This Week I Have Been Mostly Playing...
Katana Zero on Nintendo Switch
It is said that nothing new is made any more, it’s just recycling old ideas. Games probably do this more than most but it’s easier to take your own slant on an old release than in other media. In that vein, let's talk about Katana Zero by Askiisoft a game full of 80’s style, neon, death, quick restarts and uber violence. This sounds a lot like the brilliant Hotline Miami but is instead reinterpreted as a side scroller with some additional mechanics to help you survive.
Set in a futuristic Japan following a major defeat in a war, you play an Assassin who has lost his memory and is trying to piece it together between assassination jobs while addicted to the drug ‘Chronos’ which gives you the ability to slow down time and predict the future.
In game play terms you enter a building and need to take out men armed with melee weapons and guns, with the ‘bullet time’ allowing you to use your Katana to hit back bullets to kill the enemy. Alternatively you can dodge roll passed the fire and just slice them up with a nice selection of blood patterns on the walls.
To begin with the levels are very short, interspersed with much longer story sections that absolutely kill the pacing. Hotline Miami’s greatest strength was the pacing and how you could smash open a door, punch a man, steal his knife which you then throw at an attack dog before grabbing a machine gun and mowing down three attackers. It flows brilliantly which this game does not until the later levels.
Once the levels get more complex and offer additional items that you can throw, it does start to come into its own. You have to plot your way through each area, with breakable floors, flying drones and security cams adding to the complications.
The cut-scenes seem long and confusing to begin with but eventually the story is very engrossing if not a little perplexing. The end of the game can only be described as Fucked Up, I do not wish to give anything away but there are very dark themes within. Fortunately the developers are going to be making more free story DLC over the next few months so hopefully we can find out what really happens.
There is a lot to like about this game, it knows what it is doing and brings a couple of new things to the table. But it just didn't click for me as I was expecting, there were times it was a lot of fun but some parts I was rushing to just get through it. It’s not overly long and does have its moments but I feel it falls short of being great.
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