Hello there! I'm here with a new game review after a long time, I really miss Hive and the Hive Gaming Community!
I played this game a few months ago. Although the graphics of the game are 2D, it looks very aesthetic. Katana Zero is a 2D story based platform game, the game is actually quite new, it was released in 2019. As soon as you start the game, the text "10 DAYS REMAIN" appears on the screen in capital letters and a short dialogue begins. Right after this dialogue, you start the game on a platform and as soon as you land on the platform, an armed agent behind you attacks you and you start the game by killing him.
A short time later, a phone call comes in and asks us "Have you arrived?", we can choose the answer to the question of the person on the phone. The person on the phone says we have to save the scientist who is being held inside the factory, and by accepting this first mission, the first stage, "Factory Hideout" begins.
In the game, if you can't pass a stage and die, you will be resurrected with a rewind effect, I liked it very much. In the game, we can enter other rooms by breaking the doors and wooden obstacles. In some levels, lasers appear in front of you, and you can pass through them thanks to your fast transition special ability. Even if there is a ventilation in front of you, you can easily pass through the propellers by slowing down the time. In the first stage, we move forward by killing the enemies and at the end of the stage we find the scientist.
We go to save the scientist from the factory, but while the scientist is walking, the device in his head suddenly explodes and dies. After this scene, the leader of the terrorists appears downstairs and orders his men to kill us. 5-6 people run towards us and we complete the first stage by killing them.
After the stage is over, we go home. I like the house detail very much because we can drink tea, sleep and watch TV when we are at home. I drank tea first and then watched TV. There was news on TV and what I did today was in the news! The announcer was reporting that 12 people were killed and that the government scientist who had been missing for 3 weeks was reported dead.
As the news continued, I chose to sleep and lay down on the sofa to sleep. Katana Zero is a really impressive game, you know, in such platform games, the stage is usually cleared and a new stage starts after short dialogues, but in Katana Zero, the stage is completed and you go home, you can do daily human activities while in your home. Watching TV, sleeping, drinking tea and coffee and seeing the neighbors living next door... Seeing these details in a 2D platform game really impressed me and I really enjoyed the game.
That's not all, when you choose to sleep at the beginning of the game, you can control the game and play in the dreams you see while you are asleep, for example, in the first episode, I played ball in a small hut with a few black shadowy beings who looked like human, and just then, another shadowy being came from the door and a giant it turned into a shadow and ran screaming towards me, and I was suddenly awakened, it was a nightmare. Our character was experiencing psychological problems because of what he went through.
After waking up from the nightmare, I immediately went to the psychologist and sat in the patient chair next to him. The psychologist told us that he halved the dosage of our meds 2 months ago and asked if we were still having hallucinations.
Hmm, was all this what we went through, the people we killed, actually a hallucination? Were we playing the game in a simulation created by our character's own brain and disordered psychology? While asking myself all these questions, I realized that I had to choose one of 3 answers to the question asked by the psychologist.
During the dialogues in the game, when the NPC asked us a question, he wanted us to choose the answer to be given. I said I had a nightmare last night, and the doctor said it was due to a side effect of the treatment and asked what kind of dreams we were having. After that, I continued the game by giving appropriate answers to the questions he asked.
After my appointment was over, he gave me a file and said that my mission for tonight was in the file. I think the psychologist is both our doctor and our employer, because at the end of each appointment he gives us a file and it says who we are going to kill on our mission tomorrow, it's a really interesting story.
In the new task given to us by the psychologist, we have to kill a tech billionaire named "Josh Rose" and on the cover of the document it says "Destroy After Reading".
After reading the document, a lighter comes out from the bottom right and burns the document, I think this kind of small add-ons have added a very nice atmosphere to the game. When we move to the 2nd stage, we can now pick up the objects (vase, lamp, ax, anvil) in the area and throw them towards the enemies. In this way, our character turns into both melee and ranged fighter character types.
The game continues like this. Clean the stage, make short dialogues, go home, listen to the massacres you did on the news, go to sleep and see different nightmares in your dreams and go to the psychologist. The first stage routines of the game continue in this way.
In tonight's nightmare, I was playing ball with a shadowy being in the same room again, but this time, the scientist we rescued at the first stage (actually we couldn't save him because the device in his head exploded and he died) entered the room, ran to us and said vague things. Suddenly, a shadowy man with a gun entered the room and shot and killed the scientist.
The psychologist said that the reason for these nightmares may be due to the near-fatal head trauma we received during the war. He also said that there is a problem with our memory loss and perception of time.
Then the episode continued with short dialogues and he gave us a shot, there was a very slight LSD (Acid) effect on the screen and the psychologist gave us our new file (mission) and said we will continue tomorrow.
Our mission this time was at a club and we had to kill a 24-year-old DJ. Thanks to the club stage, the game teaches us a new mechanic, the "stealth ability" mechanic. Throught this mechanic, we can easily get away from the guards watching around by mingling with the dancers in the club, pretending to dance. If the guards catch us, the episode starts from the beginning.
The game gets much more difficult at this stage. Unlike other stages, there are powerful turrets that fire nonstop, gunmen waiting behind the doors and our new "stealth ability" that we have to use many times. It was very difficult for me to complete this stage and when I died for the 3rd time in a row, someone who wanted to help called me, but I refused his help.
In the later puzzles of the stage, I broke the pipes in the upper parts, covered the room I was in with smoke, and sneaked out without anyone seeing it, hiding thanks to the smoke.
Actually, I was very tilted in the following stages and took a break from playing because I'm constantly dying and the game rewinds itself and I have to play the stage from the beginning. This is really annoying. Although the gameplay time is around 4-5 hours, I do not recommend you to finish it in one sitting because if you play nonstop, you may get bored in a short time. That's why I took a break, but I'm very curious about the story of the game. I decided to start another game to avoid any more tilts and I will continue Katana Zero as soon as possible and write a detailed review about Katana Zero.
Last Words
That's all for my first impressions for Katana ZERO, thank you for reading my game review! :)