Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma - Review

Afro Samurai 2's narrative is exactly what you would expect it to be. It continues on from the anime series…but instead of playing the protagonist from the anime itself, you're actually playing Kuma. "Who", you ask? If you ever watched the anime itself (without giving away too much), remember the samurai who was running around in a huge teddy bear mask/helmet? Yeah, that guy.

This game  follows his story from showing you glimpses of his past, why he became somewhat of a rogue samurai, and his reasoning as to why he's after after Afro himself.

If you were after something amazing out of this game…you might be extremely disappointed. Afro Samurai 2's visuals uses cell shading…however, seems very unpolished and unfinished. Throughout the game, there are certain backgrounds that seem unrendered in hopes that players don't notice depending on the angle of the set camera. Which comes to our next point…there is no self camera angle control in the game, which comes across quite irritating. There are moments during the game (with most games these days) where you're wanting to pivot the angle to get a better view when battling enemies, or if you're going through a chase/running scene. Unfortunately this game has a set camera angle which isn't customisable. Coupled with the repetitive button mashing and counter of it's fighting mechanics gameplay through the whole game makes it tedious real fast. Even 'upgrading' your skills doesn't make you want to collect points and better the character.

Boss battles are unfortunately not exciting at all…with simplistic 'hit the square button'…then 'hit the triangle button' repetitively, opposed to the feeling of actually fighting a boss by controlling your character around. Which leads to the next point…the story, gameplay and puzzles are unfortunately very linear…there's nothing you need to do to work out how to unlock a door to go through to the next area (which God of War did extremely well). It's literally fight a bunch of ninjas or samurais, and move to the next area.

In terms of story, the amount of times you hear Kuma yelling, "I remember….I REMEMBER EVERYTHING" is absolutely ridiculous to the point where it gets irritating. You don't even feel sorry for the character's tragic history, but get to a point where you'd love for him to just shut up. Additionally, the gameplay tends to abruptly stop and presents a cutscene…which makes the game feel extremely disjointed. Lastly, adding "load screens" with a bar across the bottom of your screen with a % sign makes this feel like you're taking a step backward, and are playing some type of PS1 game.

We would have LOVED to have enjoyed this game…but unfortunately it was a complete let down with very minimal positivity to say about it. If we were to give any praise…the background score and voice actors 'could' be the positives to the game? We stress the word 'COULD'.

Thanks to Versus Evil for supplying the game for review