Bushido Blade

This isn't your average 3D fighter. Nope, Bushido Blade decided to take a different route and try a few new things. The most notable being it's realistic damage system. Your characters take hits and react like they would if it were in real life. For instance a sword swipe to the throat causes instant death. And a crushing blow to your charcter's shoulder renders that arm useless. Oh and did I mention there's absolutely no health bar. Unfortunately this is were the game's biggest fault also lies. Matches can end in a matter of seconds if you land a instant death hit. Taking away some much needed game time and ultimately limiting the action. Sure there's a few rules you have to abid by (such as you must always face your opponent and no from behind kills) but they do little to draw out the battles. The stages are sprawling and offer some interaction, but not as much as I would have liked to seen. You'd think with stages this big there'd be alot more stuff to break and to use as weapons instead of just eye-blinding dirt and the few trees you can cut down. At least there's a load of cinemas to open and plenty of combinations of characters and weapons to try out. I also dig the Japanese-thick theme. Bushido Blade is a good enough game (in fact it's one of the more memorable of recent years) but I would like to see Square build a better overall game with the next couple of sequels.

Overall 8.0