Akuji the Heartless

"Akuji Revisited"

The story of Akuji is one that you would find in just about any action movie that deals with the occult in terms of magic, betrayal and plenty of revenge and blood. While the game story really doesn’t leave an impression on you, you are thrust into the world of Akuji with a bare-bones game that does a fair share of entertaining and frustrating the gamer at the same time. With plenty of darkness and enemies that you can kill with a set of wickedly cool blades, you might find that there is something to really enjoy in this title if you’re looking for an adventure game. However, if you are looking for a game that features more than your standard adventure platform title, then you might want to bypass this for something else.

I KEEL YOU!

While un-original, Akuji offers a different story in which a warrior fights and is hell bent on revenge after a wicked betrayal. Offering you bits and pieces of voodoo thrown in for good measure, the game play is strictly run and fight. Going from area to area, you're main goal is to stay alive, and take out as many enemies as you can while trying to get to the end of a particular area. This may seem relatively interesting, but, you're merely playing the same game that you've played before with other action games, it's just the story has changed somewhat. Replay value is set to a minimum, in which once you've played through the game once, it's highly unlike you'll play through again.

You battle system really relies heavily on bladed weapons that you have attached to your arms while you’re playing. Through strategy, you should be able to take out any enemy that gets in your way, though you might be fighting the camera angle from time to time when it comes to the platform jumping that you must perform in certain areas in the game. You’ll find that the use of precision jumping and attacking falls into the same Eidos formula that makes the Tomb Raider games so impressive and fun to play. One of the downfalls to a game such as this is that you might find the platform jumping to be a little more difficult to deal with when you’re facing down multiple enemies.

Not too sluggish, but still not perfect, Akuji's controls are easy enough to learn and use without much effort. Where most of your problems will come in is during fights when you're trying to run and gun at the same time. This can be slightly confusing, and rather annoying when you can't quite hit what you're aiming for because you're running and firing all at once and trying not to get while you're at it. The platform jumping takes some practice to get used to because the game doesn’t have much in terms of precision control. When you get to the later stages of the game, the sheer drops and cliffs that you face might take more than one or two tries to get onto and around based on the fact that the PS controller directional pad is a little stiff.

Blood Everywhere…

The first two things that you’re going to notice about Akuji is that the game features plenty of darkness and plenty of blood. Everywhere that you look, there are instances where the game gives you plenty of voodoo style backgrounds and even the enemy designs are meant to keep the overall voodoo theme. While the areas and character designs are well done, Akuji suffers from fatal flaws that keep it from being a well-known hit. Throwing you into the mix as a warrior who has been betrayed, you'll thrust into a dark and dreary world that has some sense of voodoo and mystery. Giving you a lot to look at in terms of background display, Akuji suffers from some serious camera angles that can confuse and disrupt a player's momentum.

Funky Beats…

Decent fare for a platform game, Akuji has plenty of more dark themes and voodoo references than you can really shake a stick at. You might find that your foot is tapping with the beat in certain stages, so for the game to have enough detail to the music to keep you interested makes a grander statement than having simple tunes attached to the game. Each area is loaded with music tracks that can almost put you into the heart of the action, but at the same time can get repetitive and boring after a few minutes of listening. Most of the sound effects have a tendency to drone into the background, so be prepared to do an alertness check after about 30 minutes or so to make sure that you're volume is still up, and you're not droning off.

Alas…stuck in Hell…

Akuji tries hard to keep up with the action platforms of today and yesterday such as Tomb Raider. What it does do, is off up some different story to cover up for the basic of what it really is: Eidos trying something other than Tomb Raider. Against the games of today, this doesn’t stand the test of time, no matter how many times you play it and how hard you really want to make it work. The control scheme is unfair in the most crucial points of the game and the visuals are dark and dreary, which allows the enemy to sneak up and smack you around. With in-effective camera angles, decent music and sound, and control that doesn't quite hit the mark, you're left with a game that is great for die-hard action platform gamers, but a weekend rental for anyone else.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/01, Updated 03/10/03