Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma – Review

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume 1

Developed By: Redacted Studios

Published By: Versus Evil LLC

Release Date: September 22, 2015

Platforms: PS4 (Reviewed), Xbox One, PC

Have you ever played a game so bad, so broken, and so ugly that you were honestly amazed by its very existence? I’m not talking about the everyday budget game like Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters; I’m talking about those games that can only be described with the words “Dumpster” and “Fire.” Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume 1, the first game from Redacted Studios, is the perfect example of a game that probably shouldn’t have been made simply because it has so many issues, and frankly, it’s not a fun game.

Unlike the first Afro Samurai game, you play as Afro’s childhood friend Kuma, who is out on a mission to destroy the mystical headbands given to the best fighters in the land. Afro destroyed Kuma’s life during his quest to become the number one fighter, leaving dead samurais in his wake. Many of these victims were friends and mentors, so Kuma sets out to learn new fighting styles, murder Afro, and destroy every headband in existence.Unfortunately, a lot of enemies stand in Kuma’s way, including topless lady DJ’s, exploding cultists, and ninja clans.

This story isn’t bad, but it’s almost impossible to follow. The story is told using a variety of in-game cutscenes and comic book panels, but Redacted goes for the Tarantino style by jumping back and forth between time periods. Most of these jumps are done in the middle of conflicting cutscenes, causing all manner of problems. One cutscene will be playing, and it will abruptly be interrupted by the beginning of another scene. The dialogue even gets jumbled during these moments, which is unfortunate because Phil Lamarr plays multiple characters in Afro Samurai 2, and he’s a genuinely talented voice actor.

An artistic screenshot depicting Afro Samurai 2’s story.

Afro Samurai 2 attempts to capitalize on that episodic formula that has been so successful for Telltale Games, but Redacted Studios mixes it up by focusing on pseudo-Arkham Asylum combat. There are no conversation choices, and the only decisions to be made in Afro Samurai 2 involve choosing which of three combat styles to use between Afro, Master, and Kuma styles. Afro style is used to vault enemies—when it works—avoiding shields and explosives; Master style is used to take out large groups of enemies using speed; Kuma style is used to attack enemies with massive force. Switching between these fighting styles takes only a simple tap on the D-Pad and can be done mid-battle. This system actually works well, but it doesn’t save the combat.

Fighting enemies is done with the standard “Square/X to attack, Triangle/Y to counter” system that is used in Sleeping Dogs, Shadow of Mordor, and every Arkham game. However, those games all feature responsive controls, something that Afro Samurai 2 doesn’t even understand. Trying to do anything during combat is frustrating like nothing else because there is a tangible delay between hitting a button and watching Kuma respond. At first I thought that the game just used different timing than Arkham Asylum or Sleeping Dogs, so I spent some time working on moves in the practice dojo. Turns out, the game is just poorly made. There was no rhyme or reason behind the attack and counter timing. Button mashing was the only practical way to slog through Afro Samurai 2’s few levels.

Practicing moves in the Dojo.

Granted, it doesn’t really matter if you use strategy  or simply button mash your way through combat scenarios. Redacted rewards your time in battle with a never-ending supply of skill points to be spent upgrading the three combat styles. There are so many points given out during Afro Samurai 2 that you can actually fill up all three skill trees by the end of the second or third level. Well, you can’t technically unlock the final ability on each skill tree because those are only available for purchase in Volume 2. These final abilities just sit there and taunt you for eternity, but the points just keep on coming. It’s entirely possible to finish Volume 1 with 13 unused skill points just sitting uselessly in a menu.

Honestly, Afro Samurai 2 could be an enjoyable, albeit ugly, game, but glitches, lack of camera control, and poor framerate just cripple the experience. During the three hours of playtime it took to beat Volume 1, I had to exit to the PS4 dashboard once and restart from previous checkpoints four different times. One battle, which can take up to 30 minutes depending on how well the game is functioning at the moment, took multiple attempts because I was stuck in a purgatory in which I couldn’t kill the enemies, and they couldn’t damage me. After a third try, the game decided to work, and I was able to finally kill some ninjas.

Below is a video example of this broken battle.

Of course, functioning battles are only half of the problems with the base gameplay. Occasionally enemies would float around or disappear in the middle of battle, but I couldn’t find them because there is no camera control. Redacted went back to the Playstation One era when they created Afro Samurai 2’s camera, and that’s not meant to be a compliment. There literally is no way to rotate or control the camera in this game so you occasionally have to blindly fight some battles while stuck behind pillars or walls. Not exactly conducive to success, but fighting blindly is still more appealing than dealing with the terrible framerate.

Afro Samurai’s framerate starts in double digits, but it doesn’t stay there for long. Doing anything more than simply walking causes the framerate to plummet to low single digits, and big cinematic moments are even worse. One such scenario involved running away from a massive flamethrower tank. The framerate was so bad during this scene that the mere act of running away looked more like bad Matrix-esque bullet time than an action-packed moment. The mere presence of framerate issues is astounding seeing how the game looks like a Playstation 2 product. The dark and muddy graphics are devastatingly ugly, and the levels are barely filled with enemies or items.

There is no reason for a game released on modern consoles to function so poorly that even the audio is substandard.

Somewhere, there is an audio engineer frantically trying to remember if he mixed the Afro Samurai 2 audio before saving it as final, and the answer is no. This game has some awful audio. Some characters sound like they were recorded in a professional vocal booth, but others sound like they recorded their lines on a USB microphone in the middle of an airport bathroom. Even worse is the fact that the volume constantly changes. Playing through Afro Samurai 2 requires holding a remote control to keep up with the changing sound levels. Don’t even think about muting the game and using subtitles. Those highfalutin options are not included.

You could mute the dialogue and only listen to the songs picked out by RZA, but the audio quality is bad on those as well.

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume 1 is a terrible game. Sure, It may not quite reach the depths of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing or Aliens: Colonial Marines, but Redacted’s first game comes very close. The audio is rough, the combat is poorly done, and most of the game is broken. How did Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma even get released?

Run away, as quick as you can.