The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

The Short


Pros
- Stylized 2D action game with an insane difficulty curve
- Plays like a 2D Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry game, and works surprisingly well
- 2D "sketchbook" style looks pretty good throughout, especially for the characters
- High difficulty, but extremely rewarding once you figure it out
- Large assortment of weapons with easy switching and crazy combos
- Includes a massive "Arcade" mode, with missions that have varying objectives
- Two player co-op (three with a guitar controller) for all modes
- Weapon unlocks, upgrades, and more
- Few games like it; gameplay shows a professionally degree of polish for an indie title
- Made by one dude. Seriously. That's insane.

Cons
- Seriously, this game is really, really hard. If you aren't into that, you should avoid it.
- Story is duuuuuuummmmbbbbb.
- Continue system is a bit too punishing and pushes things into the "frustrating" territory
- Blood is gratuitous and can become so overwhelming you can't see what you are doing
- While I like the style of the drawn sprites, the ugly 3D backdrops look straight bad
- Completely outclass by its sequel, Vampire Smile

Hint: This game isn't actually about doing dishes. 

The Long

It's no secret I really like indie games. Having been an indie designer/creator/developer/whatever myself for a brief stint of my high school and college careers, I have a massive amount of respect for people who keep with it, fight the odds, and produce something awesome after months or years of labor. It isn't easy, I can tell you from firsthand experience, so when something comes along that is so good it rivals big-budget titles, I have to stand up and give it props.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai comes very, very close to that lofty goal. 

Designed by one dude (James Silva), this game won an Xbox Live Indie content a few years back. The reward? $10,000 and the chance to put your game as a full XBLA release if you could get it made. James worked his butt off for quite some time before The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was ready to be released. And I can say that, with perhaps the exception of Super Meat Boy and Braid, I rarely see a team so small do something as incredible. 

Though this game has lots more blood than either of those games. 

The concept behind The Dishwasher is a simple one: take the extremely hard, combo-based, taxing gameplay of famous action games like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry and translate that into a 2D setting. With it comes genre staples like juggling enemies in the air with guns, heavy amounts of dodging and being completely precise with your strikes, knowing exactly which weapon to use at what time, etc. Considering I love the Devil May Cry games (even if Bayonetta pretty much trumped all of them), and I love me some 2D games, I figured this would be a match made in heaven.

And it is. It comes dangerously close to being perfect. 

The story here is...well, it's stupid. James should probably go to his local college and pick some guys from a creative writing class or something for his next game if he really wants the story to be taken seriously, because both this game and it's sequel have stupid stories. Basically you were a dishwasher, and you died, and then you came back to life, and robots are taking over people's bodies or something and you have to kill them...and their maker...and everybody...and the chef at your former restaurant is also a samurai...yeah, it's retarded. It's told through comic book pages which is a clever idea, but really you don't need a story here. Kill everything. There's the story. All the rest is just bloated stupid.

It can be hard to see what is going on. 

What matters is the core gameplay is tight. It's also extremely hard, but it's a fair hard. There's a difference between failing over and over because you felt the game didn't give you the tools to succeed, and failing over and over because it's your own fault and you need to not suck as hard (Super Meat Boy comes to mind). Many, many indie games fall into the former category when they make their games "hard," most times filling their games with janky error or lack of polish (heck, professional games do this all the time too, usually the lower-budget ones), but I never felt this way on The Dishwasher, and I've played a lot of action games. Even on easy this game is completely brutal; one mistake can knock your health to nearly gone in just a few seconds, and on the harder difficulties you have to be practically godlike in order to just beat specific rooms.  But again, it's all in your hands. If you suck, you suck. If you get good at dodging (you have a dodge you can always do that renders you completely invincible during its duration, so you have no excuse), picking enemies off one at a time, and mastering the handful of weapons you can totally beat the game. I did. I beat this game on the hardest difficulty. It's one of the achievements I'm proudest of in my entire history of playing Xbox 360 games, and I got every achievement in freaking Bayonetta.

Seriously, do we need this many effects on screen? What is even happening?

It isn't all perfect, though. The continue system (where you have to buy expensive continues and can only have a max of four per level) is frustrating, mostly because continuing restarts a room with all the enemies, meaning you could be a few seconds near the end and still have to pay to retry it. Items are also expensive and have a cap, which leads to the annoying decision of risking a continue for a better run or eating your last heal and hope you don't die (if you continue, you don't get items back).

The visual overload can also be a pain. Once stuff gets crazy (with magic and blood and missiles and lazers and explosions and...yeah) the insane amount of blood every enemy sprays everywhere becomes visually distracting. You do sort of get over it (if you lose where you are just dodge for a bit; you're invincible), but it really should have been addressed, or at least given the option to turn these effects down in favor of gameplay. It makes the otherwise razor-sharp gameplay a bit sloppy, which is exactly what this game didn't need.

Seriously, too much blood. No idea what is going on. 

Aside from the main story, which will take you a hefty chunk of time and skill to beat even on easy, the game has a huge number of arcade missions to beat. These all have various goals, like killing a set number of enemies in the air, fighting off waves with locked weapons, etc. They get progressively more and more difficult (and the difficulty is locked, so...good luck) and provide a hefty amount of bonus content for those who just want to hone their skills. It's a great addition, and for a $10 game it really adds to the value.

In addition, you can play both the main story and the arcade with a friend, who is an invincible ghost-dishwasher, who when he dies he just goes away for about a minute before coming back. This can really help on the harder levels, where its basically cheating to dodge as the main Dishwasher and have your friend (on the invincible one) just kill everything for you. You can also plug a guitar controller in and strum it to do damage with a floating guitar, and while this addition is nice it's pretty much useless. 

And there goes the head. 

Your take on the graphics depends on your tolerance. The characters are animated well enough to work for this type of split-second gameplay, and they all look like they were drawn in a notebook by that creepy goth kid in High School who wore the Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and shopped a lot at Hot Topic. I think the sprites look fine and fit the gritty style. The backgrounds, however, don't fit the style at all. They appear to be rendered, which doesn't match the sprites, and they also look...well, straight up bad to be honest. There are a few better ones (the final level in the machine HQ is cool), but overall they look like crap. No sugar coating it. But it doesn't really matter, since you'll never look at them anyway, because if you do you'll die instantly.

Music is also just kind of there; with the exception of the final boss song I wasn't particularly engrossed. There's only a handful of songs anyway, but they work as background noise I suppose. 

Killin zombies. Mandatory for any game now-a-days.

Should you get The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai? Well...maybe. The sequel, Vampire Smile, is basically the same game with more fluid gameplay, a better single player, improved graphics, multiple characters, and more weapons. It also just plays better as a whole (though it is easier). It's like Gears of War 2 vs Gears of War: you admire the first game for what it is, but it's clear the second is the one you'll go back to. I suggest picking up the free XBLA demo. If you dig it, it's only $10, and you'll be well trained for Vampire Smile after you beat it. If not, you can probably just jump straight to the second one, though I do not for a second regret buying both (and I'll buy a third one, Silva! Make it happen!). Again, for $10 you are getting a ton of content, and if you don't mind having your butt kicked over and over (or if you enjoy it), there's a lot to love here. Fans of Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden should really give this game a look.

Despite its mistakes, it still is a great XBLA title, and an achievement for indie games. Four out of five stars.

Going down...