Onimusha 3

You know a publisher is confident that they have a winner on their hands when they are willing to put Jean Reno’s French conk on the cover of their game. As the star of “The Professional” and supporting actor in more good roles than anyone whose name doesn’t begin with “IMDB” cares to mention, Reno is many things, but covermodel aint one of them. His judgment can’t be faulted, however, as providing his likeness and voice to this game in particular is not going to be a career ending move by any stretch.

In the avalanche of games that gets released across all platforms it’s easy to become blasé about the amount of effort that goes into each title. So it is with particular grave emphasis that I draw your attention to the opening cinematic of Onimusha 3 (subtitled: Demon Siege). To say it’s a work of art is an understatement. It’s a pre-rendered masterpiece that could easily hold its own against dedicated short films. Rendered to give the appearance of being shot in a slightly shaky, action cam, it shows series hero, samurai Samanosuke taking on a gigantic demonic flying fortress, culminating in a memorable battle against one badass archdemon. It’s not only the outstanding visuals and sound that make this an unbelieveable spectacle, the pacing and action is executed so well that it demands at least one second viewing – and I’m your typical “press the button lets play” kinda guy. Even more impressively, theres about two words of spoken dialogue, and that’s it. The martial arts on display rival anything I’ve seen ‘real’ humans do. When Samanosuke is in his guard position after a heated pass, you can see the slight quavering of his arms and the tension in his stance, and the sequences are very, very authentic. Put it this way, watching them, you can imagine humans doing this stuff. This masterful offering really raises the bar for these opening movies, given that in terms of action content it’s realistic enough to make you think the producers wouldn’t have been out of place working on Lord of the Rings.



A quick flick through the options to boost the gore level to “High” and change the blood colour from green to red, and we’re ready to rock. Starting the game ushers in a 15 or so minute long opening sequence, largely of in-game cinematics with the odd bit of button mash on your part. You’re introduced to Reno’s character, hardass French supercop Jacques Blanc. The character isn’t a stretch for Reno, he rides a large harley-style bike, wears those kooky round sunglasses, and just to show you that he’s got something to lose, you find out he has a kid at home. All hell breaks loose however when another predendered scene reveals that demonic hordes are overrunning Paris. Just to make sure you feel like you got value for money when you clicked on the pre-game notice that “This game contains explicit scenes of violence and gore”, you’re treated to a fresh faced café society mademoiselle copping a sword through her shoulderblades, a geek with a handicam getting smited, and another French chicky copping some death from above. The agents of this mayhem are all similar in appearance, and look startlingly like Tekken’s Yoshimitsu. It’s not as bad as it sounds, and praise Allah (or any other relevant deity), it definitely isn’t anywhere near as confronting as say, your average Mel Gibson religious movie.

All this pre-rendered lush leaves you concerned for how the game can possibly match up to such an adrenalised opening sequence. Those fears ultimately prove to have a foundation in reason. Onimusha 3 is by no means a bad game, but it’s also likely to mostly appeal to a pretty confined audience. The action sequences and small cinematic byplay that play out between pre-rendered scenes are of a dramatically lower resolution, and usually culminate in you working through some basic combat. As Reno hightails it to the scene of the demonic intervention, the story flips back a few centuries to Samanosuke, in Japan. After working through some more yoshitmitsu clones, Sammy meets up with all round nasty guy, Nobunaga. After dispatching his very feminine right hand man, Sam quickly gets bested by Nobunaga, but before the final blow can be delivered, Samanosuke is sucked into a time portal.

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