Seven Samurai 20XX Review

With Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece as its inspiration, the developers of Seven Samurai 20XX had all the raw materials to create a stylish adventure that explored the personalities of Kambei and his ragtag group of fighters, and gave players an opportunity to wield the magnificent seven’s traditional weapons.

Instead, the producers decided to shift the action from feudal Japan to a bleak futuristic world and replace the film’s shabby bandits with an endless procession of quirky robots. But if the space age setting doesn’t have Kurosawa spinning in his grave, the action certainly will; reaching the end of Seven Samurai 20XX requires little more than the ability to hammer buttons in a relentless series of battles, and the hero’s supposedly ‘special’ attack — where he slaughters enemies with a sword in either hand — is so ridiculously easy to pull off that players can use twin blades throughout the entire game and complete the adventure in a single sitting.