The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai Review (Xbox 360)
Talk about a dream come true: James Silva went from submitting a game to Microsoft’s Dream-Build-Play contest, to winning said contest, to having his XBLA title on Xbox Live Marketplace.
Now, going under the name Ska Studios, James’ one-man operation is seeing the release of the award-winning The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai this week. Although some of you may have played The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai in various stages of its development, this version is the real-deal: complete Achievements, the required “how to play” instructions and a full 800 Microsoft Point asking price (or about $10). You even get local/Live multiplayer, a Horde-style Challenge arena and a straight-up points-based Arcade mode. You can play the trial version via Marketplace now, but the real question: Is Dead Samurai worth the amount of dead presidents required to purchase it?
I know what some of you are thinking— Dishwasher is an indy project that probably should be kept in the community-games sector. While there may be some areas of Dead Samurai that need honing, it’s surely worthy of its XBLA publishing.
It doesn’t take long to realize that The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is here to play hardball with the classic 2-D button mashers on XBLA. Just study the start screen for a bit: Plumes of black smoke ooze from the pointer. Ghost skulls and dreary, brush-stroked characters fill up the background. Even the font has been thought out, with O’s being replaced with Dishwasher’s unit of currency—the mesmerizing Spiral. Yeah, it’s just a title screen, but it illustrates that Ska Studios is really trying to create a memorable piece of intellectual property with The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, not just a generic hack-n-slash.
And on to the Story mode’s cutscenes. One has to be crafty in order to pull off cuts in small capacity titles, which is exactly what Ska did for Dead Samurai. Comic-book cells set slightly off-kilter create interesting reads. The cells scroll from left to right as if you were reading the pages of your favorite comic. There’s even a scrolling-speed control mapped to the face button for those that want to get on with the mashing. Some of the imagery in each cell is hard to make out, due to the overuse of like hues and a bit too much soft focus, but this push to try something different in the art-direction department won’t go unnoticed by artsy-fartsy Xbox’ers.
The dark-and-dank theme set forth by the start screen and opening cutscene carries directly into The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai’s gameplay. Backgrounds look like those CGI jobs used for the recent run of Frank Miller movies; drab to the point of them being depressing, and therefore perfect for a psychotic dishwasher that decides to go Kill Bill.
Once again, style abounds, whether in the subtle particle effects in the aforementioned backgrounds or the mesmerizing glimmer of the Dishwasher’s cleaver. Or the health meter, which purposely has some of its red juice oozing outside of the lines; as if it were plucked from the pages of a tot’s coloring book. The Washer’s animation sets are quite polished, too. He looks a bit like a character that Capcom forgot to put in Okami: kind of wispy with heavy brush-stroked lines. Ska did go a bit heavy on the lens Vaseline, but Dead Samurai is still quite buff in motion.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai plays well, too, but not quite as good as it looks. M-level gory details, such as copious amounts of blood (which can be turned from red to black—for the goth crowd, I take it), decapitations and general impalings raise the visual delights through the roof once again, but the act of making these messes in Dead Samurai can be quite frustrating at times.
There’s good gaming frustration and bad gaming frustration, with The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai exhibiting equals amounts of both. The satisfying, yet sometimes irritating, part of Dead Samurai’s gameplay is that it’s ferociously difficult. Yes, it’s a button masher for all intents and purposes, but The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai’s action goes well beyond the light- and heavy-strike buttons.
You can combo, grab and throw enemies, perform special attacks, aerial attacks, climb walls, juggle adversaries and carry two bad-ass weapons (including a chainsaw) at once. Such an arsenal will sometimes bias a game in the player character’s favor, but such isn’t the case in Dead Samurai because the enemy AI is more than up to the task. Go to the well one too many times with a devastating move and the AI will block it every time. Enemies also have automatic weapons in scenes where you don’t, and some even have the ability to fly much easier than the Dishwasher can. And, of course, there are multiples foes in every frame. Bottom line: Dead Samurai is Ninja Gaiden-hard on its Normal difficulty, and there are still three more tiers of hardness above that. It’s a toughie, for sure, and not for the faint of heart, but its complexity will keep the hardcore button mashers out there content.
The more painful side of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai’s aggravating ways is rooted in how parts of the gameplay have been designed. Although it’s set up to be a 2-D game scroller from side to side, Dishwasher contains many bits of vertical action and, of course, various platforms to support said vertical action. The platforms and various other background objects that have been keyed to “catch” Dishwasher to simulate three-dimensional depth often get in the way of the combat. Say, for instance, you’re attempting a jumping heavy attack, where the Dishwasher fires straight down onto the enemy—a standard move in hack-and-slash titles. Once the code recognizes that Washer is under a ledge, box, table or other object, he’ll get caught up on it. Sadly, these hang-ups kill nearly all of the combat flow when they’re encountered.
There’s also an issue with wall climbing and running in Dead Samurai. It’s a bit unclear as to exactly what portions of a wall can be grabbed. Or, maybe each and every vertical surface is meant to be grabbed, and it doesn’t work as advertised. Either way you…um, slice it, the wall grabbing and climbing dynamic of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is off. That’s a shame, too, since Dishwasher has reflexes like Street Fighter’s Vega when airborne. Combos can be made leaping from a vertical grab position, for example. The ability to climb vertically is a smart add to Dead Samurai, but its functionality needs another run through the rinse cycle for it to really pay off.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is an amazing game, even if you don’t have any idea of how it came about or about the size of the studio that made it.
At TeamXbox, we don’t break XBLA game scores down like we do for standalone titles, but if I had to, Dead Samurai would receive an 8 for gameplay and a 9.5 for visuals/presentation. While Dead Samurai’s gameplay could have used a bit more Dawn for it to truly shine, the visuals and overall presentation value makes this unique, indy-produced IP easily worth its 800-point asking price.
Achievements
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai does Achievements a bit differently than most games. The scoring has been massaged to match some of the objectives. So, you’ll get the odd number of 13 GS Points to impale—you guessed it—13 foes. Ska also gives a shout out to the band And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead in one Achievement name and pokes fun at former Xbox leader Peter Moore in another. You’ll also have a legitimate shot at scooping up 40 Gamerscore Points at once if you “get the hat.”
And now the full list of Achievements for Dishwasher:
Smasher of Zombies—Beat the game on normal or ninja difficulty. (25 points)
The Peter Moore Achievement—Pay homage to one of our generation’s greatest rock performances ever. (8 points)
Got the Hat—Beat the game on Samurai difficulty. (40 points)
The First Encounter—Secret. (10 points)
The Black Book Achievement—Earn 100 million points in an arcade level. (11 points)
Smash Your TV—Secret. (13 points)
Cemetery Man—Complete St. Crux Cemetery using only the chainsaw. (20 points)
The Brutal Achievement—Do 10 wall slams in one combo. (10 points)
Kill You Seven Times—Air juggle an enemy for 10 seconds. (14 points)
Untouchable—Get 21 kills without getting hit once. (21 points)
Master of Arcade Dishwashing—Complete arcade mode. (15 points)
And You Will Know Us—Impale 13 freaks. (13 points)
