Released today as an exclusive XBox 360 title, Samurai Shodown Sen is the latest in the franchise originally released in Japanese arcades as Samurai Spirits Sen. I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy, so here’s my thought on the latest in a long line of fighting games…
Review
Let me start by saying that although it’s been around for 16 years, I’ve never even heard of this series, although I did vaguely recognise one of the characters when I saw the game art (I thought I recognised two, until I realise I was getting a guy confused with Samurai Jack…). So I’m not in anyway immersed in the fandom as I am with fighting games light Street Fighter and Mortal Combat.
I think if I were involved in the fandom, I may have actually enjoyed this game. I don’t like to give wholly bad reviews but honestly? This game is entirely forgetable. I’ll justify myself.
But (and there’s always a but). The backgrounds are so disappointing. Your foreground character can be lovely, but if the fight zone is just a drab wasteland then it detracts from the pretty. Plus, when you compare it to the greats, even those nicely drawn characters look like they’re straight out of the 90s. Nothing really stood out, like the background animation in Street Fighter 4, the realness of Soul Calibur 4, or hell, even the jigglytech of Dead or Alive 3!
Now, I admit, I have been pleasently suprised in the past by ugly games. Lets face it, most of the popular games suffer from what I like to call brownitus, where the only colour the artists seem to have had available was remarkably similar to a substance I don’t like to name. So I shrugged it off and dived in.
Or tried to. I’m glad I chose to play co-op on the first outing because dear God does this take some getting into. If I’d have gone straight into story mode then I think I’d have thrown the controller through the screen five minutes in. Since there was someone there to keep saying ‘Give it one more round’ I did finally immerse myself a little.
The characters are incredibly sluggish – something I accuse the Dead or Alive characters of being, but they seem fairly nippy in comparison. The moves are just… meh. You don’t feel satisfied when you get a hit in as you do on the big hitters in the fighting game world. Even with an end animation that includes hacking your opponents arm off at the elbow. Nothing makes you sit up and take notice. And with things like Rage Explosions, Guard Shatters and Power Slashes the makers have tried their best, but ultimately we’re seeing nothing new or something old done differently.
And the arm chop off I mentioned? I believe that my co-player’s exact words were ‘For *expletive’s* sake, chop some other *expletive* part of their *expleting* body off and do something different will you?”. No amount of blood and gore stops it being boring after the hundredth time. There may have been other body parts chopped off, but we didn’t manage to see any.
One thing I will give the game is the achievements. For once they’re actually obtainable by simply playing the game. Half of them are for getting the characters through the story mode. Whether you’ll stick around to do so is the deciding factor.
The Gaj-It Verdict:
Gameplay: 3/10
Graphics: 5/10
Replayability: 4/10
We say
Overall Samurai Shodown Sen is an ok game to pick up and fiddle with, but you’ll probably put it down after half an hour and rarely look at it again. Which is a real shame because it has such good potential. Speed it up, make the moves more flashy and the character people we actually care about, improve the graphics and definitely add a training mode, and it would be greatly improved.
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