First Look: Samurai: Way of the Warrior HD

Posted by Carter Dotson on June 29th, 2010

MADFINGER Games are bringing their iPhone and iPod touch hack 'n slash game Samurai: Way of the Warrior to the iPad as the creatively titled Samurai: Way of the Warrior HD. Featuring detailed cel-shaded graphics and a smooth gameplay engine to match, this game has you playing as a samurai who is out to cut his enemies into tiny bits using his sword. There are no puzzles to solve, all you're doing is just finding and killing your enemies, just trying to survive and advance.

The controls of Samurai: way of the Warrior HD are the most questionable aspect of the game so far. Movement takes some time to get used to, but it's easiest to just tap to where you need to go. The combat controls have upwards and sideways motions that you can chain together for combos. Early on in the game, you can just wildly swipe about the screen and have success destroying enemies, but soon you'll unlock combos and they will be necessary to defeat the more challenging enemies you run into. The slash inputs are often inaccurate, especially when slashing from side to side, so sometimes, just kind of swiping like mad and hoping you pull off a combo works better than actual controlled attempts at executing specific combos.

There's the standard campaign mode with three playable difficulties, along with a selection of Dojos to fight in, that let you fight endless numbers of enemies in an arena until you die, along with online leaderboards via AGON Online for all game modes. Samurai: Way of the Warrior HD will be available on Friday, July 1st for the iPad.