Highly Frustrating, yet Highly Rewarding.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is a recent action game created by the one man development team of James Silva, a 2D game with tons of flash in a unique art-style that really sets the game apart. But does the game have enough substance to find a way to cut its way to your heart, and wallet?
The real thing that sets this game out from others is its unique and crazy goth/emoish art style that has a very hand-drawn feel to them and they do look really good. Some really intense things graphics-wise are the special effects like explosions, or dish-magic bursts. The environments look really good, though they start to get repetitive towards the end of the single-player campaign, and enemy designs are cool and varied from cyborgs to jet-pack equipped troopers. And the blood is also crazy and cool as hell, and really puts Ninja Gaiden 2’s blood effects to shame. Overall the game is really beautiful and a great place to unleash all of your mayhem in, though some of the boss character do look pretty bad, as just some of them are just plain enemy character just bigger, and their character models look stretched and ugly.
Dishwasher: Dead Samurai follows the story of…well…a Dishwasher who happens to wake up remembering he was dead and that his heart was stolen, who then goes on a bloody rampage of revenge to find the one who took his heat. It’s a tale of cyborgs, a crazy Chef, and rocking guitar solos. If this sounds super awesome, I’m afraid to tell you the story makes no complete sense, and in the end will leave you more confused than anything else. The problem is that the story is told via small cramped comic book pannel-esque scenes, the art is ugly and too dark, and thanks to the short amount of space in these panels the story is never really fleshed out and the writing is more melodramatic if anything.
While the story is a complete mess, the game play is anything but. It plays like a side-scrolling beat ‘em up that played tons of Ninja Gaiden. There are tons of combos and things to do, with 5 different weapons that are completely different from each other and offer tons of ways to dispatch enemies. The cleavers are powerful super-close combat weapons that deal out tons of brutal damage, while the shift blade allows you to teleport around and be a little more tactical in the way you battle. There are two other weapons I would love to talk about, but they’re a joy to discover for yourself, but you’ll know them as soon as you pick them up. You also will sometimes find “dish-magic” for you to use, which unleash incredible blasts of energy which helps with clearing the screen when you’re low on health.
There’s also RPG element to the game in the form of upgrading your weapons, buying items, etc. It’s pretty light and really isn’t that deep, but it’s cool to have. You’ll earn money from dispatching your enemies, and also guitar picks which to upgrade or buy stuff, but it always seems that you’re in a short supply of money and picks and you’ll have to careful choose what you wish to buy or upgrade
And you’ll need all of these combos and weapons to take out your cunning and powerful enemies. You get all sorts of crazy enemies from commandos that chuck grenades to zombies, the amount of enemies are staggering for a small game like Dishwasher, and each feel like they belong in the game and have their own crazy way of kicking your ass. The AI is great, though can be frustrating hard for some people. It was for me until I actually learned to use the combos, and to find the weaknesses for each enemy, which then the game became challenging but very satisfying. Also boss characters are fun to fight, apart from the before-mentioned big version of little enemies (Kinda like Power Rangers, amirite?).
One of the stand-out things is that when enemies are knocked out, a symbol above the enemies head will tell you to either use the ‘X’ button or the ‘Y’ button to dispatch them, and when you dispatch them correctly you’ll get a awesome execute sequence and a small bit of health and money, sometimes floating skulls to replenish your dish-magic meter.
Also for 800 Microsoft (10 real world USD.) you comes with lots of content. While the single-player will only last you about 4-6 hours, there’s also an arcade mode which gives you ton’s of missions which you can try to earn higher and higher scores in an challenge-base format, like defeating all enemies with only 1 type of weapon. You can also submit scores to an online leader board to try and get your enemy up there as a high scorer. It adds a ton of replay value for an arcade game that you normally don’t see.
Also, just as a note, there’s guitar mini-game which are awesome!
Overall for 800 points, Dishwasher to a great title that many hardcore action fans will enjoy, from the deep and amazing combat system, with the stunning graphics and special effects, and tons of fun and challenging enemies for you to take on. And while some of the boss character can look almost laughable bad, and the game can sometimes make you feel like snapping your controller in half, it’s a great experience that everybody should at least try out the trial version.
FINAL SCORE: 4 out of 5
