The biggest problem with Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku is how overly easy it is even on the hardest difficulty.
The game is split up into 4 worlds. They are all very easy with little to no challenge. Just about the only challenge the game gives you is making a few of the levels ridiculously long and challenge your patience with whether you want to finish the level or not. The fighting in the game isn't rewarding and boils down to you just pushing X and O randomly to kill an enemy . The enemies don't put up a good fight, they flinch when you hit them leading to you killing them without even finishing your combo and dieing without even attacking you. But when you get into fights with a lot of enemies they tend to surround you and that's when the trouble starts. You'll get hit a lot when this happens but to save yourself you can hold down R2 and slow down time and kill them all with ease. This game is incredably repetative. Every level has a certain amout of people to save and a certain amount of relics to collect. When you save 30 people you get a new sword upgrade that you can switch with a simple press of the left directional button, every world has a new sword and you'll probably not even use them that much because they aren't all that powerfull. You use the relics to buy power, health, and zen upgrades. You'll want to upgrade you power and zen to alow yourself to kill enemies faster and you'll need the zen to use the other swords and slow down time.This game would have been a whole lot better if it where an action rpg. If you killed enemies and got experience points to level up and upgrade your sword and things overly easy battles with there repetative nature would be more barable.
The graphics look like they were pulled right out of an old PS1 game. If you've played any of the Looney Toons games on the PS1 then you've seen these graphics. The areas you are in are bland and just ugly with the grass looking like it was painted on. In the cutscenes you get a good close up of Jack. He looks like an old PC game character, being all blocky, pale, and just ugly.
The sound in this game is just terrible. The only thing that saves it is Jack's acting. He has the same voice as he had from the show and actualy sound pretty good. Everyone else is just pathetic and sounds like the developers got some 5th grade kids to do the voices. The bad voice acting rears it's ugly head the most in the 2nd world with the people you save being so anoying that you'll turn the sound on your TV to mute.
This game will run you 5 to 6 hours. Now if you want to unlock everything you'll need to beat the game on all 3 difficulties. This isn't much of a problem because the game is so easy even on hard. But once you've finished it you won't really want to play through it again because the levels that take an hour to complete are so much of a hassle to play through again that you'll just give up wanting to get everything.
I've said a lot of bad things about this game and really the only people who will like it are hardcore Samurai Jack fans and people who enjoy playing boring repetative button mashers. I wouldn't buy it, but if you really want to play it you should rent it because if you want to play through the whole game you can in just one sitting.