Gamertell

OneChanBara: Bikini Samurai Squad
Price: $39.99
System: Xbox 360
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Publisher (Developer): D3 Publisher (Tamsoft)
ESRB Rating: Mature
Pros: Relatively easy to learn, quest mode promotes replayability, in-tact and in-depth battle system, customizable characters, downloadable content and plenty of T&A.
Cons: Minor graphical glitches, storyline assumes you’re an avid fan of the series, missions required by quest mode are unclear and somewhat repetitive.
Overall Score: One Thumb Up, One Thumb Sideways; 85/100; B; ***1/2 out of ***** 

Enter modern-day Japan, where a mysterious organization suddenly unleashes a swarm of undead miscreants to seek out two sisters cursed with the Baneful Blood. Aya and Saki are those two lovely sisters and it’s up to them to defeat this equivocal and deadly association while wearing attire meant for a sunny day at the beach. 

Blood Is This Season’s Black

OneChanBara: Bikini Samurai Squad is essentially a hack-and-slash game that puts you in charge of a group of lovely ladies who aren’t afraid to break a nail or two in order to save a defenseless Japan against hordes of undead creatures.

• Aya – The eldest sister who believes it’s her duty to protect her younger sister, Saki, at all costs. She is skilled with the blade and is even able to wield dual swords to fight. Her outfit of choice is a ruffled string bikini coupled with her distinctive straw cowboy hat.
• Saki – She is a part-time assassin and younger sister to Aya. The Baneful Blood that courses through her veins is apparently much stronger than that of Aya, making her of interest to the organization that seeks them out. Her skills lie in her agility, martial arts, and the use of a sword. Saki enjoys wearing a traditional sailor-type girl’s uniform complete with crop top, short skirt, and straw sandals.
• Annna (yes, her name does contain 3 “ns”) – A blonde who claims to be on a mission from a special United States task force that deals specifically with zombie infestations. She allies herself with the sisters and uses gun weaponry as her arsenal. Being the modest one of the bunch, she wears a blue jumpsuit and matching black boots for stomping on zombie heads.
• Reiko (must be downloaded via Xbox Live) – She works for the organization that controls the undead hordes and apparently has history with Aya. Unlike the others, she is able to make use of both guns and swords. Reiko is quite chic with her sunglasses and she enjoys wearing clothes that breathe. That’s why she adorns skin tight black vinyl/leather that’s attached by at several creative points of interest.

When you begin the game, you have the option to choose between single-player and cooperative multiplayer modes. In single-player mode, you can switch between a set of two characters at anytime during the game. In cooperative multiplayer mode, you side with a friend and play through a game together via a split-screen. Unfortunately, OneChanBara doesn’t support online play, so that means that you actually need to a have a body sitting beside you to share in this game’s chaos.

Bikini Samurai Squad features several alternative modes: story, free play, quest, survival and dress-up. The quest option tallies your in-game accomplishments (via story, free play, survival modes) and contains cryptic messages meant to guide you to unlocking what it is that’s needed. As players successfully unlock more and more of these missions, more items to be used in dress-up mode will be uncovered. However, without the assistance of a cheat sheet (from some place like Gamefaqs), you’ll spend hours upon hours racking your brain trying to figure out exactly what each mission is looking for before you’ll be able to obtain some of the really raunchy outfits.

Better Think Twice About Bullying These B*tches

As you relish in slicing bodies across the screen, you’ll begin to notice two on-screen meters that start to fill. The first meter indicates the character’s rage which increases when Aya or Saki become covered in blood (which answers the question as to their lack of clothes). Once this fills completely, Aya/Saki automatically enters her hellish berserk mode. While in this state, more damage can be dealt but at the cost of gradually depleting life until all life bars are gone. Naturally, this ultimately ends the game. The only way to release her from this cursed trance is to utilize items or find a blessed goddess statue. The second meter shows how much gore is Aya/Saki’s weapon. An uncleaned sword becomes dull and inflicts less damage while also allowing enemies to gain hold of it and forcing Aya/Saki to yank it free. Therefore, players are encouraged to occasionally splatter the blood of their sword along the streets of Japan because a clean blade is a happy blade.

Don’t Judge This Book By Its Cover

When you gaze upon the bikini-clad, boa-wearing babe that graces the cover of this game, it’s hard to believe that this game might actually be worth picking up. Or, more so, actually have some depth.

While it doesn’t require a lot of brains to maneuver through, you’ll soon find out that crazily slashing your way through zombie after zombie just won’t suffice if you want to be able to unlock everything in quest mode. In actuality, to be able to master the battle system utilized in this game requires a lot of precision and good timing. Unfortunately, though, the included instruction book does not provide much information on this feature of the game and players will have too look elsewhere in order to uncover the deadliest of combinations.

As you progress through the game, each of the characters are able to level up individual skills. When the end of a chapter/level is reached, each active character will be endowed a certain number of skill points that can be distributed according to the player’s preference. This not only promotes customization amongst the characters, but replayability as well. It’s also good to know that characters retain their skill levels throughout all of the different playable modes, meaning I can take my poorly leveled Saki and power her up in free play mode until she can whoop a zombie in one hit.

Quest mode also adds a little spice to the action because it is the key to the illicit dress-up mode. Eventually, players are able to choose from an assortment of different hairstyles, eyes/lip colors, as well as different articles of clothing. You can’t deny the curiosity of wondering just how much more naked or kinky these girls could get based on what they already wear as a default. To start you off though, there are several outfits already available for free on Xbox Live.

As therapeutic as peeling an orange, there’s just something that about the feeling of steel cut through flesh that somehow satiates the soul. With buckets and buckets of blood to be splattered, you better be sure not to wear any articles of white to this party.

Site [OneChanBara: Bikini Samurai Squad]