Reviews// Genji: Days of the Blade (PS3)

Published by Sony, Genji: Days of the Blade has been a launch title for the Playstation 3 in every territory the console has been made available in so far. A first-party launch title should show off the capabilities of its host machine to the full, setting the bar as high as possible for later games to measure themselves against. To a certain extent, launch titles from the platform owner's own development studios set the tone for the life of the console. So what does Genji say about the PS3?

Well, G:DotB is certainly an excellent looking game. The characters are very well drawn and animated, the scenery is beautifully detailed and excellently presented and the lighting, kamui and fire effects are very well done. Also, the audio is very immersive. The soundtrack is full of traditional-sounding Japanese instruments that really help to set the scene. The voice acting isn't too horrendous either, with the English translation fitting the lip movements of the characters reasonably well in the many cut scenes that drive the story forward.

Unfortunately, the place that Days of the Blade falls down is in the game play. This is not a good sign for future games. You get the impression that more attention was paid to how the game looked and sounded than to how it played. This is not a phenomenon reserved for the PS3 of course, but in a first-party launch title it's a bit of a worry.

First and foremost in the list of gripes is the camera. The action is viewed in a third-person point of view, but you have no control over the camera at all, the game determines where the camera stands depending on the area your character is currently standing in or running through. This can result in you running towards the camera and being attacked by invisible enemies. Why we couldn't have an over the shoulder floating camera is beyond me. You end up watching the overhead map more than the main action in some places, wildly swinging when you think you are close enough to damage the nearest enemy. Oh dear.

Another major gripe is that the game has a very limited set of enemies, and ramps up the difficulty by just throwing more and more of them at you at once.

You end up using the Amahagane powers of each of your warriors in turn in order to thin out the opposition to a manageable amount that you can take care of in the normal combat mode.

In normal combat your character is difficult to control; once a combo has been started, you can't alter it or even change the direction your character is attacking. Shizuka can use her Flack to pull enemies closer to her in order to separate them out for easier kills. However there is no lock-on for this move, so you usually end up missing a few times before getting a bad guy snagged, by which time he's already right next to you.

Genji: Days of the Blade is not a bad game, but it is by no means a great one either. For a launch title that's disappointing. For a launch title from the platform holder it sets a very worrying precedent.


SPOnG Score: 65%
A very pretty game that offers very little over its PS2 predecessor in terms of game play, Genji: Days of the Blade could have been a system seller if it had taken a few more cues from God of War and relied less on its graphical prowess to make a name for its self.