Disco Samurai

The rules of the samurai are guided by the Bushido code, emphasizing loyalty, courage, honor, respect and, if you’re playing the game Disco Samurai, a sick beat. Created by first-time developer Pixel Fiber Games, this new rhythm game is a fun mix of cyberpunk science fiction and virtual reality-based espionage, all put to an infectious beat that you won’t be able to get out of your head. So grab your favorite katana and put on your dancing shoes, because this is my review of Disco Samurai.

This is the story of Fox, a young red-haired woman who plays video games during the day and tends her father’s tavern at night. When her friend Gary needs somebody to tag along on a job inside a new virtual world simulation named Disco Samurai, Fox is all too eager to help. However, it won’t take long for her to realize that she and Gary are in way over their heads, accidentally getting in the middle of a powerful government and a group of elite hackers trying to tear it all down. With no choice but to get to the bottom of the mystery, Fox will need to use her samurai skills to get herself out of trouble.

The futuristic setup is certainly intriguing, but the real fun comes when you start brawling with the virtual opponents inside the game. Because this is a rhythm game, all of your attacks and moves will need to be timed to the beat of the song. What the game wants you to do is watch the enemy’s pattern and dodge and counter in different ways until they are stunned, when you can unload all your fury onto them (just as long as it’s in time with the beat).

What makes this tricky is that there are a bunch of different types moves to counter. For example, we’ll start out with the basic parry move, where you’ll hit the shoulder button right as the enemy strikes. This leads to an overhead parry, where you’ll need to hold the shoulder button for a certain amount of time, as well as a multi-parry, where you’ll have to double tap the shoulder button to avoid taking damage. Players will also need to roll out of danger, throw objects found around the level and know when to dodge a bullet. It’s easy enough to deal with one of these types of attacks at once, but the game likes to throw complicated combinations at you, which is designed to keep you on your toes.

The emphasis here is on perfectly countering the string of attacks, which both looks cool and feels great when you’ve got the rhythm down. The combat itself isn’t nearly as deep as the defense, usually consisting of simple (on beat) swipes of your samurai sword. You do have a few other attacks, like a gun that you can shoot when you have enough flow, a meter that fills up as you combo parries or take damage. One of my favorite moves in the game is a simple kick. That may not sound like much, but it’s a lot of fun kicking somebody into a garbage can or in front of a speeding car on a busy highway.

Instead of traditional stages, each section of the level is a standalone diorama shown from a slightly overhead perspective. Some stages are large and will be full of items, while others will be small and cramped, barely enough space to stage a proper sword fight. This allows the developers to mix things up with the stage designs. While a lot of them are just straight-up beat ‘em up fare, where you’re squaring off against multiple waves of guards, there are also a bunch that will require more puzzle solving. For example, it might be beneficial to keep the grenade-throwing enemies around, as you can lob their grenades at the armored guards.

This is not the kind of game where you’re going to nail every level on the first try. In fact, it took me multiple tries to counter to the beat and defeat all of the bad guys, especially when multiple waves come in, each with their own combination of moves and attacks. Despite being a veteran rhythm game junky, I found myself stumbling when trying to keep the different patterns straight. Not in every level, but every once and a while I would just hit a wall, completely overwhelmed by the amount of enemies being thrown my way.

The developer must have anticipated this, because they made the smart decision to allow the player to change the difficulty at any time. That means that, when you get stuck on a particularly hard stage, you can give yourself a fighting chance, and then adjust the difficulty back up on the next stage. This doesn’t change the speed or how the enemies act, but rather it gives you a few extra health points to play with, which is usually the difference between winning and losing.

You’ll do this through seven extremely long stages. Stages that might actually be a little too long, if you ask me. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time fighting to the beat and loved how the story progressed, but there were times when I wanted that progression to speed up a little. There’s a lot of filler crammed into each stage, which only slows things down at times I want them to be quicker.

Weirdly enough, the game’s weakest link is the motorcycle mini-game that pops up from time-to-time. These show up to break up the action and have the player driving on a three-lane highway. The idea is to dodge the debris in the road and, eventually, jump over obstacles and shoot at enemies on each side of the street. While not necessarily difficult, I found these sections to be painfully dull, no matter how much they spruced them up over the course of the game. And apparently the developers anticipated this kind of reaction, because if you fail them a few times, they’ll ask if you want to skip them and get back to the beat ‘em up action.

Apart from that, I enjoyed my time jumping in and out of Disco Samurai. The game does a good job of keeping the espionage story interesting and each chapter adds something new to the gameplay. It also has a catchy beat that somehow rides the line between being extremely simple, yet not so simple that you get sick of it in a few minutes. The same goes for the different stages. Although many are similar in look, the developer has done a good job of giving each one a little personality. The backgrounds do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the world building, and a few of them lead to some truly epic battles.

Disco Samurai is hardly the first game to tie beat ‘em up action to the rhythm genre, but it is one of the few to do it well. The action is easy to learn but tough to master, and there’s more than enough content packed into the game’s seven lengthy stages. This is a strong debut from developer Pixel Fiber Games.