

Every victory is a flawless one - it has to be.Įnemies aren't the only source of danger either you'll be faced with lasers, turrets, minecart level gaps to jump across, stealth areas where you have to make sure you're not in some enemy's line of sight and more. If you die at the end of an area, you'll have to start all over and while that can sometimes be frustrating, it's incredibly rewarding to nail a perfect run. The playable character dies in one hit, meaning that Katana Zero is all about trial and error and developing muscle memory to get through each room. You'll still die a lot, trust us, and at the end of every encounter, you'll get the option to check your many tries to find out what you did wrong in each. When time is slowed down, you have a short window to take down all the many enemies in sight and have an easier time deflecting bullets back at your attacker (or attackers) with your sword.

This ability is somehow linked to the drug the handler pumps you full of between missions. Of course, you'll be running, crouching, sliding, slashing doors open, attacking and throwing items at your enemies, however, you also have the option to slow down the action on the battlefield. Your task, on almost every mission, is to take down all of the mobsters in your path with very few exceptions but there's fun mechanics at play here that make what sounds like a tedious objective feel unique. After each chat, the player gets a mission briefing that, once read, needs to be burnt. The protagonist, who seems to be mentally unstable in some way, talks to a handler who appears to also be his psychiatrist and tells him about dreams he's having at night, letting the player choose what he wants to tell him, how much of the truth he'll share, or if he wants to share anything at all, and the choices alter the dialogue throughout the game. When we spoke to Askiisoft's Justin Stander, he explained how the game was inspired by Korean revenge-thrillers and we can definitely see the source of his inspiration shine through when slashing our foes through city streets, gritty nightclubs and run-down cell blocks. The player follows the game's tough protagonist, a samurai assassin of sorts who slices through mobsters and other bad guys in a gritty, neon-clad city. After charging through the game, we were left in awe of what the developer had accomplished with this simple yet uniquely fantastic little experience. The Askiisoft pixelated action game Katana Zero hasn't exactly flown under the radar since its launch, with 100,000 copies sold in its first week on the market, and we have to say that the success is well-deserved.
