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| Onimusha 3 (PS2) by FABIO 07/24/2004, 3:15pm PDT | ||||
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| Fussbett played an early Jap copy of this and loved it, but also said that he only played 15 minutes so it wasn't a review.
The key is only experiencing the first 15 minutes. Onimusha 3 is a game that somehow secures the budget to hire the world's best CGI team to produce the most mindblowing cutscenes with the single best videogame intro in years, get JEAN RENO to star in your game, then launch a campaign heavily advertising the fact that Jean Reno is in your game as well as looping the intro movie constantly on the television monitors in every EB store in the country (as I was watching them, a woman who was also watching exclaimed, "Wow that looks just like the movie, doesn't it?". Ummmmm....sure. Maybe she thought it was Van Helsing?) all in the hopes that no one would notice (until it's too late) that it's all on top of a mediocre to slightly above average action game. But damn does the beginning do a good job making you think the game's gonna rock. You have a mechanized demon horde lead by one of those Lord of the Rings giant elephant things only this one is one mile tall and half tank. Our samurai hero boards it, commences in much choreographed swordfighting, destroys it, and leaps off then slows his descent by spinning around so fast that he turns into But then you go to playing and switching back and forth between the sword-carrying samuria and the light saber whip toting Jean Reno. I probably would have liked this game a lot more if I had never played Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. Onimusha 3 seems like a step backwards in the genre. Combat feels like what Devil May Cry's would be if they took out the guns, jumping, rocking sound track (Onimusha 3's music ranges from flat to forgettable), the sense that you're smashing the living fuck out of your victim with your monsterous strength, and then added a block button. It's rather limited and leaves you hoping that something new will come along to change things up. DMC and NG made you look like an asskicking god by letting you constantly pull off crazy over the top moves. The craziest thing you can do in Onimusha 3 as the samurai is occasionally slice an enemy in half. That's it. Things are a tad more interesting with Jean Reno and his whip, but it's still severely limited. You can lasso someone with the whip, shoot them with a pistol, then toss them. It's cool the first couple times you see it, but wears thin. You either toss the guy straight ahead or straight behind you. They missed a completely golden opportunity to go nuts with this by not letting you swing enemies around like wrecking balls and crash them into other enemies or repeatedly smash them back and forth into opposite walls. Jean Reno is completely wasted. Before his character gets a universal translator thingy, he speaks entirely in French. Only the french is voiced by Jean himself. Almost right away though, he starts talking english and is replaced by a retarded American that dashes any hope for coolness. Supporting characters are even worse. By some freak accident, Reno has spawned a pwecious weakling of a son and the kid ends up getting far too much screen time. Then both heroes get joined by a cute pixie sidekick that never goes away because she can time travel and is ALWAYS by their side no matter what time period you're in. There's some subplot about how the son doesn't like Reno's fiance. WHO CARES? Some of the in-game graphics can look sort of poo-ish at times, like they're trying to be mind-blowing but the Playstation 2 just can't handle it. This might just be from me playing this right after the crisp Ninja Gaiden though. Still, they seem less slick than Devil May Cry's. I'd say they're just slightly better than Devil May Cry 2's. It suffers slightly from what I call "Siren Syndrome": not having the player perform the most obvious action when he presses the X button. Locked door that you have the key for? Pressing X won't do any good, you have to choose that fucker from a menu. Like Devil May Cry, it also suffers from too many Resident Evil style item puzzles (there are also many, many RE type "connect the lights with a line" puzzles). Only now since you have two characters in two time periods that means you're shuttling back and forth between them through time portals so that one character can use an item that you found in the other's time period; it just makes it feel more like busy work. I'd rather kick ass, please. There's the staple Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden colored orbs for money system, but with one gay aspect: you MUST spend it on certain things in order to advance. At times you'll come across a door that can only be opened if a specific weapon of yours has been upgraded to a certain level. The game never tells you that this is coming up. I spent all my saved money on other stuff right before reaching the first one of these, which forced me to backtrack to some sewers and kill random enemies for 20 minutes until I had enough money. Now I NEVER spend money and just save it up until I'm hit with the next mandatory weapon upgrade. So right now I'm continuing to play it more in hopes of seeing another top notch cutscene and the fact that I don't have to return it for 5 more days rather than having a blast. The main hamper of this game is that you'll be continually wondering why you aren't playing Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or The Two Towers instead, and the best answer you can come up with will be, "Well, I've already played those other games a million times, and this one is new. Plus damn that opening sequence was totally sweet. I guess I'll keep going." 6/10 for the gameplay by itself 7/10 for the gameplay coupled with the cutscenes 8-8.5/10 if you've never played Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or The Two Towers |
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