It all has so much promise, too. Holding down the L trigger unleashes the game’s primary gimmick, the Focus mode: the colour bleeds out of the screen, the action slows to a crawl and, holding down an attack button, a shimmer of light creeps up Afro’s sword. Releasing your attack when the sparkle reaches the tip of the sword is rewarded by an incalculably fatal slash, capable of slicing through any of the game’s minions in a single blow. It’s the centrepiece of the game’s combat, and a superbly subtle way of conveying a gameplay mechanic without having to pop in any HUD elements. When you start Afro Samurai, it’s a blast.

The game can also boast about its visceral dismemberments. Focus attacks really do slice through anything, and you’ll be lopping off arms, fingers and bits of head within about five minutes of spinning up the disc. You can slice a man clean in half. There’s accompanying achievements for hacking away at all sorts of body bits, and there’s even a poker-themed minigame that revolves around dismemberment. Blood has a habit of flying everywhere, too: I spilled 1096 gallons of the red stuff in one playthrough at normal difficulty. It’s gory.

Unfortunately, it’s too much of a one trick pony. By the time you get to the fourth level the Focus system is starting to wane, you’ve experienced most of the vicious death animations and you’re still attacking the same basic enemies with the same equipment. You only wield a single weapon for the entire game, an example of the design sticking to the equally stylish anime series at the expense of more raucous gameplay. It’s all a bit rudimentary, then, and if you’ve played a game of similar ilk before you’ll be entirely unmoved by the motions. One button does light attacks, one heavy, and there’s a ridiculous amount of redundant combos to potentially use. But you won’t, the ones you get at the beginning of the game are more than sufficient and the game provides no impetus for you to learn anything else.

There’s a certain allure to it all, however, and that’s undoubtedly due to the incredible presentation. Certain moments, such as a mid-air boss fight and the frequent perusal of beautiful vistas, are remarkably good fun. But it’s the lousy design flaws that bring the game down considerably, and for a title that can be completed in less than five hours you’d have expected it to be a little bit more polished. What Afro Samurai has in visual style, it lacks in design finesse.

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