Screenshots :.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
360
Matt
11-01-2010
"Quite literally, bloody hell."
"Super massive magic attack!"
"... and the aftermath"
I must be getting old. There was a time when I was a little younger when I would quite happily sit myself in front of any kind of tricky video game and, through gritted teeth and tantrums, eventually grind myself to the end and feel pretty satisfied with myself. Nowadays, I am more likely to come upon a frustrating point of a game, put the controller down and stroll off cursing every living creature under the sun for my inability to complete whatever it was I was doing. The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai caused this to happen several times, with depressing frequency.
Funnily enough, this wasn't necessarily due to it being a bad game. Designed by indie bod James Silva, and is about... er... a dishwasher who is bought back from death and goes on a mission to destroy the head of the Cyborg army who took his sister. It's a pretty silly premise and made all the more confusing by the comic book sequences that are supposed to drive the story forward being murky and at times almost completely indeterminable. It's certainly not a poster child for well-told storytelling then, but hey – it's doubtful it was ever intended to be.
The game itself is a pretty standard 2D slasher, much along the lines of Castle Crashers. You control your little samurai chappy as he adventures from left-to-right (and sometimes back the other way) around over a dozen levels, during which he will have to hack and slash through pretty much everything that is in his way. It's surprisingly brutal too; blood will spatter everywhere, limbs can be detached and there are a couple of finishing moves that are really rather gruesome.
The problem with Dishwasher isn't in the idea, but in the execution. The main issue is that, even on the normal difficulty setting, it is arse-hard, and unfairly so. Each enemy takes at least half a dozen slashes to finish off, with the game having a normal and higher powered attack on offer. When an enemy is teetering on the edge of oblivion a little button icon flashes above their head and, when the corresponding input is pressed one of the aforementioned finishing moves are unleashed, upon which you are rewarded with extra health, currency to buy upgrades and, after a while, magic skulls to unleash spells.
It sounds a decent enough system, but in practice it becomes somewhat frustrating. The main reason for this is that the game often locks you into a section and spawns waves of enemies at you for a good five minutes, which is a lot of time given how tough the battling is. This also contributes to the other main problem the game has; as the game is so frantic, chances are you will slash through a stunned enemy rather than using the correct button to initiate a finisher, thus costing you health and magic replenishment. More than often it comes down to luck, and when games start treading into the territory they are always more likely to frustrate than entertain.
That this is the case is undoubtedly a shame, as the game not only manages to look wonderful with a distinct, almost pastel-like, shade and gritty look, but also chucks in a decent amount of longevity for the 800 Microsoft Points that it will set you back. Alongside the main story mode there's an arcade mode that throws you into a number of one-room challenges in which you go for high scores that are ranked online, and Dishwasher Challenge is basically a mode in which you have to survive as long as you possibly can against never-ending waves of foes. There's even a multiplayer offering tucked in there for folks to spread the stress a little and slash their way through the game with their mates.
Hence, no matter how many controllers it might cause you to break out of sheer frustration, and no matter how many flaws there are in the way the game plays out, you can't help but at least admire it. It won James Silva the Microsoft Dream-Build-Play award back in 2007 and along with the prize money came an Xbox Live Arcade development deal. The Dishwasher sees a reasonable, if flawed, start; time will tell if it proves to be the foundations on which better things are built. For the sake of smaller indie developers, here is hoping.
Funnily enough, this wasn't necessarily due to it being a bad game. Designed by indie bod James Silva, and is about... er... a dishwasher who is bought back from death and goes on a mission to destroy the head of the Cyborg army who took his sister. It's a pretty silly premise and made all the more confusing by the comic book sequences that are supposed to drive the story forward being murky and at times almost completely indeterminable. It's certainly not a poster child for well-told storytelling then, but hey – it's doubtful it was ever intended to be.
The game itself is a pretty standard 2D slasher, much along the lines of Castle Crashers. You control your little samurai chappy as he adventures from left-to-right (and sometimes back the other way) around over a dozen levels, during which he will have to hack and slash through pretty much everything that is in his way. It's surprisingly brutal too; blood will spatter everywhere, limbs can be detached and there are a couple of finishing moves that are really rather gruesome.
The problem with Dishwasher isn't in the idea, but in the execution. The main issue is that, even on the normal difficulty setting, it is arse-hard, and unfairly so. Each enemy takes at least half a dozen slashes to finish off, with the game having a normal and higher powered attack on offer. When an enemy is teetering on the edge of oblivion a little button icon flashes above their head and, when the corresponding input is pressed one of the aforementioned finishing moves are unleashed, upon which you are rewarded with extra health, currency to buy upgrades and, after a while, magic skulls to unleash spells.
It sounds a decent enough system, but in practice it becomes somewhat frustrating. The main reason for this is that the game often locks you into a section and spawns waves of enemies at you for a good five minutes, which is a lot of time given how tough the battling is. This also contributes to the other main problem the game has; as the game is so frantic, chances are you will slash through a stunned enemy rather than using the correct button to initiate a finisher, thus costing you health and magic replenishment. More than often it comes down to luck, and when games start treading into the territory they are always more likely to frustrate than entertain.
That this is the case is undoubtedly a shame, as the game not only manages to look wonderful with a distinct, almost pastel-like, shade and gritty look, but also chucks in a decent amount of longevity for the 800 Microsoft Points that it will set you back. Alongside the main story mode there's an arcade mode that throws you into a number of one-room challenges in which you go for high scores that are ranked online, and Dishwasher Challenge is basically a mode in which you have to survive as long as you possibly can against never-ending waves of foes. There's even a multiplayer offering tucked in there for folks to spread the stress a little and slash their way through the game with their mates.
Hence, no matter how many controllers it might cause you to break out of sheer frustration, and no matter how many flaws there are in the way the game plays out, you can't help but at least admire it. It won James Silva the Microsoft Dream-Build-Play award back in 2007 and along with the prize money came an Xbox Live Arcade development deal. The Dishwasher sees a reasonable, if flawed, start; time will tell if it proves to be the foundations on which better things are built. For the sake of smaller indie developers, here is hoping.
6/10
