Okay, sure, 2019 has already given us plenty of great games, and at the end of 2018 I already knew most of the titles I was looking forward to, but Katana Zero – a game originally planned for release in 2015 – surprised me with its release this month. I had been following the game for a while and I tried not to obsess over news and information as much as I’ve done with other unreleased stuff, so maybe it kind of crept up on me. In any case it was absolutely worth the wait.
Katana Zero – slo-mo assassination
Katana Zero is a 2D (side-on) action game where you play a blade-wielding assassin accepting jobs to take out targets and possibly getting wrapped up in bigger things along the way (but Disposable Media doesn’t want to say too much about that…) Like Hotline Miami, progress is made by eliminating every enemy in an area before being allowed to move on, and most things die in one hit – including your character. However, there’s a lot that makes Katana Zero unique – you’ll be facing gun-wielding goons, turrets and other ballistic hazards, but aside from some throwable items you’ll have to take them on with your blade. This means slowing down time to dodge or deflect bullets, rolling through hazards, and working around the environment so that you can ambush a group of enemies rather than bursting in through the front door. At times it can feel cruel, frustrating, and impossible, but you’ll end up persisting.
Bullet ballet
One reason for this persistence comes from the fact that the pacing is judged well – you rarely feel like you go for too long without finding a new room and another checkpoint – however, the best payoff comes from the replays. You’ll use the recharging slow-motion feature a lot to get through environments, but the game is portrayed through a grainy VHS filter, and every time you clear a room you have the option to see a real-time replay of your actions. Viewing these sequences stripped of the godlike slo-mo is the ultimate bullet ballet, as projectiles fly around the screen and the character is never touched. If you ever watched Zhu Zhiqiang’s stick-figure animation series “Xiao Xiao“, Katana Zero is the closest I think a game has got to giving those kind of combat sequences a playable equivalent (er, not counting the playable games Zhu’s made, of course.) It’s that feeling of witnessing the classic one-man-against-all-odds battle, but you’re playing and controlling it, and there are enough items and paths in the levels for a player to improvise and come up with their own solutions.
Katana Zero – tough but fair
The difficulty does ramp up in time – a later chapter named “Bunker” makes it very hard to manoeuvre safely, and checkpoints in the chapter are spaced quite far apart – but you rarely feel like there’s anything that brings progress to a halt for good. Towards the end of the game things get a little more strategic; you’ll be tasked with not wasting the slow-motion ability, and even though each sequence is against the clock you barely take notice until those later (larger) areas demand that you work quickly. This leads to a tightrope-walk between shaving seconds from your run and avoiding rushed decisions that lead to your demise. I believe there are more things for me to discover and more dialogue branches to try, but after this initial playthrough I had to offer some early thoughts. If you’re a fan of 2D action and cinematic stylings, and you’re willing to stick with a game’s more challenging sequences, Katana Zero is definitely worth your time.
Katana Zero is out now on PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch
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