This is first person shooting and sword fighting game. That's enough of a sell for me right out of the gate. I played this game when it came out way back in ye good olden year of 2006. I only recently beat it because I like to put things off in a major way. Actually, I didn't beat it all those years ago because I thought that it was terrible and I didn't want to play it anymore. Now, in 2019 and in 2020 I've revisited the game twice and I can honestly say, I love it.
This is by no means a perfect game. Your aiming dot will sometimes just fly out of control no matter how steady your hands are. By sometimes, I mean there is a constant flickering and jankiness to the aiming. The flickering and jankiness can be compounded by the dot flying totally out of control. You can expect this to happen a few times when you're activating the slow motion shooting power. This is because you have to hold down the A button and then lurch the controller forward like you're trying to stab a ghost.
My hands shake like I need a drink, because I need a drink. Though I wouldn't recommend drinking while you play this game, you could get really frustrated and break something valuable in your place. Controllers learn to fly much easier when there is some alcohol fueled rage in the room with you. Yes I might be disassociating from the booze rage I get after 7 consecutive deaths to a highly pixelated samurai lady. I'm not gonna tell you directly of my booze rage situation, but it may have happened over at my friend's apartment who happened to be revisiting this game around the same time.
Sometimes the sword fighting controls will feel perfect and sometimes they will ignore you the way most women ignore me after our first conversation. Something about sending a lady 8 straight one-liners about my penis that sends them running in the opposite direction. I thought people loved hearing about my penis? Anyway, the sword mechanics in the game. Sometimes you can sneak up on an enemy and whip the nunchuck at them for a stealth sword kill. The kill part of the equation work pretty reliably but the stealth part doesn't. As your character winds up for the kill, the bad guy usually turns around and shoots you at least once. That kind of blows, but it doesn't ruin the experience.
The 1v1 sword battles are just plain rad. I know a lot of people hate them because they make no logical sense. Scott, the main character is a gun expert. Why on Earth would he swap to a sword and battle it out with some fools instead of gunning them down on the spot? Because this is a video game! Scott knows that we need these sword battles whether we want them to make sense or not. So he delivers.
The sword combo moves can be somewhat difficult to pull off at first, but I found them to work consistently after a good bit of practice. Regular sword fighting enemies are usually fast or heavy hitters. You have to dodge and counter the heavy hitters and you have to parry the fast hitters. Sometimes they will swap styles in the middle of the fight. Even so, once you get the hang of it, they are not that hard to handle.
The sword fighting boss fights are tense and challenging. Specifically the one with the babe that you see sitting on Scott's lap in the loading screen. She swaps styles and you have to lower her aggression meter or something like that, I don't know I wasn't really paying attention to that part. You parry, dodge and unleash combos to win, just like every other game. This tough babe is in the geisha mission and fighting her is probably one of the highlights of the game. So if you play the game, look forward to that mission.
So, like I said, the asian sword hotty is on Scott's lap in every load screen. Does that loading screen imply that we boned her off camera and cheated on our fiance that we are trying to rescue? If that's the case then why was that scene cut from the game? As a total creep, I would have loved to have observed a bit of pixelated junk bumping. Plus the lady is Asian and I think we all know that they have blurry genitals anyway, so, no need for censorship. Real missed opportunity there.
When I first saw that loading screen I thought it meant that we would befriend her and then turn over a few buddy cop missions. Maybe they had something like this in the game but had to cut it later on. It would have been so cool to get to work alongside her to stealthfully take out unsuspecting enemies like a couple of ninja lovers. Then at the end of the game you have to decide if you want to make your lifu about your sword waifu or go back to plane Jane damsel in distress. I'm 100% in the marry plane Jane and then cheat on her with sword waifu third category.
The final sword boss fight sets up a twist ending that you could probably see coming. But it's still fun anyway. I'm not sure that it really counts as a twist ending, but it does go against your expectations, so it's pretty good in that way. Like I've said before, you don't make your way through this murky, pixelated shoot and slash fest for the riveting story and deep symbolism. You don't even play this game to learn more about a culture. Well, maybe they had some kind of consultant for that stuff but I really doubt it. Most of the time the voice acting sounds like an offensive impersonation of an Asian person. That's not a dig against the voice actors if they really do sound like that, but it does at times make me laugh just listening to the dialogue.
The technology of the Wii was brand spanking new when this game was made. So it is pretty janky control wise. The graphics are pretty bad and the story is pretty dumb. But you shouldn't come into a game like this expecting cinematic brilliance and cutting edge realism. You should be in the mood to make the bad guys go boom-boom and to whip the controller around your apartment in a virtual sword fight. I got way too into one fight and slightly strained my left bicep. I told everyone at work that I did it at the gym but I think they can tell that I don't go to the gym.
The fight where I strained my left bicep was during a parrying mission against a guy that you are lead to believe is your friend. His fight is in place to make you master parrying. I didn't really understand the levels of parrying in the game at the time and so the constant whipping of the nunchuk during the fight caused me my minor injury. After something like 21 straight half parries I was able to figure out that I needed to wait a little longer to swing the nunchuk and to make the movement shorter. This allows for the full disarming parry and that's how you beat the bastard.
I was happy for most of the experience with this game. The shooting felt really good. The slow down time power was pretty rad and the game as a whole has this silliness but sometimes seriousness to it. It's really an interesting flavor. It's not always ironically funny either, some of it is intentional. The highlight of the game is probably this comical but also horrifying rabbit level. At first it plays like it's comedy, but then you have a pitch black fight scene with a bunch of ninjas or something like that. I got kind of spooked to be honest. There is no shortage of demented rabbit heads in the level. It's weird man. It's like the people who made it wanted a way to communicate that they are in fact Japanese and therefore the champions of being weird.
There are two scenes in the rabbit level that gave me jump scares to be more specific. One of them is the moment directly after the lights are turned out on you. There are two flying white orbs in the room. Turns out, those are the masks of two guys who will shoot you when you get close enough. Pretty damn spooky yo. The second time is when you walk down a corridor and see a green dinosaur looking mannequin. You can walk right past it and get a shotgun blast to the back. The green dinosaur mannequin is a man! For a rated T 2006 Wii game, these two moments got me pretty good.
When the sword fighting is responsive, which is about 75% of the time, the game feels awesome. When the shooting feels responsive, which is about 90% of the time then you feel like a total badass. The uzi is fun to blaze away with, the pistols are all great. The semi auto shotgun and the Scar assault rifle are just a great time. Both guns make you feel really powerful. The game is fun if a bit dated and janky. I give it my full recommendation. You might want to take a pass if you are easily frustrated though. In those moments where you are swinging away as if you're a madman trying to kill a house fly that isn't there, the game can get pretty frustrating.
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