantastic, and the hip hop is placed so perfectly in the game that it is possible the closest i have felt to playing an anime, except for the opening for Naruto : The Broken Bond (which i hold one of the best anime games of all time). 
 
The game itself took me about five and a half hours to complete, that being without finding all the mementos. On completing the game there was a section in the credits that indicate that there will be episodic content for the game available via download, there is nothing as of this moment but that addition will give the game longevity, even if only a small portion of it. Also, a completion gives you access to the treasures section on the main menu. This section lets you view the opening and ending movies, view art from the game and most importantly, listen to all the music featured in the game. Its a nice but easily un noticed touch which could have been given a better presentation to give the underlying style its true recognition. The game i would mostly compare this to entirely for style and control is Price of Persia. The two basically share the same graphical choices and both incorporate their voice acting well, however. The biggest difference between the two is that Afro Samurai doesn't seem to rotate the same idea tediously as Prince of Persia did with collecting orbs, but more replaces that with more fighting. Afro Samurai almost feels like what Prince of Persia would have been if someone filtered out all the obvious "coin collecting" elements and said "five collectibles per level, the rest is just killing doods", which i agree was a nice design move. 
 
So to conclude. Afro Samurai's visual style and musical orientation lend them self well to each other, even if this only creates a above average experience, it still knows what it is, and feels proud for it. It doesn't scare you with overly complicated controls, but uses the control style to throw above average boss fights your way, causing you to take a step back and think. For a five and a half hour experience, i would defiantly rent this game, or buy it with intention to return. Afro Samurai buffs will hopefully like it, avid gamers will understand it, but i playfully enjoyed it.