Review: Samurai Shodown Sen

When I play a fighting game, I usually connect with a character or two after tinkering around in practice mode for a while. In Soul Calibur IV, it was Taki. In Dead or Alive 4, I was partial to using Hitomi. Samurai Shodown Sen left me absolutely infuriated. Here was a list of 24 characters I could use right off the bat, and I hated them all. Every fighter in Samurai Shodown Sen is unbalanced and lack the usual strengths and weaknesses that would set them apart from other fighters. The unbalanced characters are the least of Samurai Shodown Sen’s worries, however.

First off, the controls are extremely clunky. The stiff controls make themselves known right off the bat, and no amount of fiddling with the practice mode remedied the fact that they just flat-out sucked. Though the Samurai Shodown series did well in its hay day, its transition to the wonderful world of 3D was a poor one, leaving me shaking my head in disgust over the sub-par graphics and tacky use of gore. You’re given a very basic set of controls. You have your kicks, vertical slashes and horizontal slashes. You can make combos of course, but they’re extremely limited.

Something that bothered me the most about Samurai Shodown Sen (besides being bored to tears while playing it) was that the controls were extremely unresponsive and left me completely frustrated with all the lag. Even on the easiest setting, Samurai Shodown Sen is extremely unforgiving, especially to those who like to button mash their way through matches. Casual players definitely won’t want to pick this up for some light fun, and hardcore fighting game enthusiasts also won’t be satisfied by the clunky, limited controls.

If the game itself is great, I can usually forgive poor graphics. In the case of Samurai Shodown Sen, it almost looks as though the game belonged on the Playstation 2 with its mediocre character models and really jagged movement. None of the characters had fluid motions, and the gore was positively laughable. A spurt of blood would often shoot from the chest in such an unnatural manner, I found myself bursting out in laughter when it happened the first time. Sometimes a head will come off (also hilarious), and other times it’s a hand (even funnier than the awkward decapitations).

The weird use of gore wasn’t the only thing that had me laughing, though. When scrolling through the characters on the selection screen, I noticed that all of the characters had a small description at the top of the screen, such as “The Crimson Murderousness.” Another read, “The Handing Sword Princess.” And then there’s my personal favorite, “The Impact Blue of Justice.” Normally, I find engrish to be cute and funny. The engrish in Samurai Shodown Sen may be funny, but it’s almost a bit sad that the writers were earnestly trying to get you interested in the story.

If I played fighting games for their stories, I wouldn’t have bothered with any of them, so what makes them think I’m honestly going to start caring now? The story line itself is bland, but it doesn’t matter anyway because due to the poor translation, it doesn’t even make sense. Multiplayer mode was a joke as well, since I couldn’t even find a single player online to play against. It’s really sad that this is the best SNK Playmore can offer for an Xbox 360 rendition of the Samurai Shodown series. Fighting game enthusiasts have a plethora of great games to choose from, from Blazblue: Calamity Trigger to Street Fighter IV.

There is absolutely nothing here that would make you want to buy this game let alone rent it instead of the games that I just mentioned. What Samurai Shodown Sen ultimately boils down to is a poor game that should have never made it to 3D, and one that I will soon forget.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - Hilarious Engrish at least gives a few laughs.	Doin’ It RONG: - Extremely limited number of moves leaves much to be desired. - Audio sounds as though it was recorded in a tin can. - Graphics are extremely dated. - Offers nothing to the fighting genre.
FINAL SCORE: 2 / 10