I look forward to reviewing this game again like I look forward to clipping my toenails. For most games I play, I can honestly say that my feelings usually change over a period of time. But with Afro Samurai, I played it as much as I wanted to, needed to, and could. Every mission was beaten on the hardest difficulty, and every achievement obtained — the only one remaining is to get a few more kills than what I currently have. Needless to say, I played the game and I played it hard.

Coming back to it, I didn’t have any “eureka!” moments where I realised what I had missed before. Afro Samurai is an incredibly simple-natured game with little room for interpretation. All that’s really left is preference. While the fighting mechanics are in working order and allow you to make some wicked looking fight sequences, it does eventually become a bore. A comparison I can make is to Grand Theft Auto IV. When I’m with friends and we rotate free roam play, we tend to resort to building up the highest wanted level or just pulling off insane stunts while smashing faces into various hard surfaces. I have fun doing this, but I begin to lose interest after I’ve had so many turns. Afro Samurai is pretty much free roam the whole time. There are specific moments in each mission where you have to do a certain thing in a certain way, but for the other 90% of the time, you kill as you please. And yes, killing is the foundation of this game — it’s not some byproduct of the events that takes place, the events are killing.

I still remember that when I first played the game, the only reason I continued was to hear the jokes between fights and see how the story progressed. After all, it is a hack and slash, and with it, you get a certain degree of predictability in the combat. In the end, I stand by what I said in my review. This is something you rent and moderately enjoy, or if you buy it, only end up playing a handful of times and hating yourself for it.