TGS 06: Genji: Days of the Blade Hands-On

TOKYO--Earlier today, shortly after the doors to this year's Tokyo Game Show swung open, we were among the first people to get our hands on the latest demo of Genji: Days of the Blade. Initially, the demo appeared to be the same one that we played through just a couple of weeks ago, but we're pleased to report that this version was longer, and it also afforded us our first hands-on time with one of the new playable characters.

The TGS demo got under way in the same babbling brook that we saw in the last Genji: Days of the Blade demo. We were forced to spend a couple of minutes with three of the game's four playable characters at this point, so after killing some bad guys as the samurai Yoshitsune and knocking down a wall as the giant monk Benkei (both stars of the first game), we got to play as Shizuka--a female warrior armed with a razor-sharp hoop that she wields like a deadly yo-yo and can also use as a grapple to pull enemies toward her or to access areas that her colleagues can't reach.

This portion of the demo ended with a boss battle of sorts, in which we were confronted by a large warrior whose only weak point was on his back--as indicated by what looked like a glowing pink gemstone. Because of his size, Benkei seemed like the obvious choice to tackle this foe, but we quickly realized that he was simply too slow outmaneuver the enemy. Using the directional pad, we were able to switch between our other available characters on the fly, eventually settling on Yoshitsune, whose superior speed and acrobatic skills made getting behind the big guy much easier. The game's controls are easy to pick up, incidentally--you've got a jump button and three different attacks, and while the left stick is used to control movement, the right stick can be used to evade in any direction.

After defeating the boss and locating a chest, hidden behind a waterfall, that contained new weapons for all three of our characters, we proceeded up a path to a large battlefield, which, although it had clearly been a green and pleasant land at one time, now glowed red with fire and smoke. Our first task on the battlefield was to kill 20 enemies within three minutes, which was made easier by the fact that each of them had their weak points clearly indicated by glowing pink crystals (or whatever they're supposed to be) just like the one on the boss that we defeated earlier. The enemies came in a few different shapes and sizes, and some of them were flying rather than walking, but all were easily dispatched with some acrobatics from Yoshitshune and Shizuka.

Our next and final task in the demo, was to defeat--you guessed it--a giant crab with four legs and a skull for a head. The crab's weak point was inside its mouth initially, so we had to let it get close to us and wait for it to try to grab us in its jaws before attacking. That technique eventually allowed us to knock the crab's face/skull/head clean off, exposing a large pink area underneath that we were able to hit with only two of Benkei's powerful attacks before the crab was destroyed.

Although we played through the TGS demo of Genji: Days of the Blade quite easily, the game's camera did occasionally prove problematic. With the right analog stick being devoted to evasive moves, there was no way to move it around manually, and so we were often forced to attack enemies who were offscreen using a small map to locate them. It didn't help matters that we were required to stand only around a foot away from a large widescreen television for the duration, but the character animations and environments looked impressive nonetheless. We look forward to bringing you more information on this one as soon as it becomes available.