What game do you get when you combine African and Japanese? Afro Samurai. I downloaded the demo for Afro Samurai for the PlayStation 3 last night and I must say this demo is one of the shortest demo I have ever played. The demo allows you to slice about 20 or so enemies and just when you are about to meet the boss of the level, the demo ends there (bad teaser!). Since the demo is short, my demo review will reflect on that as well.
Let me talk about the positive things about about Afro Samurai first. I love that artsy cell shaded graphics and the fact Afro Samurai is voiced by one of my favorite actor Samuel L Jackson makes this Afro even more live and real. Aside from the cell shaded graphics, it was also real fun to see your enemies (samurai’s and ninjas) get decapitated and body parts fly out as a result.
The controls are pretty straight forward, typical first/third person shooter style. You get a few basic attacks initially and you will be chaining your attacks similar to Heavenly Sword. You get a light, heavy and a kick attack as well as two focus moves which I personally think makes the game much less challenging, at least in normal mode. As you progress you will unlock more moves.
Although too powerful in my opinion, these focus moves are pretty fun, again during the short game play. You have to hold and press either L1 or L2 to execute each of them and will be able to refill them by doing normal attacks so its pretty easy to execute them. The L1 focus move, when held down, you will also have to hold down one of the attack buttons (light, heavy and the kick) and release the attack button when the sparkle is at the tip of the sword to execute. The focus + light attack combo will execute an area attack (in circle actually) that slices everyone in the area and pretty much all your enemies in range will be in half. While the L2 combo will perform a strong vertical slice from top to bottom so this will split your enemies in half vertically. Finally the second Focus, again while holding down L2, will have Afro moving around and chopping up enemies while the Focus lasts.
Now to the negative things, the characters use the F word a lot, even in this short demo, the F word was used more than a handful of times. While I found this funny at first, it started to lose the humor after the first 2-3 times. I can’t imagine how many times it will be referenced through the full game. My control related complain is the 360 degree camera using the right analog stick. Its inverted which means if you press right the camera will look to the left and vice versa. And finally while the slicing of body parts was fun, I have a feeling that I will get bored of this repetitive game play pretty soon.
This game might be for the Afro fans and/or anyone that doesn’t mind repetitive hack and slash games. But even with its pretty cell shaded graphics, Ef-fing humor and the body chopping, I’m not sure if this game is worth $59.99+ tax but rather a rental. I also don’t see any reason to replay this unless you want to challenge yourself to a harder level. Then again to each his own. But I do suggest renting this game, try it out before you actually buy it.
