Zombie Hunters 2 (PS 2)

Once in awhile you come across a game concept that is so amazing, so perfect that not only do you wonder why no one had thought of it before but marvel at how you could possibly have lived before it came along. One of these stunning games is the Oneechanbara series. For the uninitiated, the game stars Aya, a Japanese girl who is decked out in a cowboy hat and bikini who uses a sword to fight zombies. It's an insane conflagration of juvenile pleasure qualifiers and comes across like someone shook some geek's head and built a game with the pieces that fell out. It was absurd. It was tacky. I wanted to play it.

It took awhile to not only circumnavigate the difficulties of region encoding but my own personal sense of shame but I finally was able to buy a copy of The Oneechanpon: The Oneechan 2 Special Edition. I picked up that title since the meager amount of English information on the series indicated that this was the latest and most complete of the games available for the PS2. That, and it had the most girls on the cover. But now that the game had moved from being some far off import I could only theorize about to being a concrete item in my possession I had to decide just what I thought of the Oneechanbara games.

The first thing that struck me was how the sound in the game betrayed its budget title origins in both a positive and negative manner. Instead of lengthy, expensive cut-scenes between each chapter the plot is fleshed out via dialogue read by the voice actresses. This is a thrifty, clever means of creating and explaining the plot. Thanks to this the cast was no longer simply a collection of fetishes but were now actual characters with motivations and empathy. The only problem with this is that I don't know Japanese so I'm out of luck when it comes to understanding the subtleties of what's going on. The in-game sound is also, for the most part, nicely done. Both the shrieks and squeaks of the girls as well as the sounds of rending flesh and spilt blood are done with loving care. Most of the music is of the action-guitar variety which is in keeping with the game genre even if it is nothing particularly spectacular. The songs that have lyrics, however... well, I'm assuming someone, somewhere enjoys the tunes and let's leave it at that.

The graphics also look like they came from a game that wasn't working with a gigantic budget but it still works in the areas where it counts the most. The environments are sparse affairs but do a good enough job of establishing a sense of place. They are also surprisingly open; the shopping malls and whatnot you have to fight your way through have had all their merchandise thoughtfully pushed to the corners of the room. Although that may not be realistic it is appreciated since the last thing you want to worry about during a zombie apocalypse is tripping over a display case. My personal favorite bit of budget constraint was a row of parked cars that looked like they were driven in from a first generation PSX game. Obviously I'm supposed to be focused on other things while playing and I do appreciate that they are there to help set the mood but, wow, those are really special looking.

While adequate environments are all well and good the producers are smart enough to know that it's the character models that really make an action game. The player characters shake and shimmy during their down time but those moments are few and far between. Most of their day is spent running, hacking or doing similar gender neutral activities that are a bit less embarrassing to watch. All that experience with sword swinging that the game developers Tamsoft have from their work on the old Battle Arena Toshinden games has paid off because Aya and the rest of the cast swing their swords like pros. Even the zombies have quite a bit of life to them, which is surprising seeing as how they are dead and all. I thought they would simply have slowed down movements but instead the ghouls will stagger about in a jerky and uncoordinated manner and will often attack the area where they last remember you being even if you have moved to the other side of the screen. At various points I've almost been tempted to leave a single zombie on the screen and play with it.

With a description like that a person might think that the fights in Oneechanpon would be easy as anything and they are, but only if you are fighting one or two zombies at a time. Trouble is, zombies are the most social of monsters and invariably travel in packs. There are no worries when you're chopping up a single zombie but it does become troublesome when you have to worry about the seven others that closing in on you. It's the never-ending volume of enemies that will eventually wear you down. As if dealing with a constant stream of zombies and other beasties wasn't enough to worry about the girls tend to get infected by all the blood and general evil floating about. If you aren't careful they can quickly go into a crazed, life draining blood rage. Combine all that with some clunky map navigation and intentionally stingy item drops and you end up with an odd survival-action hybrid. While the Oneechanbara games aren't going to give Devil May Cry or Resident Evil any direct competition the series instead creates its own unique niche.

In spite of its shortcomings and questionable origins I found I really like The Oneechanpon: The Oneechan 2 Special Edition. Although the games may never win any awards or respect they do have a bit more going for them than the just the high concept of the premise.

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