Reviews
[Review] ‘Onimusha Warlords’ is a Standard Remaster of a PS2 Classic
Capcom’s other great demon-slaying classic from the PS2 era returns. Find out if it’s a warm welcome in our Onimusha Warlords review.
It’s been almost two decades since Onimusha first slashed its way onto screens, quickly becoming a PS2 favorite. After a glowing reception, Capcom was quick to follow with four mainline sequels and then, with the launch of Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, the fledgling action game series just disappeared.
For close to fourteen years, the only glimpse of a new Onimusha came via a 2012 browser game that was exclusive to Japan. Apart from that? Zilch.
At the same time that Dawn of Dreams launched, Capcom was already starting to pivot more towards a western audience. The Xbox 360 was just on the horizon and so too were Dead Rising and Lost Planet, both of which performed well for the publisher. Capcom doubled down, however, and those westernized games that followed (its Bionic Commando reboot and Dark Void, just to name a couple) didn’t go down well.
In a way, Onimusha being benched during the past console generation may not have been such a bad thing after all but for years fans have waited for its return. And here it is: a full remaster of 2001’s Onimusha: Warlords.
For those who skipped the original, Onimusha is a combat-heavy action game set during the Sengoku period in Japan. The land is in turmoil as warlords muster their clans and go to war, Nobunaga being chief among them, a powerful daimyo often referred to as the “demon king” in most pop culture. That moniker takes on a more literal meaning during Onimusha’s epic opening as he falls in battle, our hero Samanosuke returning to his lord’s castle only to find that Nobunaga has risen again, a demon horde now at his command.
Originally, Onimusha was pitched as a Resident Evil game under the title Sengoku Biohazard. Although Capcom decided to steer the project in a different direction, it’s hard not to look at Onimusha as a game heavily inspired by the world-beating survival horror franchise. From the tank controls (which we’ll get to later) and enemy types, to a familiar approach in level design, the two have much in common, Onimusha also acting as somewhat of a precursor to Devil May Cry.
As Samanosuke, you must repel the demon invasion and thwart Nobunaga’s quest to conquer Japan under this dark new regime. Most of your time will be spent dueling with his minions and exploring the game’s vast castle complex which, in a way, mirrors the Spencer Mansion of Resident Evil.
Combat is swift and skillful. Samonosuke’s moveset is somewhat limited though unlocking and switching between various weapons and magical powers add new flavor to the fairly basic gameplay. Naturally, there’s a samurai-esque quality to the way he fights using precise sword strikes, counters, and blocks, encouraging players to circle around individual targets and wait for an opening.
Where most games of this ilk can be incredibly linear, Onimusha: Warlords involves a surprising amount of exploration and puzzle-solving. You’ll often need to loop back and revisit areas in order to find clues and key items in order to progress, again, much like Resident Evil.
For a game that’s almost pushing twenty, this isn’t the prettiest remaster you’ll come across on current gen hardware though it definitely has a nostalgic charm about it. Some of the static backgrounds can look oddly out of place but there’s an appeal to them you just don’t get from full 3D environments.
Aside from sprucing up the visuals, this remaster makes some other noticeable changes. Inventory management can still be a hassle though equipping weapons is now be done at the press of a button instead of diving into menus. You can now move your character using the analogue stick too, supplementing the admittedly archaic “tank” controls that featured in the original release.
While it would have been nice to see Capcom tart up those three original games and present them in one package, simply wanting more of what this remaster has to offer is a good sign. Beneath a new lick of paint and some clever adjustments, Onimusha: Warlords doesn’t make for an essential action game in 2019 but it’s a great modernization all the same and hopefully we’ll see more Capcom classics undergo a similar makeover.
Onimusha Warlords review code for PS4 provided by the publisher.
Onimusha Warlords is out now on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PC.
Franchise callbacks and connective tissue between films are aplenty in Sébastien Vaniček’s Evil Dead Burn, including a sense of humor. Yet the laughs feel oddly placed in the most dour entry yet, with its sobering allegory for domestic abuse. Ambitious swings and inspired sequences unleash thrilling carnage that satisfy, but it all unravels by its clumsy final showdown.
Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is already a survivor before the arrival of Deadites. She’s suffered domestic abuse and violence at the hands of her husband, Will Price (George Pullar), and finally sees reprieve when the lakeside Deadite that bookended Evil Dead Rise causes his death. It’s a calculated move by the undead; they’re in search of a certain Kandarian dagger that happens to be a Price family heirloom. So, Alice’s grieving with her in-laws becomes a bloodbath as she’s forced to confront literal and metaphorical demons, courtesy of the Necronomicon.
Vaniček, who co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard, presents a rather rotten family tree before any demonic activity. Will is, after all, his parents’ son, and mom and dad are a nasty piece of work. Erroll Shand manages to top his skin-crawling villain from Mārama as Price patriarch Edgar, a volatile vision of toxicity and control. His wife, Susan (Tandi Wright), reveals herself to be even more vile, doling out cruel barbs that indicate she’s quite comfortable with her husband and eldest son’s penchant for violence.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; flickers of ignorance and bigotry occasionally cut through Grandma’s (Maude Davey) dementia-addled mind. The exception to this family’s rot is with timid youngest son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), though he’s too browbeaten to protect anyone from the Prices’ wrath. His cowardice is revealed to be a different form of toxicity, though, a byproduct of the kind of fruit this family tree bears. Which is to say that Evil Dead Burn may be the first in the franchise to operate on such a palpable degree of hate. It’s hard to feel fear when you actively despise the majority of these characters and root for their demise.
The good news is that Vaniček delivers on that front. Adhering to the formula, the family members perish one by one in inventive ways. Including the poor family pup, though his Deadite form doesn’t contribute much to the chaos. It’s the ingenious set pieces and demonic sequences that stand out in Evil Dead Burn, calling Vaniček’s nerve-fraying Infested to mind. An early sequence involving a moving car, one that sees multiple bodies fighting for life or death and utilizing whatever weapon they can, is worth the ticket price alone. A later sequence that sees Alice crawling away as an all-out brawl breaks out around her in a long, continuous take also adds thrilling personality.
Evil Dead Burn sags dramatically between these sequences, though, forcing us to sit through more vitriol from vicious in-laws with only contact lenses and wounds to distinguish them from human or demon. The somber tone is matched by a flat gray palette evocative of ash, made more literal by the falling of snow. The cold, flat aesthetic also diminishes some of the horror’s visceral impact. It all builds to a rather dismal climax that introduces a shoddy CG monstrosity that makes Alice’s demons made of burnt flesh.
In a film series that has, thus far, maintained fierce commitment to practical effects, the clunky final boss of demons here winds up a huge disappointment. At least the filmmaker commits fully to the Burn part of the title, forgoing the blood-drenched finales of the previous two films to deliver something a bit fresher.
It’s so heavy-handed in its domestic violence theme that subtext is just text, which in turn clashes with the upbeat splatstick fan service bits. A mid-credit scene aims to bring the laughs, but the post-credit scene is so egregious in its fan service that it reads desperate and feels shoehorned in just to remind fans how much we love this particular character.
Vaniček most certainly understands the assignment when it comes to delivering gruesome freakouts and brutal carnage. It’s everything else around it that largely frustrates. Yacoub is a winsome final girl who’s already been battered before the events of the film, then we’re forced to watch the rest of the family pile on in even worse ways.
It’s the type of bleak that’s at constant odds with the Evil Dead formula and callbacks, making for a tonally uneven vision of domestic abuse. It makes you miss when the ancient evil in this series didn’t need a trauma metaphor to terrorize. That’s what the demons are for.
Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters on July 10.
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