Cgrundertow Samurai G for Nintendo 3ds Video Game Review

UFO Interactive’s all-out assault on the eShop has gone from relentless to “holy crap, how many 3DS and DSi games can a company even make?” In fact, we’ve gotten to the point that they’re running out of nouns. Already the second UFO game called Samurai something or other, it’s Samurai G for the Nintendo 3DS. You’re making this really confusing, UFO. Of course, it’s great to see a third-party supporting a Nintendo platform the way UFO is. But since its very first eShop release, the problem has been that...a lot of the games have great ideas and individual parts, but they don’t come together as well as you’d hope. It’s kind of the same story with Samurai G. So this is basically an endless runner with an emphasis on action. You control some samurai who is trying to collect as much gold as possible. Sounds like a pretty terrible thing for a hero to do, but supposedly, he’s only trying to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. A likely story, Scrooge Mc-duck-under-the-ninja-stars. So obviously, Samurai G automatically scrolls from left to right...which means your samurai does, too. But you can jump and speed up or fall back...and of course, you slash enemies with your sword. The objective is get as far and last as long as you possibly can. For us...that meant a few minutes, if we were lucky. In the game. Now, in a sense, short lives are expected. But it’s not, “Oh, it’s a challenging runner and you die a lot.” There are objective flaws that make surviving in this game next to impossible for longer than a minute or so. Chiefly, it’s very hard to see the weapons being thrown at you. It’s a constant eye strain to make out the ninja stars and the projectiles, which means you can’t really focus on anything else. And to me, the bigger problem is its ridiculous difficulty. I mean, you have almost no opportunities to refill even a portion of your health, there are some obstacles that are instant kills...I mean, it’s a reflex-based runner, but it makes progress beyond two or three minutes next to impossible. To me, that’s just frustrating design. Of course, as with most of UFO’s eShop games, there’s also a lot to like about this game. Clearly, someone at UFO loves Muramasa, because this is their second 3DS game that takes visual cues from it. The game looks beautiful and plays well...it’s a shame it’s so damn frustrating, otherwise I’d love this freaking game. Samurai G is a great time killer. It’s best played in short bursts and can be addictive, which makes it a solid portable game...in theory. You could’ve been a contender, Samurai G. As you are...only the most hardcore need apply.