When indie game connoisseurs enjoy an Xbox Live community game, an XNA dev gets their wings. Or, maybe not. In any case, certain XNA titles are good enough to be gifted with the honor of becoming a full-fledged Xbox Live Arcade game. Last year, before the Community Game program was fully launched, gamers were given a few of the Dream, Build, Play-nominated titles to test out for themselves before a winner of the contest would be announced. The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai was amongst those games available for download, and now we’ve seen a complete release of the game, along with its own achievements and fleshed-out gameplay modes. Just between you and me? Perhaps this dishwasher should look into a different profession.

Story
The Dishwasher relies solely on interstitials of shoddily-drawn comic panels with few lines of text illustrating what is actually going on within the scenes. It’s a loosely-woven tale of revenge that you’ve no doubt encountered before. It can get a bit difficult to follow, as you aren’t dropped directly into the flow of events from the very beginning. It’s apparent from the very first few strips that this will be quite the convoluted little adventure.

To clear things up a bit for you, this story revolves around a protagonist who has no real name save for “Dishwasher,” who has been captured by malevolent cyborgs. Luckily, Chef (no, not the South Park character), the Dishwasher’s mentor, comes through for the poor lad and donates “alien blood.” This brings the Dishwasher back to life, and gifts him with some peculiar and very strong powers. Back with a vengeance, the Dishwasher swears that he will exact revenge on the cyborgs who are (of course) bent on taking over the world, recruit by recruit. Nothing spectacular here, and it certainly won’t keep you glued to the edge of your seat, but then again, this game never did promise any compelling storytelling, now did it?

Gameplay
This is your average side-scrolling brawler in every sense of the word. If you’re familiar with the genre, then you can expect all of the conventions to make themselves known here, even the arrow that flashes, notifying you that the next area is open for carnage. As the Dishwasher, wielding your weapon of choice, you’re to hack through all who stand in your way of revenge, no matter who it may be. You can move left, right, jump, vault off of walls, and utilize the environments to your advantage. Presses of the face buttons in quick succession ensure that each enemy turns to mincemeat in a matter of, well, minutes. Defeating enemies takes longer than it should, even with upgraded weapons along the way. You’ll find that ten, or even twelve strikes may not be enough sometimes. This does ramp up the difficulty, but it also incites such monotony that wielding a shining cleaver, katana, or various weapon loses its “cool factor” sooner than it should.

When you’ve slashed enough times, you can choose to perform a clean or messy kill according to which button appears over an enemy’s head for a potential health bonus. And you’ll need the health bonuses, as even though you can dual-wield weapons, perform various combo attacks, and even juggle enemies, this is quite the difficult game. Often, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed with on-screen enemies and no way to clear them out save for giving up or tossing your controller across the room. This shouldn’t be an obstacle, but the difficulty is inconsistent. In some areas you may find that combat is monotonous and dull, and then others you will want to bash your head into a wall in sheer frustration. This sort of hit-or-miss difficulty is a definite turn-off for me, and will likely annoy you as well should you choose to put down the Microsoft points.

Your primary weapons throughout a good portion of the game, the Meat Cleavers, are effective enough. It’s quite entertaining to watch them slice cleanly through limbs, torsos, and necks. As your progress throughout the game, you’ll earn significantly better vehicles of destruction, especially the Shift Blade that channels Vergil of Devil May Cry fame. If relying on weapons isn’t your forte, the Dishwasher also receives an arsenal of magical spells that are extremely helpful when it comes to wiping out multiple enemies at once. Various abilities and augments will gain levels as you make your way through each mission as well, which should ultimately make life easier for your Dishwasher, but as previously mentioned, the difficulty is so scattershot that the weapons you make use of rarely turn the tides in your favor.

Though you will gain new abilities, spells, weapons, and other goodies, the game lacks what every piece of entertainment should provide when it’s a form of recreation: fun. Slogging through each mission feels more like work than it should, and that’s where The Dishwasher ultimately fails. It’s an exercise in typical hack-and-slashery that has rather lofty goals but reaches none of them decisively.

As such, this is such a strangely-paced and lackluster journey that you should ultimately have the right to ask more of. If it wants to imitate side-scrolling beat-em-ups of the past, it’s going about the execution all wrong.

Visuals
While the fact that one person is responsible for the game in its entirety, not much can be said for the stick figure-like character designs and bland comic strip panels that attempt to thread a story together. While backgrounds and the effects of weapons or magic spells seem colorful and free of the jaggies, the fact that the environments and character models don’t mesh well together is a bit of an annoyance to me. It’s as if someone took a child’s crayon drawings, ran them through anti-aliasing, and pasted them into several Photoshopped backgrounds with colorful fireworks and bland areas to explore for good measure.

But, there’s a lot of gore. And I mean a lot. Who’s ever complained about that? Okay, I take that back. You know what I’m talking about, though.

Audio
There’s little voice acting to be found here, and the silence is coupled with some cheesy rock-techno similar to what you might have heard recently on the WCG Ultimate Gamer atrocity. Nothing too memorable here or noteworthy. It’s safe to say that you won’t be scouring the internet for a soundtrack anytime soon.

Multiplayer
If The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai proves too difficult for you (and it may), there are various co-op modes available to undertake. You can choose to have a friend drop in and out in order to come to your aid, which is your garden-variety co-op addition. However, the icing on the cake is the fact that a second player can drop into your game using a Guitar Hero or Rock Band controller. Sounds strange, I know, but it’s actually quite entertaining. The second player can contribute by playing solos on the guitar peripheral, performing electrical attacks in order to wipe the floor with enemies. While this doesn’t always work as well as planned, it’s an interesting addition to what would otherwise be another bland co-op offering in a random Xbox 360 title.

Lifespan
The Dishwasher is a rather short game. Once you’ve completed it, there’s really no good reason to play through it all again unless you’re a masochist or an achievement whore. If you’re both, you’ll find tons of fun to be had here and will find yourself returning over and over. For everyone else? You’ll likely be over the entire experience shortly after completing the story mode.

Recommendation
Are you into bland, side-scrolling brawlers? Love gore? Can you button-mash with the best of them? The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai may be just what you’re looking for. In all seriousness, it isn’t a horrible game per se, but I’ve most definitely seen better, especially in titles that were released years ago. When you take into account that this was a one-man ordeal it becomes more impressive than it really should be, but as far as a full Xbox Live Arcade release, you may want to give this one a pass. The addition of a guitar peripheral for co-op play is interesting, as well as the concept, but there are far better ways you can spend your time and money. Maybe you can go wash some dishes.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
System: XBLA
Developer: Ska Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Find: Amazon
All reviews are based on final retail code unless otherwise noted.

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