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Review: Bushido Blade (alternate 2) |
Some might have read my Letter of the Week a while back before ‘officially’ joining the High Voltage staff, I’ll try not to repeat the many crticisms I had for the game. I was VERY disappointed when I got this.
Bushido Blade gets full marks for an original concept, actual realism in a weapon fighting game, if you get hit, chances are you’ll die or your arm will be dragging behind or you might take a bad hit to the legs and be forced to crawl. Anyway while this game is highly realistic, I found the response time and overall feel of the game to be not. When parrying or blocking the blows, I want to actually PARRY the blows, deflect the strike, or pass the opponent’s guard, in Bushido Blade, if you listen very carefully, you can hear a ‘ting’ sound, but your character just stands there, he takes no damage but you usually can’t even tell if the parry was successful, since I have some experience in this sort of area, It was disappointing to find I could not lead the opponent’s weapons, beat them back or any other cool stuff ala Ninja Scroll. There are 6 characters ranging from fastest but weakest, slowest but strongest etc. They also all have their own little storylines, but in Bushido Blade, the character’s style varies depending on their strength and weapon chosen, every character has a preffered weapon they are especially good at, this adds a LOT of depth to the game, and is a welcome change that other game developers should follow. If you’re a weak character and you choose the big friggin’ huge hammer, he isn’t going to have fun with it, it will take him some effort to even lift it, and when hitting with it, the weapon will drag, he changes his stances slightly to compensate all of this I found brilliant. However the fights do not flow very well, not from my over expectations of martial art-ish accuracy which usually biases me somewhat :) but the footwork and overall manueverability of the game was very poorly done. The characters move like robots, sidestepping is purely an affair of luck because of the poor response time, also dashes and every other move are slowed down, and the characters feel like they’re wearing magnetic boots. Why?
Because after everything they do, they return to their ‘normal’ posture. Rarely anything flows except for the pre-set combos in this game. While other fighting games don’t chain everything, they still don’t take forever to return to their previous posture making strikes and blocks more instantaneous, and in weapon combat, a hindrance like this usually costs you the victory as well as your enjoyment. Some cancels and guard breaks should have been implemented and would have helped the game flow a lot better. I had to run nearly a hundred percent of the time, since the normal dashing and walking were so laborious, the running attacks usually would usually flow a lot better, most of the friends I played with also ended up doing this and the whole game would turn into a running battle. When I heard about the different stances, I applauded Square’s innovative realistic approach to the game, if done right it could revolutionise so called “realistic” games like Virtua Fighter. IF done right. Say for example you’re surfing or skating, or just standing on a surfboard, to maintain your balance you sure as hell wouldn’t stand upright, so instinctively you would widen your feet, bend your knees right? you would be shifting your weight, not your whole body right? Well in Bushido Blade, your characters go to the absolute extreme, robotically jumping into their new stances to the furthest extreme, usually into postures that have incredibly poor form, and THESE guys are assassins??? e.g. when using the Katana, and shifting your character into a low stance, he would naturally carry his sword a bit lower, but he widens his stance to furthest extreme making walking incredibly ridiculous, his kness stuck out so far that you can’t help but take advantage of it, his sword trails back so far it becomes completely useless except for one attack which you can see a mile away which makes it impossible for you to defend in the game let alone in real life. In theory, you can ‘weave’ and stuff a little better in your low stance or hit higher or down for more power with a higher stance, but what about defense?
You can only block high when you’re in a high stance, low in low stance and a bit of both in mid stance, so I tended to favour the mid stance for everything just out of practicality, you rarely know where the attacks are going to land right? ha! so you just watch the opponent’s stance and change accordingly right? wrong, the game turns into a machine-like process as you constantly change stances just to even guard right. Say for example you were picking up something from the ground and suddenly a frisbee flew towards your face, you would instinctively put your hands up to catch it or to protect yourself :P , even from that position you would probably have to strain your body, or move back a bit to do it, it would have been nice if we saw this compensating when defending in a bad position it would have given the gameplay more of a flow, even if the defense was weak you would still attempt it right? Sadly this is not the case in Bushido Blade, you just don’t defend, you get hit which I found really stupid.
Bushido Blade also suffers from lack of long-term value, the storyline, the characters and the order of bosses you fight remains the same no matter who you use. They’ve added in a feature where if you’re “dishonorable” i.e. hit people before drawing their weapon, or when they’re crapping on and on, then you don’t get the proper ending, fine but with one hit kills, the game can be finished mighty fast, and the CG endings are of very poor quality, with grainy video and lots of texture blurring, nothing much happens in them at all, the character talks a bit and then it ends, this is really pitiful compared to games like Tekken 2, where even the insignificant endings like say Wang’s actually had something occuring, a point to them. There are various game modes such as practice with wooden weapons (a nice touch!) various incredible arenas that you fight in 2 player mode that you probably wouldn’t see in Single player, a chanbara mode where you fight one opponent after the other with every tenth one being a boss up to a hundred (yawn) the weird thing is, THIS seems to be there only to provide a bit more long term value before you fall asleep anyway. Bushido Blade offers little to no incentive to reward you for diligent play. You can’t really hone your skills to the Nth degree like in Street Fighter because of the pitful AI, the one hit kills and poor game design etc. There are no secret characters, endings or even new options. I thought I’d never go back to Soul Edge again after getting this game, sadly four days after messing around with Bushido Blade I went back to Soul Edge. Despite its over exaggerated moves, its simplicity , it was a lot more responsive and more fun to play, and in the end that’s what counts.
- Fansta
