Maximum Letdown: Onechanbara – Bikini Samurai Squad (Xbox 360)

*sigh*

Think about it, Asian women in bikinis killing scores of zombies.

This should have been an early contender for game of the year.

(Okay maybe not exactly, but it should at least have been a fun way to pass the time until Resident Evil 5 had been released)

So what happened?

I don’t know, but click after the jump and I’ll do my best to help find an answer.

Onechanbara is one of Japanese publisher D3’s Simple 2000 series of games. These normally budget priced games eschew high production values in favor of providing a simple, yet fun experience for gamers. This is the second one of these games to hit the US (the first being Earth Defense Force 2017), and there is a sequel on the Wii. While other games of this type usually sacrifice fancy cinematics and flash in favor of simple and fun gameplay, OBSS seems to sacrifice good gameplay in favor of half naked Asian women.

The game centers around something called the Baneful Blood. When the skin of someone who is afflicted with this condition comes in contact with too much of it, they fly into a rage mode which gives them increased strength and speed, but at the cost of their life force. Keep this in mind, as not only does it explain why the girls run around half naked, but it’s the reasoning behind one of the game’s [flawed] mechanics. The scrolling intro tells you everything you need to know about it. Enough about that, all you need to know is that zombies are attacking the city, and Aya and her sister Saki need to stop them. You’ll meet a third gun-wielding character named Anna, and there is some secret corporation involved. Not much of a story, but then who needs much of a justification to kill a whole bunch of zombies? The girls have upgradable stats and secret abilities, and you can replay any already completed stage to gain extra items and experience points. You can customize your characters costumes with clothing items you unlock in the story mode. There is also 2 player co-op in the campaign (at least in the levels with more than one character), and if you don’t have a second player, you can control both characters, tagging in and out. So far so good….

…however, here is where the game falls apart. It plays like Dynasty Warriors (with the Chinese warriors replaced with half naked Asian chicks and zombies), but a lot less unplayable. How bad of a maximum letdown is this game? Let me count the ways. Remembered when I mentioned the whole Baneful Blood thing? Well, it’s inevitable to avoid, as pretty much every enemy splashes blood all over you, and you automatically go into it whenever the blood meter is full. To make matters worse, the only way I can get out of is is by using a special item which appears randomly. So when this happens, and I don’t have this item in my inventory, I can either keep killing zombies until the item appears, hope that I complete the level in time, or I’m pretty much screwed. Unlike rage modes in games like the Suffering, Scarface, and just about every other action game featuring a rage mode, this is the exact opposite of what a rage mode is supposed to do. Another annoying (and somewhat sexist) game mechanic involves your sword’s gore meter. Simply put, if you get too much blood on your weapon, it becomes so heavy that you run the danger of having said weapon stick to every enemy you swing it at. This continues until you shake the blood off of it, thus reaffirming the stereotype of women being weaker than men. Lets see, Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu never had this problem, and he chops off whole limbs for gods sake. Devil May Cry’s Dante and Nero don’t have this issue either, and their weapons get coated with blood on a regular basis. Thankfully Anna, the aforementioned gun-wielding character doesn’t have these problems. Instead, she only has to deal with reloading her weapons, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY ALL HAVE UNLIMITED AMMO! Now this wouldn’t be so bad, IF YOU DIDN’T RUN OUT OF AMMO EVERY 15 SECONDS! LITERALLY! While there is a lock on function, it’s screwed up as well, as targets frequently switch automatically with no intervention on your part. Oh, and the instruction explain very little. While it tells you the basics in controls, it doesn’t explain what the rage mode is, the item you need to ward it off, or the fact that you need certain types of attacks to kill certain types of monsters. Yes, while it has sections in French and Spanish, it doesn’t say how to get out of the rage mode. It’s like I have to find out how to play the game as I go along. A tutorial would have been nice, but it doesn’t even have that!

Now you could avoid combat all together, but don’t worry, they managed to fudge this up as well, as there are sections that lock you in and FORCE YOU INTO COMBAT. Now of course, many first and third person shooters do the same thing, but those shooters don’t have force you into a MINDLESS RAGE MODE for getting too much blood on yourself! Oh yes, Onechanbara has some of the worst level designs ever seen in any genre. Say what you will about Dynasty Warriors, but at least they have wide open battlefields, straightforward levels, and clearly defined objectives (even if they do revolve around beating up an enemy officer). Onechanbara has large nondescript areas that have you running around in circles searching for KEYS. Moreover, these levels take place in the same city, underground parking tunnel, and sewer. There is the occasional change up like a hospital and graveyard, but other than that, every level looks the same. Oh yeah, there are some motorcycle levels, but they are even more unplayable than the on-foot levels! Or maybe I’ve been spoiled by years of decent motorcycle gameplay in everything from Saint’s Row to Road Rash on the Sega Genesis.

Nearly every time the game tries to do something unique, it shoots itself in the foot. However, there are a few bright spots. The boss battles are well planned, and some of them even require strategy. The soundtrack is catchy as well, kinda feels like an old school SNES game (only with crappier gameplay to go along with it). There are even downloadable characters and costumes on the Xbox Live Marketplace (though they costs a little more than they should). There is even a loading screen minigame that plays even better than the main game itself (which is good since the game loads all to frequently). The girls are lovely to look at as well (especially in the opening cinematic), and lets face it, if you’re enough of a masochist to suffer through this game’s faults, you earned the right to dress (or undress) them as you wish.

Like Rumble Roses and Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball before it, Onechanbara is one of those games that could have been enjoyable had its developers concentrated as much on the gameplay as much as it did on rendering attractive women. With gameplay like this, I’m shocked that it lasted as long as it did in Japan. Hopefully just because this game bombed, that won’t mean the end of the Simple 2000 series in America. Let this be a lesson though, semi-naked women on the cover does not a good game make.

*Oh yeah, be here later this week for a Wolverine lost classics/maximum letdown special and the $20 game of the week.