24-Jun-2004 Honour, revenge and blistered digits in KOEI's Sixteenth Century samurai swash-buckler
All across the country thousands of us spend long evenings in darkened rooms, bashing away at our buttons, leading our 'army' to 'victory'. Now, thanks to Koei, even more of us will be doing it, and even in front of our mums.
Samurai Warriors comes manure-fresh from the same hack 'n' slash stable as the hit Dynasty Warriors series. So, more rampaging across vast terrains and battling insane hordes of war-raged opponents in a showdown of strategy and extreme button-mashing. But this time, the sword-swinging is set on the bloody battlefields of 16th Century Japan.
Each of the five playable characters have three methods of attack to aid in the endless carcass-shredding - a powerful single direction slash, a weaker but wide-reaching acrobatic swipe and a devastating magical attack for felling heaps of foes.
In the main Story mode, you'll select your character and slug it out across five main levels - victory depends on meeting certain simple criteria such as invading an enemy camp or bringing an opposing General to his knees. Some levels, however, feature hidden goals that you can meet to go slashing off down a branching story pathway, unlocking a host of new areas and objectives.
Back For Blood While it shouldn't take more than a few hours to hack your way through each character's tale, Samurai Warriors chucks in a rampant roster of modes and unlockables to keep replay value high. Officer mode lets you build your own warrior, while Free mode enables you to mix and match characters and conditions for combat. There's also a two-player Versus and Co-operative mode thrown in as well. So far so good.
The game also provides some truely tense moments of adrenaline-fuelled annihilation against an often staggering number of opponents on the battlefield - it's the sheer thrill of combat that ends up being so addictive.
But the repetitive hack 'n' slash mechanics mean anyone looking for a bit of depth to their destruction is likely to feel a bit short-changed. If superficial yet satisfying sword-swinging action is your bag though, get your pad-gnarled fingers on this.
Dynasty Warriors fans and hack 'n' slash nuts will lap up the Feudal blood-spilling on offer, but the shallow gameplay mechanics won't be to everyone's taste.
Enter Officer mode to create your own fiendish samurai warrior from scratch. Unfortunately, to begin with your character's as limp as a leek in a thunderstorm. You'll need to train him up from puny weakling to rippled stud through a series of mini-games if you want to take him out on the battlefield in the other modes.
Burst tests speed and dexterity – find the exit and avoid the perilous traps and marauding miscreants
Melee mode tests you in hand-to-hand combat, pitting you against an avalanche of adversaries
Archery brushes up your bowmanship – penetrate the pretty ladies as they run at you screaming
Face an infinite number of archers in Deflect mode – swing your sword and flip arrows back to mamma
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