Even small encounters with two or three enemies may require a half-dozen attempts before getting it exactly right. He doesn’t fail missions so much as he repeats them, rewinding time until each attack breaks in his favor.įor all the gameplay’s limitations, the repetitive nature aligns well with the themes. In practice, this means bullet time and infinite lives.
He’s been treated with an experimental drug called Chronos, granting him a unique perception of time. Players take on the role of Zero, an amnesiac samurai assassin tasked with killing anyone he’s told to kill. Katana Zero is a game about this cycle, weaving the notion that “mastery that comes from defeat” into a gory tale of revenge and redemption.ĭeveloped by Askiisoft, Katana Zero is a 2D side-scrolling action game in a dingy, neon-burnt metropolis. What threat is a band of pirates to Nathan Drake if he’s immortal? Acknowledging failure would spoil tension in a game’s story.
Most games are built upon this cycle, but few call attention to it. Numerous botched attempts through a stage can lead to the knowledge (or just simply precognition) required for survival. “A single success is often built upon countless failures” is hard to conceptualize in real life, but is obvious in the world of a video game.