Written by: Mark

 

 

 

"The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai" is a game created solely using the XNA design tool and during the early part of last year was one of the major highlighted games which would soon to be available on the new community games section.

 

However such was the praise that the demo received that the ’big wigs’ at Microsoft decided that the game should become a future Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) downloadable game.

 

Instantly one had to wonder if this would put too much pressure on the games designers to make the necessary additions and changes in order for it to compete with other XBLA releases.

 

After what seemed like an eternity the full game is now available at a cost of 800ms points and we at PlayDevil finally got our hands on this hotly anticipated game.

The following review will give you a flavour of the final product and hopefully give you an idea as to whether it really is as good as expected.

 

 

With a title such as The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai one may be believed into thinking that the game would be one which does not take itself too seriously and probably be a parody of several other side scrolling beat em ups.

 

However it soon becomes obvious from the opening screen which is backed by some Oriental style music which fit’s the overall look very well that the game has a real arty feel to it and seems to be presented in an excellent fashion.

 

 

The story is a pretty simple one which sees you taking on the role of  an undead samurai dishwasher who thinks that someone has killed him and stolen his heart. To gain revenge he has to battle through a variety of mostly side scrolling levels battling various enemies and boss characters using a variety of weapons including swords, guns, chainsaws, projectiles and magic all of which can be upgraded at various points throughout the game.

 

In addition to the main quest the developer have also included an online co-operative mode, an arcade mode and dish challenge to add more depth and longevity to the 14 level main story, but more about this later.

 

 

From the outset the game looks beautiful with the menu screens giving a small flavour of what is to come. However once the player commences with the main story mode it becomes obvious that you are going to be in for a real treat with it’s visuals which has to be said are very easy on the eye.

 

The story is told in the form of a graphic novel which is presented in a comic strip kind of way which I found to be a very refreshing change from the abundance of long drawn out cut scenes which are evident in many other games including those which have a much larger budget. This certainly had me nodding my head in approval before I had even seen the in game graphics which are acceptable if a tad disappointing when compared to the level design and amount of detail placed on giving the game a nice cosmetic look.

 

The characters in the game are easily identifiable although wave after wave of enemies do look almost identical with the exception to the well presented boss characters. If I had to make a comparison the games character design seems to have taken inspiration from the XBLA games release by developers The Behemoth in the form of the hugely successful 'Castle Crashers' and 'Alien Hominid'. This is not a bad thing as those games were both very playable and the enjoyment came not only from the excellent gameplay but also in their slightly basic presentation.

 

 

One thing for certain is that although comparisons can be made the game seems to have a more adult feel to it and draws massive inspiration from the successful movies from the far east and the comic books and manga TV shows that accompany them.