Genji: Days of the Blade was the last game I had a chance to get my hands on, thanks to the aborted evening of gaming. I was literally in the middle of an attack when a Sony PR guy came up, turned off the console and told me I HAD to go downstairs to eat and see the "surprise."

I, and just about everyone else, had already figured out that the surprise was Ludacris, so I was a bit grumbly as I made my way away from the game, despite their false promises that we could all return later on to play more.

I did get enough time with the game to get at least a decent sense of what it was all about. The graphics, while quite nice, weren't as stylistic as I had hoped and the same could be said for the special move animations, but the game is still quite pretty.

Fighting is accomplished through a series of button pushes and your character can swap weapons on the fly. Build up enough power and you can go into a special mode that lets you dish out a series of punishing special attacks to however many unsuspecting enemies happen to be standing around at the time.

In this mode, your character dances through a near void of falling flower petals and strange symbols, while you have to match button pushes that flash on the screen. The more you match the more enemies you get to cut down in a series of slightly interesting special attacks.

While I found the game intriguing, I really didn't get to spend enough time with it to tell if it's something that is truly going to captivate my interest.

As with Lair, I felt that the developers really didn't put in enough over the top, highly-stylized attacks. Maybe I've just come to expect that, but it really helps add sizzle to a perhaps otherwise mundane title.

I was also a little disappointed that Genji features so much magic. It would have been nice to see the developers take a more realistic, less magical approach to the game. But perhaps that title is coming another day.
Brian Crecente

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