"A lesson on Japanese history... with magic robots."

Sengoku Basara has a strange history in the states. This first game technically made it here, but in a bastardized form known as Devil Kings that was far removed from its original Japanese identity. The sequel didn’t make it here in any form. Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes is actually the third game in the series, but the first real version to make it to North America with its identity intact.

The game is exactly what its title advertises it to be with “Sengoku” being the warring states period of Japanese history in which the game takes place, and “Basara” roughly translating to “stylish” or “over the top”. And let me tell you, they aren’t messing around when they use the word, “Basara”.

While it may take place in feudal Japan using the names of real historical figures, it has all the characteristics of an insane fantasy anime. Each character is vibrantly colored and sports a fancy, often intentionally absurd costume that sets their appearance apart from the rest. If you’re looking to see Ieyasu Tokugawa ride into the sky atop a flying robot version of Tadakatsu Honda, you’ve found the right game.

The genre is easy enough to pin down. Sengoku Basara is a Hack and Slash through and through. In each of the game’s stages, you’ll fight your way through hundreds of enemies. The swarms of soldiers you’ll encounter are huge in number, but not in variety or difficulty. When confronting standard enemies, you’ll feel like a god among men, with little to stand in your way. Enemy soldiers feel more like toys than threats. But like toys, they can be fun to play with.

Ridiculous combos are the goal while fighting enemy swarms. After 100 hits, money starts to pour out of your victims. For each additional 100, the multiplier increases for how much money you get. On average, I found myself getting around 2,500 hit combos when doing well, but at one point I had as high as a 7,500 hit combo.

"You can send countless enemies flying with the power of your fists."

These high combos are achievable thanks to a brilliant sense of flow from your attacks. Each character has a decent number of them to play with. Much like a fighting game, the key to success is discovering which move is comboable into which in order to create longer chains. And these combos aren’t stiff either. You can actually adjust your movement reasonably well while attacking.

But there’s more to it than fighting wave after wave of enemies (though that is admittedly a huge part of it). Maps are divided into sections of control. In sections your opponent owns, enemy soldiers continually spawn. In your sections, ally soldiers spawn, though they are as effective as the enemies (read: not very). To seize control of an area, you must kill the general who will then inexplicably (but awesomely) explode, wreaking havoc on the surrounding enemies before giving your troops a new spawning location.

Most missions are pretty formulaic, having you take over each area before fighting a boss. However, they do add a few variances from time to time. One involved a boss who pursued me and could only be hurt after I took control of the next area. Another had me attacking alongside a boat, taking over specific bases to open gates throughout the river and prevent attacks to the boat.

Between missions, you’ll level up, gain new abilities, and obtain new allies (characters who fight alongside you when you have no co-op partner). Your individual abilities also level up as do your various weapons and allies. The process is all very streamlined and quick, automatically selling any duplicate weapons you acquire. The character progression adds a much needed incentive to continue that the story simply does not.

"Berserker Barrage!"

The stories aren’t without their amusing moments, but overall they just aren’t particularly interesting. Told through a combination of cutscenes and lengthy voiceovers, they can often drag. Fortunately, all of them are skippable if you feel so inclined.

Each character has their own campaign with branching paths. The paths usually consist of somewhere between 7 and 10 missions. With my first few playthroughs using different characters, I had very different missions. But since all the campaigns are really just a combination of missions pulled from a giant pool, they became increasingly similar. The more campaigns I played, the more repeat missions I encountered until seeing one I had never played before became a rarity.

Although each character’s campaign doesn’t feel that different, their play styles do. With 16 playable characters, I am amazed at how unique each one feels to use. The controls are always the same, but the functions of these attacks can be quite different, especially between the melee-based and ranged characters.

I started the game with Yukimura Sanada, or “Two Lances Jackson” as I called him, who has a fairly predictable melee style. But even as I used other melee characters I could immediately spot the differences. Kanbe Kuroda fights with a giant boulder that appropriately feels like flinging around a giant weight. Kotaro Fuma uses his ninja speed to constantly disappear and reappear mid-combo. Keiji Maeda has a button whose purpose is dedicated to “cancels” that changes functions depending on the context in which it is pressed.

And then there’s the ranged characters. Magoichi Saica is especially notable. Her normal attack simply fires a gun, but what makes her so interesting is that performing different special attacks will switch which gun she uses. Depending on what the last special attack you performed was, her normal attack button will fire either a pistol, a shotgun, or a machine gun. Then there are characters like Oichi that combine ranged and melee attacks allowing you to deal with up close enemies while simultaneously sending out creepy shadow hands to slam distant enemies around.

The soundtrack is a surprising gem. You’ll hear traditional Japanese instrumentation combined with a variety of styles including Rock, Jazz, Electronica, and Flamenco to make some really interesting hybrids. Kow Otani (Shadow of the Colossus), Rei Kondoh (Okami), and a handful of others did a great job of making a score that’s fun to listen to.

Let me just take a moment to share some especially “Basara” moments. Tsuruhime’s super attack damages enemies with the power of figure skating. Masamune Date uses 6 katanas held like Wolverine’s claws, but can get tri-bladed katanas, essentially causing him to use 18 katanas simultaneously. Magoichi Saica can lay on the ground and juggle an entire cloud of enemies with a machine gun (not to mention she has a rocket launcher). There is a boss that spins around on the ground using a giant wok on his back. I could go on.

Even with all that stylish absurdity, it is still a Hack and Slash at heart. The only real challenge comes from the boss fights, and even most of them aren’t particularly challenging. There’s never much depth to the enemy AI. It is mindless fun that’s best when played only a few missions at a time. It’s definitely one of the better Hack and Slash titles out there with its great combo system and character variety, but still doesn’t avoid the feeling of repetition that plagues the genre during extended play sessions.

This review is based on a copy of the Playstation 3 version of Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes provided to us by Capcom.

At first glance, Bayonetta seems like it has the perfect formula for the best action game ever. It’s got a sexy, badass protagonist, over-the-top combat, and to top it off, its creative director is Hideki Kamiya, the man behind the original Devil May Cry. All of these components have come together to make something truly special.

Bayonetta is simply an amazing action game. The level of polish never ceased to impress me. The combat system is the epitome of what every Devil May Cry game has strived to be and more. The combat animations are super smooth, flowing from combo to combo almost seamlessly. There is nothing more satisfying than watching Bayonetta toss her foe up into the air with a quick punch, fill him full of bullets, and finish him off with a gigantic, demonic heel made out of hair.

Like DMC, Bayonetta’s combat is a fluid combination of ranged gunfights and intense melee fighting. The more complex combos are extremely tricky to pull off and require near-perfect timing, but always reward you with some absurd, over-the-top animation. The pure absurdity of the combat is hilarious.  Bayonetta summons demons from hell to devour her foes… with her hair! Her hair, which is also her clothing, opens a portal to hell and takes the form of an enormous demon that beats the living hell out of bosses.

Rather than blocking, Bayonetta expects the player to dodge incoming attacks. Pulling the right trigger at just the right second triggers “Witch Time”, which slows down all of your enemies for a moment, letting you get in one or two of those killer combos. This system makes the combat a lot more fun. There’s nothing quite as fun as slowing time at just the right moment and unleashing a huge combo or torture attack.

There are quick time events, but they aren’t implemented in an annoying way. I don’t mind mashing on the X button fifty times if it means that I get to summon a giant demonic crow made of hair to peck out the eyes of my foes or throw an angelic minion into the iron maiden and crush him to death.

Building up combos fills up Bayonetta’s magic meter which, when full, lets you unleash “torture attacks” on your enemies. These high damage attacks let Bayonetta summon torture and execution devices such as iron maidens and guillotines to punish your angelic foes. These are some of the craziest attacks in the game, and they are extremely entertaining to watch.

Different weapons are unlocked as you play through, and they can change up the pace and style of the combat dramatically. Bayonetta always has two weapons equipped at once; one set of ranged weapons attached to her heels and one being held. Mixing and matching weapons is a great way to find a combat style that fits the way you want to play. The player is able to swap between two custom weapon sets during combat, which adds another level of fluidity to the action. Encounters and the tactics required to survive them are changed up often, and I loved being able to quickly swap between a short range, high damage weapon for taking on the big, tough enemies and a fast, long range weapon for dealing with the weaker, more numerous foes.

The bosses are simply incredible. Not since God of War 2 have I been so impressed with the scale of a boss battle. For example, in one of the fights about half-way through the game, you fight a wind-based boss in the middle of a raging tornado, dodging rocks, riding pieces of debris, and avoiding fireballs all while trying to inflict damage on the monstrous foe. Most of the bosses are so large that Bayonetta actually can run along their arms and legs, inflicting damage at weak points before jumping to safety. Also worth noting are the boss fights with Bayonetta’s rival (and dare I say equal),  Jeanne. These are the most fast-paced fights and they require sharp reflexes and lightning fast combos, but are some of the most fun encounters in the whole game.

The story sequences that break up the action feel like they get in the way more than anything else. The story is fairly uninteresting, which is a bit of a let down considering how excellent the rest of the game is. The jokes fall flat, and there is almost no character development. I can’t remember watching a single cutscene and actually being interested in the story. But, when it comes to a game like Bayonetta, you don’t play it for the story. You play it for the action, and thankfully the insane action is where Bayonetta shines.

Bayonetta took me around fifteen hours to beat, which is about twice as long as the average action game. Even after fifteen odd hours of hacking, slashing, and hair-demon summoning, I still found myself wanting more of Bayonetta’s addictive combat and insane style.

The over-the-top combat paired up with impressive visuals and ridiculous combos and finishing moves combine to make one of the best action games this generation, and earning Bayonetta her place beside Dante and Kratos. While it may not do a lot of new things, Bayonetta’s near perfect combat, stylish visuals, and intense boss fights make it one of the greatest games of its kind, and an instant classic. Bayonetta is one of those timeless games that you will be able to go back to years from now and it will still feel fresh. I cannot recommend Bayonetta strongly enough, and fans of the action genre owe it to themselves to check this one out.

This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of Bayonetta provided to us by SEGA.

As much as I dislike using the word “metal” as an adjective, I simply cannot think of a better way to describe Brutal Legend. How else do you describe a game set in a fantasy world inspired by classic heavy metal album art? With it’s impressive 107-song soundtrack, cameos from heavy metal icons such as Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister, it’s impossible to describe Brutal Legend as anything but metal.

Being a Tim Schafer game, it’s pretty much a given that the writing is top notch. The metal references and inside jokes are good for a laugh here and there. All of the dialogue is very well written, and expertly preformed. Jack Black is Eddie Riggs. He fits the part perfectly, and his enthusiastic performance is really what makes the character so lovable.

The variety of metal cameos are just great. Lemmy Kilmister plays a badass bass player with a sweet hat (so, he pretty much plays himself), and the dialogue between him and Eddie is some of the funniest in the game. Ozzy Osbourne also does a great job as the “guardian of metal, ” but I would have liked to see a bit more of him.

From the moment you step into the shoes of Eddie Riggs, you are immersed in all things metal. Trapped in an alternate fantasy universe where demons control the earth and most of the human population toils their lives away in slavery, Eddie is tasked with leading Ironheade, the human resistance (the extra “e” so you know they mean business). He recruits the head-bangers, builds the stages, directs the battles, protects the tour bus, and kicks plenty of demon ass. In short, he’s the road crew for the resistance.

The gameplay is a pretty mixed bag. Split between open world exploration, 3rd person action and, most notably real-time strategy, Brutal Legend tries to be a lot of different things all at once which hurts the overall experience. It’s not that any of the specific gameplay styles are bad, but none of them are great, either. It feels like Tim Schafer was trying just a bit too hard to keep Brutal from being pigeonholed.

The main focus of Brutal Legend’s many gameplay styles are the explosive stage battles, the backdrop of which are huge rock concerts. The stage is your base and where all of your units spawn. If your stage is destroyed, it’s game over. Your resources come in the form of fan geysers spread throughout the map. Playing a “fan tribute” solo near one of these creates a “merch booth” on the geyser and directs the fans (resources) to your stage. The more merch booths you have, the faster your fanbase grows.

Ironheade’s metal themed units range from the basic head-bangin’ infantry to the mighty fire breathing Metal Beast. What’s unique about Brutal Legend’s stage battles is the interaction with each individual unit. Each unit has a unique attack that they can preform with Eddie. For example, when Eddie teams up with the Head Bangers, they form a mosh pit around him, knocking enemies out of the way. These “double team” attacks are what make the stage battles really fun.

One of the best things about Brutal Legend is it’s setting. Every area of the game looks like it was ripped from a classic metal album cover. Fire rains from the sky, jagged mountains reach up toward space, and monuments to the great titans of metal are scattered across the land. Everything is on a very over-the-top, epic scale.

While the combat is pretty basic, it still manages to be fun. The “A” button attacks with the battle axe, “B” blocks and “X” attacks with the guitar. The variety comes in the form of the guitar attacks, which electrify or burn enemies from afar. There are a few guitar/battle axe combo moves, which help keep the combat interesting. Sadly, you can only decapitate so many emo kids before things start to feel repetitive.

As I played through, I never really felt like I was doing anything new or original. After a while it feels like the same old hack and slash gameplay that’s been done a thousand times before, but with a heavy metal paint job. Sure, the RTS elements are fun, but with only a handful of stage battles, by the time I really fell into a groove and started to kick some ass, the game was over. It doesn’t make the game any less fun, just a little disappointing.

This brings me to my biggest complaint with Brutal Legend. Even though I completed about a third of the side missions, unlocked most of the hidden songs and searched the land for various other collectibles,  I reached the end credits within roughly 5 hours.  I imagine a 100% play through would take maybe only an hour or two more. Even if there is some after game content, this is simply too short for a single player campaign.

The high point of the game is the music itself. The soundtrack boasts an epic 107 tracks from every sub-genre of metal, (and believe me, there are a lot of sub-genres of metal) everything from Def Leopard to Dethklok.  If you’re a metal head, your favorite band is probably represented in Brutal’s epic soundtrack (unless you’re an Iron Maiden fan, that is.) At the start of the game, about 35% of the songs are unlocked. While most of the tracks are unlocked as you play through the story, there are 23 songs hidden in relics throughout the world known as buried metal.

The best way to experience Brutal’s epic soundtrack is through the “Mouth of Metal,” a playlist-like upgrade for the Deuce that lets you select a specific song, create a custom playlist, and sort the music in a variety of ways, such as genre and alignment. What I really love about the song selection isn’t necessarily the tracks themselves, but how many of the songs tie directly into the theme of the current mission.

As you drive the deuce through a burning arena and meteors fall all around you, “Through the Fire and the Flames”  by Dragonforce blasts from Eddie’s speakers. It really ties the whole experience together. A game about metal, with a great metal soundtrack, and songs that suit the action during every mission.

Brutal Legend is an enjoyable game, if not an entirely unique experience. The writing is wickedly funny, and the inside jokes and metal references make it a must play for any metal head. But at only 5 hours or so, It’s not exactly worth the $60 price tag.

We all have those games that we miss the first time around. With the busy release schedule of modern gaming, no one has time to play everything. That is why we at WingDamage present to you “Fashionably Late Reviews“. This is our series on games from the current generation of consoles that we may have missed on their initial release, but have gone back to experience now.

“Heavenly Sword” has just about everything wanted in a launch title. Though the reviews from the big names only pegged it as “Decent”. From my admittedly average gamer’s point of view, this game was surprisingly awesome.

Even on a standard definition television, the graphics are gorgeous. I am especially impressed by character expressions. Little nuances that make dialogue and character development more believable, lifelike and compelling. I’m sure we’ve all played games where the camera zooms in on a character’s intense expression in order to indicate “It’s on now” and we’re left sitting, waiting for some kind of change, that is never quite as fulfilling as we want.

Another often overlooked aspect that really contributes to the story is the voice acting. “Heavenly Sword” takes place in what appears to be an amalgamation of Eastern Asian countries, yet everyone speaks with a vaguely British accent. At least those are well done. Both Nariko, the heroine, and Bohan, the villain are brilliantly played out, with no cringe-worthy cutscenese dragging down the game.

The gameplay is smooth, intuitive, familiar and yet still innovative. All the talk of this being “God of War” with a chick? Completely true. You dual-wield two swords which can be utilized in one of three modes: Ranged, Normal and Heavy.

Ranged has you swinging the Heavenly Sword and its mate on chains just like the Chaos Blades. Like God of War, the real trick to combat is stringing together long lines of combo attacks. Not just because it looks wicked, but because you unlock new abilities, artwork and special features by doing so. Movement also has some clever moments with timed-button presses that allow Nariko to perform crazy acrobatics in order to scale walls, fall down a mountain and in general, look like raw pwnage.

Also like God of War, there is a focus on puzzle-solving to move past an area. These frequently utilize the most rewarding, yet frustrating feature of the game, “AfterTouch” controls. AfterTouch allows the player to slow down time and control where a thrown or shot projectile goes by using the motion sensor in the PS3 controller itself. The one drawback is that I frequently had to keep my arms raised to get the angles right, which was very tiring when the level requires you continue firing arrows for a good twenty minutes.

However, the game takes full advantage of this system, whether it is firing cannons, throwing shields or just about any object on the ground…turning a stool chair into a lethal weapon.  The core fighting is still done with your blades and like all good hack-and-slash titles, this one delivers fast-paced action with brutal graphics, though little blood.

The story doesn’t hold too many mysteries. Nariko, cursed with a sword that will drain the life-force from her in exchange for its power, seeks vengeance on Bohan, a suspiciously Crusader-like King who seeks to subvert her clan along with all the others of the Land. Between his freakish generals (the snakelike Whiptail, the creepy Flying Fox and Bohan’s unfortunate son, Roach) and his seemingly endless horde of soldiers, Nariko has her bloody hands full. The strength of the story rests in how seamlessly the game moves from full motion cutscene to normal gameplay to minigame to in-game cutscene and back again.

“Heavenly Sword” may not have brought anything significantly new to the table. It is Dynasty Warriors meets God of War with a prettier, sassier protagonist. But what it does accomplish is take familiar characteristics and revamp them for the next generation of consoles. The graphics and gameplay it boasts could not have been done on a Playstation 2, thus allowing it to showcase some new features while taking advantage of a tried formula of melee-and-puzzle fun.

I would suggest a one-day rental. If after the first hour or so you’re not convinced you want to buy this game, the next four hours will not change your mind. If you like what you see though, the replay value is sufficiently high to warrant shelling out for your own copy.

"Thanks for helping me move, Kratos"

We all have those games that we miss the first time around. With the busy release schedule of modern gaming, no one has time to play everything. That is why we at WingDamage present to you “Fashionably Late Reviews“. This is our series on games from the current generation of consoles that we may have missed on their initial release, but have gone back to experience now.

The transition of God of War from console to hand-held was as smooth as one could possibly hope for.  The design of the PSP lends itself so well to this bloody platformer that it easily ranks high on the ‘Must-Have’ of any starter PSP game collection.

“God of War: Chains of Olympus” acts as a sort of prequel to the main games, fleshing out Kratos as a character and giving a bit more back-story. The actual plot involves quite a bit of mystery, so not much can be said without spoiling, but pressure of the ‘everyone-in-the-world-will-die’ variety is certainly on you.

Meanwhile, you, the player, learn of his daughter as her specter haunts him throughout the game, especially when he enters the Underworld.

That’s right. The Underworld. One of the greatest things about this game is the level locations. You almost literally ride the sun, go down into Tartarus, and all of the levels, though containing familiar items like pots and columns, are drastically different, making each one fun to explore.

There is very little graphical detail lost; the game looks almost identical to the Playstation 2 precursors and plays the same way. The only difficulty I had was the analog (joystick / nub) proved a bit harder to maneuver than the toggles of a PS2 controller. This only really came into play during the mini-games, which come with a bit more frequency than I recall from the original two. Be warned: If you do not like the events that may be timed or have to be executed in a specific manner, you may not enjoy this game as much.

The only real failing point of this game is the learning curve. I saw someone beat the entire game on Easy mode in less than five hours. Move it up one level to Normal and you’re going to spend a lot of time dying… over and over again. It got so bad, the game itself asked me if I wanted to switch to Easy Mode. Failsauce.

If you’re thinking of picking up a PSP, I strongly suggest making this one of your first games. It’s gratifying and fun, easy to pick up, easy to pause and come back to, has a strong plot, intriguing and challenging puzzles to solve, and of course, a crazy cool main character.

We all have those games that we miss the first time around. With the busy release schedule of modern gaming, no one has time to play everything. That is why we at WingDamage present to you “Fashionably Late Reviews“. This is our series on games from the current generation of consoles that we may have missed on their initial release, but have gone back to experience now.

Sometimes, when I’m hanging out in Gamer Time, I come across the most ridiculous looking/sounding games I’ve ever heard of. Enter “Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad”.

It goes without saying that this game was designed with a young, male demographic in mind. Even if you were to look past the name, the translation of which is basically “sword fighting big sister”, and the cover art, you’d still have the back of the box to deal with. Here it explains that this game features “Sexy Samurai Sisters”, “Nonstop combat and swordplay” and a “dress-up mode”. Yeah, you read that right.

The game is a pretty simple hack-and-slash where hordes and hordes of zombies pop out of the ground for you to dispatch with the aforementioned samurai swords. The controls are fairly basic. You have your regular attack, a kick, and a miscellaneous. Depending on the character and the stance, this can be either a projectile, a quick run, or a different, slightly more powerful attack.

Since you are fighting off hundreds of zombies, there is one major problem that most games overlook. All that blood has to go somewhere, right? Don’t worry, D3 has thought of that. There is a meter right next to your health that lets you know when your sword has too much blood on it to do any more killing. You have to tap the left bumper to get your character to clean off those blades.

The main characters also fly into a rage mode when they have too much zombie goo on them. This greatly increases your speed and strength at the cost of your health, which then slowly starts to drain. You can use items or find special statues that will cure you of your rage. I guess art is good for the soul.

One feature that I found pretty neat is the ability to swap characters on the fly. If you are playing single player, you can simply tap the R-trigger to do so. Anna, the gun wielding, yet still scantily clad, police woman is a great secondary character to stick with. She has infinite ammo and can keep her distance.

The game is not great by any stretch of the imagination. However, I did find myself having more fun with it than expected. It may not have any long term re-play value, but if you are looking for some mindless zombie-slaying fun, this might be the game for you. Probably as a rental. But parents, as always, look at the ratings on the back of the boxes. They are there for a reason.