Samurai Showdown was a fighting game by SNK and originally appeared on the Neo Geo and the Super Nintendo in the early 90s. Later, ports of the game came out for several home consoles. There were several sequels and versions released since then for the Neo Geo as well as other home consoles. Samurai Shodown Sen (Samurai Spirits in Japan) is the eleventh installment in the Samurai Shodown series and the fourth 3D version. It is also the first to receive a Mature rating. The game features weapon based fighting with special attacks and a Rage meter to spice things up. I have a love/hate relationship with fighting games – I love to play them, but I really hate to have to learn a lot of complicated moves. Samurai Shodown Sen doesn’t have a lot of tricky button combos, but it can get very frustrating at times especially when playing the Story and Survival modes. However, when played against a human competitor, the game is a lot of fun.
Samurai Shodown Sen features a Story Mode, Versus Mode, Practice, and Survival modes. In Story Mode, you choose one character and fight through 10 battles with different characters. If you die, you are able to continue where you left off but it pushes you to the Character Select screen where you are actually able to select a new character without changing anything. Assumably, whoever you actually beat the final boss with is whose story you complete. All that being said, Story Mode is pretty weak since there really isn’t much of a story to who you are fighting. You just read the blurb at the beginning and the blurb at the end and poof! you have your story.
Versus Mode is where you can play one on one rounds versus a computer opponent or a local competitor. If you want to play online with someone, you have to choose the Xbox Live option but good luck finding a match.
I made the mistake of jumping right into a fight without reading the manual for moves or taking a few minutes in the Practice mode. Let’s just say that I got my ass kicked…a lot. After several frustrating rounds, I went into practice mode to try and learn some of the moves. One of the first things I did was reconfigure some of the buttons. The default controls just weren’t working for me so it was very nice to have the option to customize the controls to my liking. After doing so, things started to get a little easier. One thing that I like in fighting game practice modes is when they show you the moves you are trying to pull off AND they show you the button input as you hit them. Unfortunately, Samurai Shodown Sen does not do this so the practice mode is literally a place you can try to pull off moves but you are never 100% sure if you are actually pulling off the move you are trying to. The practice does help though as I noticed an improvement in my fighting skills – I was able to actually win a round.
I tend to be a bit of a button masher at times but over the last few years I’ve come to realize that you can only go so far with button mashing. If you really want to move forward, you are going to have to learn the moves. This game also requires a lot of patience, something that I don’t think I was born with. My biggest frustration was with the computer’s AI. Sometimes, I would go into a fight and kill my opponent in three hits. Then in the next round, I couldn’t even get a punch in because my opponent was mopping the floor with my face. In the final round, I would either win or lose but it was a toss up to how the round would go. This inconsistency was present throughout the entire game. A lot of times, I would just cheeseball the rounds but using one attack over and over which in most cases, if timed just right, I was able to kill my opponent in three hits.
Survival Mode places you in the Final Round with one character after another. You get some of your health back although I only really noticed that when I got my butt kicked but was able to move on. The next round I had a little more health than I ended the last round with which gives you a little more challenge – as if the AI inconsistency wasn’t challenge enough. I’m not 100% sure how far Survival mode goes since I was only able to survive about 10-11 battles.
I really wasn’t a fan of the game until Norm and I sat down and played the game against each other. I had a lot of fun while playing the game co-op since I didn’t have to contend with the AI issues. I also tried some fighting over Xbox Live but I had a hard time finding matches whether it was just a Player Match or a Ranked Match. I was able to find one and fight but I haven’t been able to find one since.
The game focuses on weapon based fighting and like most fighters, each character has their strengths and weaknesses. Some are fast so they do a little less damage but they can do more by attacking rapidly. Others have slower attacks but are a bit more powerful. Others have longer reaching weapons. You will have to change up your strategy depending on your opponent.
A lot of the characters are from the original games but there are also a few new faces. I enjoyed the character designs and while some looked familiar, I had never seen any of them before. The art style of the game was a little confused since the menus featured a watercolor cutout style while the in game graphics were very fleshed out and realistic looking and had no sign of the watercolor influence or the bold black outlines featured in the cutouts in the menus. The game makes an attempt to be brutal by adding some gore to some of the kills. While you cannot perform fatalities like you can in Mortal Kombat, you will occasionally (more often than not, that is) end a battle with a random brutality like decapitating your opponent, chopping off a hand or arm, chopping them in half, or disemboweling them. While I’m totally OK with violence and gore in games, I felt like this was a rather unnecessary thing. It almost felt like it was added in for its shock value rather than to actually enhance the game. While I’m sure some would argue how does that kind of extreme violence enhance a game? Play a few rounds of Mortal Kombat. That’s how. The added brutalities are kind of fun though but after you have seen all the animations, they lose their luster. Especially since each and every character reacts the same way. I would’ve like to see some more individualized brutalities but again, I think that just solidifies my point of it really being an unnecessary thing. The backgrounds are nice with depth and lots of details however, sometimes it’s too dark or the colors are a little drab so you really have to pay attention to the backgrounds to fully appreciate them.
The game’s menu was a little clunky as after making a selection, it offered no way of going back to the previous menu. That means if you choose the wrong thing, you have select a character and sit tight until the round starts just so you can quit to the main menu. The worst part about that was the annoying music. Most of the music was decent. It was right for the fights and the feel of the game however, the menu screen music especially when you were loading the next fight was extremely annoying. I enjoy music from many different cultures but when you have to listen to it every time a new fight loads, you will hate it too. It’s especially harsh during Survival Mode and if you have to continue several times in Story Mode.
If you are looking to play a fighting game by yourself, this may not be the game for you. If you are familiar with the Shodown series, you’ll probably enjoy the game. I recommend renting it first and playing it with friends. The game shines when played with others although if you want to play online, you may have a really hard time unless you know other people with the game. As frustrated as I got while playing the game, I did manage to enjoy a lot of it and will probably continue to play it. The game is also available for the arcade and may actually lend itself better with the use of an arcade stick controller than the traditional Xbox 360 controller. If I run across the arcade version, I will definitely throw in some quarters and try it out.
Samurai Shodown Sen is rated M for Mature and is available now for the Xbox 360 for $49.99.
A review copy was provided but did not affect the outcome of this review.
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