Retail Price: $39.99
Official Website: Sega SJ Site
Platform: For PS2 or GameCube, I've got a PS2
Crappy Screen Caps: By me
Let me start out by saying how big of a Samurai Jack fan I am. Huge. Massive. I was blown away by the animated series the first episode I saw, and I wait and drool for the day when I can get them all on DVD. The animation is unique, beautiful, and simply stunning to watch, some wonderful hybrid of American animation with Anime influences. It breaks the traditional talking-head mold of animated fair by having very little dialogue…our hero seldom talks, and half an episode can go by without a single line of dialogue uttered. The plots are simple but elegant, often evoking a strong emotional response from laugh out loud humor all the way to deep sorrow, and the action sequences are often as good as any action movie out today. The music is it’s own character; a strong undercurrent of the show heavily influenced by traditional Japanese styles but will take a turn for something completely different when the plot needs it. Overall it’s an excellent work of art that proves animation can be for adults as well as children, and that it’s creator Genny Tartakovsky is a God.
So it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I heard they were making a video game. How well would something so unique in 2D translate to a 3D action adventure?
The Story:
The game follows the basic plot of the show. In ancient Japan an evil shape shifting entity named Aku is set on destruction and conquest. The son of the Emperor, nicknamed in the present time Jack, has trained all his life to become a samurai and defeat Aku with the help of a magic sword that is the only weapon capable of harming Aku. But just before Jack can dispatch Aku, the shape shifter opens a portal in time and sends Jack into the far distant future where Aku now rules the world and despair a misery reign. Jack wanders the Earth looking for a way to travel back to the past and prevent this awful future, all the while doing some good ol’ fashioned wrong-righting along the way.
In the game you play Jack, who does the aforementioned wandering looking for a time portal while righting wrongs. There’s some smaller sub-plots going on, mostly in the form of little missions you take on to help the local people who in return will help Jack try and find his way back home. You meet up with a few different races and peoples, do some tasks for them, help free some villages, and generally be a good guy.
The game is divided into four large story hubs, each with several mini-missions and Bosses that must be defeated in order to continue. The mini-missions are straightforward affairs where you have to get from one end to the other without getting killed.
The Visuals:
Usually in games with cut-scenes I find the animation is far better during the created scene then in actual gameplay. Samurai Jack is the opposite. Once you get accustomed to looking at Jack in 3D running around in a 3D environment it actually looks pretty good. All the characters move pretty much the same way they do in the show, from the various familiar bad guys to friends that pop up to Jack himself. The creators obviously spent a lot of time studying and copying the way Jack moves as he fights, and what you see from your PS2 is spot on to what you’d see in the show.
The game fails in the cut scenes. From a slight distance Jack looks pretty authentic. But in the cut-scenes, where we get close ups, Jack suddenly looks like he was made of Lego blocks and he has a chin even Leno would envy. Also the various other races look amateurish up close. While the show often has characters with very little in the way of detail, they are drawn with such style it doesn’t matter. That style is lost in the 3D world, and you end up with races that look like Muppets.
One nice thing, though sometimes frustrating, was the complete freeness of the camera. You had a 360 degree view of the world, and can move the camera all around Jack as well as up and down to look everywhere. It was very nice when taking a closer look at the surroundings looking for hidden objects or figuring out how to get past obstacles. However during fight sequences it could mean the camera was suddenly in a bad spot. I tend to like the camera to be behind my character, and by pressing the block button the camera will automatically return to that position, however if you’re running around you could end up looking in the wrong direction.
In a nice nod to the show, Jack’s look will change depending on his state of health. If he’s healthy his Gi will be clean and full and unscarred. The worse off Jack get’s the more ripped up his outfit becomes, until you reach critical status and his top gets torn off and he looks all cut up and beaten. While die-hard fans who appreciate Jack for his physical attributes (and let me add that he is probably the hottest looking cartoon in history) may be disappointed that we don’t get the almost prerequisite Jack-In-Nothing-But-Fundoshi…aka nothing but his skivvies…battle-damaged Jack is nothing to sneeze at.
Jack can also pick up armor that will protect him for a certain number of hits. Not only will the armor slowly get stripped away as it runs down, but the look of the armor changes depending on what hub you’re currently in. In the last hub you get to wear the same armor Jack puts on in the Pilot eppy, complete with saucepan helmet adorned with a tiny dog!
The Gameplay:
You spend most of the time guiding Jack through dangerous realms fighting bad guys, and the controls are pretty easy to grasp. I am not a fan of ComboFighting, where in order to get your character to win battles you need to memorize complicated combinations of button sequences to get them to do something. Samurai Jack simplifies the fighting tremendously. You have two buttons to use for Jack’s sword attacks, one a fast but lighter side swipe, and the other a stronger but slower thrust. You can use these alone to defeat just about anything, or string them together in sequences to watch Jack perform some pretty cool moves…however with only two buttons it’s much easier to perform a move, and is never essential in winning. For those who want something more Jack can find scrolls that detail slightly more complicated moves, where you hold down R1 while entering in a four button combo. Jack will then perform some rather outrageous and very cool attacks, and they tend to be very useful when confronting a group of enemies.
You also do a lot of jumping, and Jack not only has a normal leap but by pressing the jump button twice you get a much longer jump (because he did learn how to “jump good” :-) ) The jumping was a bit problematic for me as it was sometimes difficult to gague just how far away something was, and Jack has a hard time sticking the landing when double-jumping. These were the most frustrating parts of the game, when you needed to navigate a jumping section to move on.
Jack also has some longer range weapons, though you need to find supplies wherever you go to use them. Press the top button and Jack will launch throwing stars at the nearest enemy. Or hold down L1 and Jack will draw a bow and arrow. Aiming is pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and while you can adjust Jack to shoot just about anywhere he will lock onto targets as you get aim close enough.
The Extras:
All the familiar characters in the game are voiced by the same wonderful talent that work on the show. Not only do you get to see the main characters of Jack and Aku, but some old friends and enemies pop up along the way. It was especially nice to see the Scottsman again and the scenes with his character are very funny, though he ends up being more of a throwaway plot device then anything else.
There are three levels of difficulty you can play at. When you finish the game at a certain level it unlocks a short behind-the-scenes bit showing models, backgrounds, and the like. To see them all means you have to defeat the game three times, once at all three levels. This is a novel way to encourage replay, and the game certainly is enjoyable enough to play through another time, however there is no significant change between each level beyond making Jack weaker and the enemies stronger and more numerous. It would have been nice if there was something new for every level, or even if the awful ending was different at the highest difficulty setting.
And that was my biggest let down. I won’t spoil it…though there is not much to spoil…but the ending sucks big time. After such an enjoyable game I was almost pissed off at how awful the ending was. It’s absurdly short, quite lame, and leaves you wondering just what you spent the last few hours fighting robots for. Though the beginning itself isn’t much better…there is no opening sequence that even attempts to describe to non-fans just what the backstory is. You’re thrust right into gameplay with only the briefest of conversations between Jack and FirstAlienGuyWhoNeedsHelp. For someone who’s never watched Samurai Jack, they would need to read the backstory inside the instruction booklet to get it.
Overall:
Samurai Jack is a solid game, best suited for people like me: Fans of the show who enjoy playing console games but are not necessarily hard core gamers. It does nothing new with the samurai hack and slash kind of game, and while the 3D is adequate it certainly is not on par with most PS2 games released nowadays. It’s a fun time, certainly not too difficult even at its hardest levels, and it’s a blast to get to pretend to be Jack even if it’s just by console. If you’re an SJ fan looking to enjoy some quality geek time then this is an adequate way to indulge.
But I’m still waiting for my SJ DVD’s!
Lauren (OboeCrazy)