Do the honourable thing
LIKE the samurai, fighting games have a proud tradition. From the mean side-scrolling Streets of Rage and Double Dragon, to the even harder Final Fight and Battletoads, each has paved the way for the new generation of beat ‘em ups.
It’s easy to forget what’s gone before, so it was lovely to get a little wave of nostalgia playing Samurai Riot.
From indie studio Wako Factory, Samurai is the developers’ bid to revive the stagnating genre – and they’ve added their own little twist...
You have the choice of playing as two different warriors, Sukane or Tsurumaru. Each has their own special ‘skill’, Tsurumaru can throw grenades – which, to be fair comes in handy in a sword fight – while Sukane is accompanied by her fox, Azu, which can turn into weapons.
After you’ve selected your player, you get to choose a fighting school – this affects the character’s outfit and fighting style.
Initially there are just four to pick from but you have the option to unlock more as you progress through the game.
Graphically, this game is very pretty. The art is a great homage to the beat ‘em ups that have gone before, while being quirky enough to work.
The backgrounds especially have been lovingly created, with some beautiful work.
As you would expect, the gameplay is fairly straight forward to pick up, but can be deliciously difficult – especially if you get cocky like I did and try to jump in at the deep end on with your first play-though on hard.
As there are zero tutorials here, it’s essential to try and work out what the special combos are.
The first few waves of enemies make great target practice, but pretty soon the harder villains start to pop up, and they will make short work of you if you’re still relying on kicks and punches.
It’s easy to get lost in the fun of slicing and dicing the enemy, so easy that you can forget about Wako Factory’s little twist...
Samurai Riot has eight different endings, and the ending you see is dictated by the choices you made as you played through the game.
As you progress you’ll reach branching points, paths you get to choose which will later decide how your journey unfolds and, ultimately, how it will end.
Choose the follow the honourable samurai code, and you might be in for peaceful closure. Go a darker route, and who knows what horrors await at journey’s end.
And it’s not just the single player mode that alters as you play.
The game comes with a local co-op mode (sadly, there’s no online co-op), and it learns from how you play with your partner, offering team based choices.
As Wako Factory game designer Kevin Buchet put it: “Samurai Riot is a game that can judge the quality of your cooperation. If you protect your partner’s back or hit together the same enemy, you’ll be rewarded – don’t and enter a PVP (player vs player) fight against your partner to win the lead.”
A lotis made of the replay value of this game being high – the varied endings, the different fighting schools and so on.
Yes, you want to see the different endings, but it soon becomes apparent that the fighting styles of each school are not that different.
You get an extra life with one, you can double jump with another – slight alterations that make very little difference. And while I enjoyed my first few play-throughs, the idea of having to play through the same repetitive levels soon wore thin.
Wako Factory has created a beautiful little homage to some golden greats of the past, but it needs a little bit of spit and polish to be up there with them.