You control Gojiru, a Samurai wandering the West in search of another renegade warrior. Along the way - and despite your best efforts to stick to your peaceful roots - you make a few enemies (namely, almost everyone in town) who shoot at you on a regular basis. The idea is to deflect their bullets with your sword (or dodge them) and then cut the bad guys up to gain points. The more experience you have, the faster you level up from student to ronin, all the way up to master swordsman. And if the enemies get too overwhelming, you can enter a "Master" mode that lets you kill everyone in sight with just a single strike and lasts as long as you can keep the meter full with kills.

The game has some strong points. For one, you have to give them credit for a pretty original game idea. The controls are pretty solid too. There's no learning curve with this game. As long as you can move and push a button, you've got this one down pat. The music is great too, for the most part. It adds an authentic western feel to everything.

You control Gojiru, a Samurai wandering the West in search of another renegade warrior. Along the way - and despite your best efforts to stick to your peaceful roots - you make a few enemies (namely, almost everyone in town) who shoot at you on a regular basis. The idea is to deflect their bullets with your sword (or dodge them) and then cut the bad guys up to gain points. The more experience you have, the faster you level up from student to ronin, all the way up to master swordsman. And if the enemies get too overwhelming, you can enter a "Master" mode that lets you kill everyone in sight with just a single strike and lasts as long as you can keep the meter full with kills.

The game has some strong points. For one, you have to give them credit for a pretty original game idea. The controls are pretty solid too. There's no learning curve with this game. As long as you can move and push a button, you've got this one down pat. The music is great too, for the most part. It adds an authentic western feel to everything.

But there are problems too. The camera has a mind of its own at times. You can be in a crowd slicing and dicing away, then have to fight someone off camera. While it stays behind you most of the time, it lags often and can leave you in trouble. And the objectives pretty much remain the same each time: "Defeat [insert name here]'s henchmen". Scramble around and kill them all, then find their twin brothers waiting for you in the next level. Not that I'm looking for some car chase scene or something, but a little difference here and there couldn't hurt.

The graphics are nothing groundbreaking. This could have easily been a PS1 game. While the environments are fairly decent, the characters are bland with very little definition. And as for the cut scenes, sometimes the mouths are out of sync with the words. Add the horribly-rendered characters (one woman's arms are actually squared off rather than round), and you have an almost-laughable scene where it's supposed to be dramatic. Also, there's no clear way to tell between a box you can pick up and hide behind, and one you can't. This can be frustrating when you're getting shot at on all sides and looking for something to help even the odds a little.

There's a setting to turn off the blood, and that's probably a wise choice. Otherwise, those guys pop like balloons and send blood spraying everywhere. This is one of the bloodiest games I've seen, but it looks like one of those old samurai movies from years ago. One swipe will send an enemy spraying a crimson fountain around him. Also, their banter gets monotonous quickly. While shooting at you, they say "Hold still!" and when you kill them it's either "Who are you?" or "Arrrggghhh!" With a dozen enemies onscreen, you can see how this would get on your nerves after a while.

All in all, this is a great rental, but there's not really enough replay value to merit owning it. It's fun deflecting bullets and knives while Ginsuing your way through rough hombres, but it gets old quickly. Still, it's a nice diversion if you're looking for something different on a rainy afternoon.