Let’s start with a bit of history. Oneechanbara was a game in the “Simple 2000″ series in Japan, made by D3 publisher. It was a relatively simple game (as the title suggests). The full name was “Simple 2000: The Oneechanbara”.  Simple 2000 was just a bunch of cheaply made games for the most part and most weren’t really good and didn’t become popular. But The Onechanbara one of the few titles in the series, if any, to spawn an actual sequel. Heck, it was so popular it even got a movie (which I reviewed), and it was surprisingly good. Like a good B movie, a bit campy but ultimately a fun watch, and one of the very few good video-game based movies.

That of course made me interested in the actual games, and as luck would have it 2 were announced in America: this one, and Bikini Zombie Slayers on the Wii. So I knew I had to at least pick up one of them (and i’ll rent the other later). And, like the movie, this was surprisingly fun.

So let’s go! Read on!

Looks and sounds
The graphics are okay. Pretty much like a really early 360 title. The textures are kinda meh, the enemies look average, and the girls are well done. There’s a few problems though. I saw people whining about the resolution. I didn’t have many problems with that, but what I DO see, a lot, is screen tearing. There’s tons of it. All the time. May it be during cutscenes or during gameplay, if there’s some movement on the screen, there’s gonna be screen tearing. Heck, I even get some when just running around with no zombies in the vicinity. And there’s some graphical glitches, like Saki’s mini-skirt disappearing to show her panties at total random, which was kinda weird…

The sound is average. I actually don’t remember any of the music in the game just by thinking about it, but while playing you know it does the job okay.  The voice acting is all in Japanese with subtitles, and for the most part the voice actors do a good job, though sometimes they seem to lack emotion. The sounds of the zombies are well done, either showing what weapon they have and such giving you proper sound cues to know when to evade gun fire and such.

Overall, the game looks and sounds fine though not as NEXT-GEN (current-gen would be the proper term, but whatever ) as other titles on the 360, keep in mind this is a budget title.

Story
After… Whatever happened in the 2 first games, Saki and Aya are teamed up and taking a break from zombie-killing. But that break doesn’t last too long, as zombies are attacking the city. So it’s up to them to get to the bottom of this zombie attack. It just so happens that some organization is after Aya and Saki’s Baneful Blood, which has… something to do with zombies, and they want to kidnap Saki (and actually manage to do so in the beginning of the game). Saki is saved by Anna, a gun-using policewoman in a skimpy outfit (surprising isn’t it?).

 

The rest of the story pretty much revolves around finding out about the organization behind the zombie attacks (since they have control over that) . Not a super-interesting story, but it’s not bad either.

Gameplay
This works like a basic Beat ‘em up. Go through a stage, come across enemies, go further in the stage, beat more enemies, and eventually fight a boss. The game’s basics are… really basic. But it still has quite a bit of depth. There’s various enemy types that require different strategies to fight, or different moves for faster kills, or different strategies by using different characters.

The basic controls are simple. You have a jump button, an attack button, a kick/alternate attack button and a third alternate attack/move button. You can lock on which gives you some evasion moves. You have a style change move which changes the weapons a bit ( Aya gets 2 swords instead of 1, Anna exchanges here badass dual-pistols for a shotgun and a machine gun and Saki gets NOTHING), a button to change character (most missions you get to choose 2 characters for the mission) and a button to clean your bloody sword or reload your ammo.  And the “Back” button brings you to the item menu so you can use items to heal yourself and get temporary stat boosts and such (the instruction manual doesn’t tell you that). You have various attacks, depending on your Skill level and what button combinations you use. 

The camera is a bit bad, it moves way too slowly, but it does the job most of the time, though it gets really jittery when you lock-on to an enemy.

Each character has a bunch of normal attacks and 2 special attacks. There’s a ” counter stance” attack that does massive damage in a small area in front of you, but it takes away from your lifebar. As you build up your combo, a yellow bar fills up near your character’s portrait, and as it gets higher you can use an ecstasy attack. Saki and Aya get a spinning attack(as seen in the movie!). Aya’s does more damage, but Saki’s does a shockwave which attacks far away enemies and Anna just mows away all that’s in front of her with her guns and during those attacks you’re invincible.

Aya and Saki also have 2 special mechanics. First is the bloody sword. As you kill zombies, your sword gets more bloody and loses its sharpness, sometimes getting stuck in zombies, so you have to keep your sword clean to prevent getting trouble with things like this. Anna doesn’t have that, but she has to reload her guns from time to time. The other mechanic is the Bloodlust system. As you kill zombies, Aya and Saki get covered in blood, and if there’s too much, they get in Rampage mode. This speeds you up and makes your attacks a lot more powerful, but you lose health as you stay in that state. The only ways to get out of that is to either use a goddess statue head or find a goddess statues on the map to purify yourself. Anna doesn’t have that mechanic, or something to replace it, because she doesn’t have Baneful Blood(sorry, no blood-covered policewoman for you).

Enemies are mostly zombies, may it be animals or humans or mud with hearts (yeah, weird), and they’re a bit different from usual zombies. Not Left 4 Dead fast, but still they can be fast(when they want to) and they can also use weapons. At first they can have chainsaws and such, or they can be burning. Later they can have handguns and shotguns. Enemies get dismembered when you slash or shoot at them, and that changes how they act. Zombies with guns, for example, can’t aim properly anymore if you cut their head off. When you cut their torsos, only their legs are left(why their legs instead of their upper body? I don’t know) and they can kick you, but they’re easy targets. There’s various other enemies. Zombie crows, zombie dogs, huge zombies, mud zombies that you can rip their heart out of for a fast kill and a few others. Bosses are a bit tougher. They take a lot more abuse and have more complicated attacks. But they have patterns and relatively cheap AI that are easy to fool. Also, against certain bosses, if you evade certain attacks with the perfect timing, you get some bullet-time and if you attack during that time you do massive damage to the boss.

Other stuff
In addition to the normal mode, there’s a survival mode and a freeplay mode where you can go through any stage with any character, but the most “interesting” is the Dress-up mode. This starts you up with the characters in their underwear and you can dress them up to make your own custom costumes. To get those costumes though is a really tough task, as you have to do various “quests” in the game, which aren’t all that easy. But after getting some and making costumes, you can use those costumes in any more in the game.

Also, there’s a leveling feature in the game. Enemies gives orbs when they die, and those give experience. As you level up you get 3 points per level which you can put in 1 of 4 stats: Skill (gives more attacks as it gets to certain levels), Vitality (defense/health), Power and Reach (for Anna it’s Gun, which makes her guns stronger, so power isn’t one of the really important stats for her). So you can pretty much customize each character like you want them to be. Cool stuff.

There’s a few other elements I could speak of like bracelets, but sadly I suck too much to get more than 2 consecutive “Cool” attacks (which somehow require pressing X while your sword is in an enemy… or something like that… I’m not too sure, but it requires consecutive “Cool” attacks on  Blood Mist monsters.

Overall
The game is fun. It’s like an old-school beat ‘em up, but with a bit more depth. If you like old-school beat ‘em ups, this could be right up your alley. Otherwise, it’s really violent with blood everywhere and, if it’s selling, it’s mostly because of the premise of bikini/schoolgirl outfit-clad japanese girls killing zombies with katanas, but look beyond that and you actually have a good game. Simplistic, yes. Repetitive, yes. But bad? No fucking way. Not the best game ever, but it’s unreasonable to expect that. It’s budget-priced, so it’s not like you’re losing THAT much trying it out. And the face of the store clerk(and other people in the store) will most likely be pretty funny when you bring that up to the counter.

What could make the game better? MAIDS. You get a bikini and cowboy hat-wearing girl, a schoolgirl and a policewoman, but no maids? Sucks. Maybe you unlock maid outfits as you finish quests, I didn’t get everything yet so I don’t know. Also, the instruction booklet is horrible, one of the worst I’ve ever seen, it says nothing about the game and you have to rely on IGN’s well-written guide instead (though they don’t say much about the controls, but you’ll figure that out easily).

*EDIT*
Good timing I say, DLC was just released for this. 6 outfits(2 for Aya, Saki and Anna… 1 for Aya is free and 1 for Saki is free, the rest are 200 points) and 3 new characters to play as (Reiko from the older games(she’s free), Misery and Himiko (those 2 are 500 points)) and there’s a pack with all the content for 1600 points (20$… kinda a lot if you ask me…).

jobocan Games, Review, sexy