login sign up feeds about

It seems that in recent months developers have realised something quite obvious about the Wii: it can be used to bring those classic light-gun games from the arcade into your home where you can beat them without sinking your life-savings into the slot. The final nail in the coffin of the arcade? It's certainly the only type of game that I still play, there. Anyway, after the recent ports of Ghost Squad and House of the Dead comes a new variation on the theme.

• images (28)

  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • all 28 images

• game info

  • 

  • Publisher:

    Developer:

    Release Date:

  • more

• related stories

  • Gallery: Samurai Warriors: KATANA
  • Gallery: Samurai Warriors: KATANA
  • Gallery: Samurai Warriors: KATANA
  • more

• wii

  • Nintendo play it casual
  • Sam
  • Guinness World Records: The Videogame
  • Sam & Max Season One
  • LEGO Batman: The Videogame
  • more

Katana is a spin-off of the popular Samurai Warriors series that takes the setting and turns it into a first-person sword fighting game. The reason I compared it to light-gun games is that it uses the exact same mechanic; pointing and 'clicking' at the baddies to whack them with your katana. So if you were hoping for a truly motion-sensitive game involving swinging your sword, you will be a bit disappointed. Waving the wiimote in certain directions allows you to perform certain attacks but it is certainly not a direct translation of your movements to the screen.

The game starts out in an "on-rails" style where you simply attack the enemies that come towards you. This soon turns into a button-mashing fest where you just need to click on the baddies enough before they attack you - again, just like a shooting game. You do have energy that you earn and can expend to perform fast slashing attacks in any direction, but apart from this the enemies are quite tedious to dispatch. Later on in the game you can also pick up the odd ranged weapon, which adds a bit of variety to things, but the focus is always on the melee.

Again, in classic light-gun style, you often get the chance to choose which path you want to take. For example, in the first level you can choose to fight the foes coming out of a gate while your mate goes around the back to close it, or you can switch roles and elect to sneak back yourself.

In later levels, you can actually choose your movement with the analog stick on the nunchuk. This adds a different dimension to the game, but the core gameplay against your foes remains the same.

There are five chapters in the game, and each of these is split into three levels. There is actually a fair amount of gameplay in there to enjoy, although it does get very samey. This is not least because after you kill one guy, you soon have to kill all his identical twins - the game suffers from a massive over-use of the same character models. Even more unforgivably, the bosses are even re-used. Of course, these are bosses in the loosest sense of the word. They really boil down to a guy with a silly hat, a little more health, and a bit more skill at blocking.

The graphics, overall, are rather poor. Not only are the enemies all the same, they run in a fairly ridiculous manner and there are quite a few visual glitches to be enjoyed. The music is agreeable but the voice-acting would not seem out of place in some sort of comedy spoof film.

There is also an RPG-lite aspect to the gameplay. You collect gold as you go along by defeating enemies and can use this to buy new weapons, upgrade your existing ones, or upgrade your stats. It's a vaguely interesting addition but it almost feels tacked-on - it adds a new depth when you can't help but think the developers should really have concentrated on getting the main game right.

Overall, the game almost has an experimental feel to it. We know that the Wii can do light-gun arcade ports, and this is the first real attempt at turning that into a sword-fighting game. Judging by the precedent set by the Dynasty Warriors series, I am sure we will be seeing a sequel before too long. Hopefully it will show a bit more polish, as there is a good fun game waiting to be made around this concept.

55%