Seven Samurai 20XX

[John Beaulieu]

Quite possibly one of the greatest movies of all time, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has been emulated by western movie makers many times whilst never being surpassed ..... this game is taking the ideas behind Seven Samurai but transporting them to a sci-fi ish setting (this has been done before - Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress was the inspiration behind Star Wars A New Hope)

so the basic premise of the game .... Aliens/demons are invading the Earth, a wandering stranger (who gets named a samurai early on) helps out a group of fellow travellers - then he gets drawn into protecting a village, so goes out recruiting 6 more 'samurai' to help him do it and ends up saving the world

at first glance this game isn't upto much ... you look at it and think 'bleh its just another shinobi clone', and the hack and slash combat is simplistic to say the least (1 button to attack, 1 to block and 1 to jump) .... after playing Bujingai it all felt so slow and sterile....

attacking the first few enemies it was a simple hack,hack - move to the next one - hack,hack - repeat ........ but i could see that your character has 2 swords (1 tucked away on his back) and i just knew that this game would get rougher when both swords were in action ..... pressing L1 and R1 draws your second sword - once your second sword is drawn a countdown timer kicks in, you have 90 seconds to use the sword before it gets tucked away - you then have to wait for the sword meter to get to 100% before using it again (killing enemies and some powerups speed up this process)

pressing select brings up a menu - where you can view your move list (tons of moves are available - it looks as though mastering them will take sme time), a weapon list in which only 2 spaces are full (with your current weapons) and there are lots of empty spaces for new weapons (i hope).... it looks as though its going to be one which completists are going to love

you can link combo's between enemies - and all the tricks are present - dash attacks, instant kills, 'bullet-time' - you can make it look as good as you wanty

only minus i have on this game upto now is that the voice acting is in english (with japanese subs) and it is attrocious - the script is beyond bad ... hopefully a japanese voice option will open up at some point

from reading bits about this game it seems that a survival mode opens up after your complete the game once -- which should be fun

anyways - heres a short vid of my poor skills in action - which hopefully will give a few peeps an indication of what could turn out to be another enjoyable sleeper

6 meg vid

[PeteJ]

Wasn't Akira Kurosawa's Son behind this? I guess that his involvement (and being loosely based on the film, obviously) is the only reason I'm interested in this game. From the screenshots I thought it looked completely dire.

It is a shame in my opinion that they took the game into the future, as I'd have thought a basing it tightly around the film could have worked quite well.
I'd like to read further impressions whenever possible

The vid doesn't work by the way. Edit, does now

[Che Musashi]

I can't believe they have bad voice acting and game loosely based on a classic film. Is it a quasi hack n slash brawler of sorts...?

edit- Saw the video and all my questions were answered. Maybe it will be worth checking out on the cheap eh?

[John Beaulieu]

his grandson was part of the development team - i agree that it could have worked better in a feudal japan setting (especially after watching The Last Samurai last night) but there are tons of little things which point directly at the movie - such as the character walking about with the sword on his shoulder

and the vid does work now - i put a m instead of M

camps

[Saurian]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Looks like another one where it's like a blank canvas for your skills to be unleased! Kind of like Shinobi - you can totally miss the concept of the game and think it's rubbish when infact it's extremely clever!

Loving all this sword action - Kunoichi, Bujingai and now this!

[PeteJ]

Looks like another one where it's like a blank canvas for your skills to be unleased! Kind of like Shinobi - you can totally miss the concept of the game and think it's rubbish when infact it's extremely clever!

Loving all this sword action - Kunoichi, Bujingai and now this!

The video does make it look a lot better than I was expecting, and Camps you are being quite hard on yourself - the opening battle you seemed to do really well, though it went downhill from there
From the video it looks a tough loose, with the character just spinning his arms aimlessly (though impressively) rather than huge skill and getting away with it, which is quite worrying.

I've just ordered Bujingai so I'll probably give this one a miss, unless people here start really praising it of course...

[John Beaulieu]

hes spinning his arms 'aimlessly' cos i am tryna get some of the specials out - its analogue control only and the timing has to be precise

and ... i thought i did well with the boss - i kicked his ass in double quick time

camps

[Geoff D]

I can only get sound on the vid

[toy_brain]

only minus i have on this game upto now is that the voice acting is in english (with japanese subs) and it is attrocious - the script is beyond bad ... hopefully a japanese voice option will open up at some point

I remember reading somewhere (IGN perhaps) that Sammy was going to re-dub the voices for the western release.
This sounds odd, given that its in english to start with - and will be dubbed in english AGAIN, but after hearing the voice-acting on the first part of the game I can see why.

I also seem to remember some mention of someone who works on the TMNT cartoons being involved in the re-dub.

I'll see if I can dig the story out again.
EDIT: Found it - it was Gamespot, not IGN that had the story. Here's the link. Might need to copy-n-paste it as some people have problems with links to gamespot:

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/sevensamurai/preview_6086241.html

[Crispin]

Really? I loved the voice acting. Since the only thing I know about Seven Samurai is that the Magnificent 7 copied it (IIRC), I was really surprised by that video. Looks like a chance to show off flair and style.

I'll probably pick this up. Wait! I'm on a gaming diet. Damn you Camps, you pricktease. You did rather well, I thought, try and have some self esteem.

Looks like this could be the "Viewtiful Joe" I actually enjoy. :P

[Crispin]

It's out in Game now. Exclusive. For ?30. Ooh.
Linky:
Here