The soundtrack is heavily synth based, with a large dose of drums. I didn’t experience any issues or bugs while playing the game, it feels highly polished. Depending on the character’s state of mind screen distortion or other effects can occur which messes with you, and feeds into the story. It’s easy to tell where you are and if enemies can see you or if they are alerted, though I ran into a few instances where the enemies were shooting at me from off screen. As you kill enemies, the blood sprays over the walls and furniture, leaving you painting the stages with enemy’s blood. The game is pixel based, but looks great with that aesthetic. There is also a hard mode and speed run mode for those who wish to test themselves. This can change what you experience in the nightmares and potentially opens up a secret boss, as well as achievements. The game has some replayabilitiy in the fact that you can load up missions and change your response to certain areas, which can change future outcomes. The hidden boss fight was a great Akria reference! There’s a stage where you are chasing down a boss and killing mobs while riding a motorbike down the highway, and a stage where you control someone else who has similar abilities to you but is more in control of them.īoss fights are interesting, with some of them skipping ahead if you fail enough, but most require the precision fighting techniques to pass, and become easier when you have the patterns figured out. The game isn’t afraid to change things up, some missions have you progressing while remaining unseen (like sneaking into a prison or nightclub), and encourage you to not kill anyone, while a later stages has you babysitting a mining kart while racing to hit the track mechanisms to keep it moving. You have a few different one time objects you can find scattered across each stage which can be thrown at enemies or used to help you progress. All of them are crack shots if you are standing still or not using your abilities, and throw in some of the traps found in each stage or environmental hazards makes for interesting combat. After each mission you have the option of watching your run, which I thought was fairly cool.Įnemies are copies of each other so you know their attack profiles, and while they might be generic they are deadly. Every enemy needs to be dealt with, you mission guidelines don’t allow you to leave anyone alive. Each of the stages is well designed, with a few different options for you to move around as you murder your way through to your target. Even being out slightly results in death, and results in a restart of the screen you are on, but thankfully each stage is small so you aren’t losing tons of time and effort with each death. The gameplay is simple, but requires a good deal of precision as you dodge, slow down time, throw object and reflect bullets back at enemies as you work towards each target. Are you a war vet having a mental breakdown, a pawn of a clandestine shadowy government operation, or something else? I didn’t see the ending coming, which totally puts a different slant on the entire game. Depending on how targets were eliminated, dialogue options you pick and if you follow orders the story re-frames itself, which can keep you (the player) in the dark about what is happening, or completely change your perception of what’s happening. Between each mission you have therapy sessions with your shrink to help with your PSTD from the war you fought in, and nightmares after each completed mission. It feels heavily influenced by the Vietnam War, and has equivalents of a lot of controversial topics. I found the story great, and it had plenty of twists I didn’t expect and kept me guessing as to what was real and what the character was imagining until it all came together in the end, though there are a few lose plot points I wish the game explored further. You play as an amnesic katana wielding assassin who can slow down time and uses precognitive abilities to plan your path through stages. I highly recommend playing it if you haven’t already, though an average run only last a few hours. It offers plenty of fun gameplay as you master your abilities, and a fairly free ability to make the story evolve as you want to along with a pumping soundtrack. Katana Zero is a side scrolling hack and slash platformer where you need precision control to murder your way through each stage, as you try to uncover your past.
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