So far, this is really good! The fidelity isn't AAA but the strong visual design compensates for that - bright open spaces filled with cherry blossoms, leaping fish and hopping bunnies. If it's a little cliched, they at least lampshade it with a comment from Lo Wang.
Speaking of whom, they've de-aged the protagonist, so his quipping feels more appropriate than with the bald, white-bearded Pai Mei type of the original - here he's an ambitious and abrasive young man, introduced speeding his sports car through the hills of Japan, singing along to The Touch and lighting a cigarette. I really enjoyed the opening cutscene - I think it really worked well with his youthification and the pleasingly specific archetype of 'young, ambitious Westernised Japanese man who doesn't believe in all this stuffy tradition and supernatural nonsense', and it was also cool to see a lot of effort go into such a light-hearted scene - licensing the track, doing some really good 'singing along' lip syncing, a ton of custom backgrounds and props etc.
(Unfortunately, they replaced the original caucasian actor with another, and indeed the entire voice cast seems to be a whitewash.) They've also given him a sassy demon sidekick, who's really fun in a Ryuk from Deathnote kind of way.
I groaned when I realised that there would be an emphasis on sword combat, but it's actually really fun so far - you can generally hack your way through enemies pretty easily, slicing them into pieces in an OTT update of the original's gory kills, you're given a heal move very early and the special sword moves are simple to pull off so far. I'm finding it a lot more accessible than the saber mechanics in the Jedi Knight games. I also groaned when I realised that it's got an RPG-lite leveling system, which means I'll be scrabbling round for money in every drawer I can see. It seems pretty generous, though, and is closer to Gunslinger's arcadey flair-rewarding set-up than, say, Bioshock Infinite.
My only niggle so far really is that the demon enemies are too skinny - they feel more like DOOM '16's imps than the bulky Goro types from the original. It compromises the Big Trouble In Little China feel that this game otherwise very successfully carries over from the '97 version.
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I'm about halfway through this now and still enjoying it. It's progressing nicely, with better weapons to match the bigger demons that are coming in. It all feels very DOOM '16, actually - a lot of arena fights where you have to use certain moves to get health back, you use demon hearts as weapons and there are big plinths of gore and bones sticking out of the floor that you pull stuff from. There was even a Hell ("Shadow Realm") level where you had to run round a big circular arena and shoot the shiny bits off a massive lumbering demon, but that might be more DooM3 now I think about it. Anyway, you can really see the pattern of arcadey style-rewarding wave-shooting in this and Gunslinger, which I guess may have been started by Bulletstorm, and which DOOM got a lot of credit for adopting.
Small complaints are that it's often too tricky to swap between guns and sword, and thereby fully strategise when dealing with a collection of big and small demons, and also that it's unclear how to get higher karma rewards for stylish or unusual kills. I might look that up before I get back to it, actually...
The writing in general is really fun, if not super-sophisticated. There are clever nods to the Hero With A Thousand Faces and some cute lampshading as well as some well-acted banter.
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I'm over two thirds through now and mostly still enjoying this. Some issues are growing, however: the variety in demons and special moves is starting to slow; the boss fights range from dull (shoot the glowy bits!) to rather irritating (shoot the glowy bits on the back of something that charges at you really fast!); the environments have settled into typical FPS metal corridors; I'm getting pretty tired of scavenging for coins. Overall, it's that standard FPS problem where I'm in the end-game and I don't feel as powered up as I should. I'm still having enough minute to minute fun to keep slashing my way through, though.
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Okay, finished. Frankly, I wish I'd stopped at the two-thirds mark, because from there it's just same fight, different room, over and over. No new moves, no new enemies, and even the mind-numbing boss fights get repeated over and over. Plus, the story sank into incomprehensible demon family back-stabbing and failed attempts at pathos. Probably the most frustrating thing of all was that when they finally gave me the new powerful sword that I've been chasing the whole game, I was allowed to run down a corridor for 30 seconds killing a handful of grunts before they took it off me again for the rest of the game! I couldn't believe it! The central dynamics are fun enough that it still came out as a positive experience overall, but it's really frustrating that such a strong first half got utterly fumbled.
(There was one absolutely amazing bit that I have to mention, though, where you find a secret room that is a small grassy area from the original, pixel graphics and all. Pretty standard easter egg, I thought, as I walked over to pick up the collectible. As I did, suddenly a heavy metal track kicked in and a black bunny appeared, flying at my neck and ripping me to shreds. The combination of surprise and mixed pop culture references had me cackling even as I desperately hacked away at the little beast.)
Rating: Orange.
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