Genji: Days of the Blade - hands-on

There were a few neat touches, mostly revolving around the ability to switch characters instantly, just by hitting a direction on the d-pad. We're told the idea is that you'll be able to switch between characters mid-strike and chain together all sorts of spectacular, massive combo attacks, but we weren't actually able to pull that off.

We were, however, able to get Yoshitsune and Benkei to work together to stomp the level's boss, which basically amounted to a lumbering suit of armor with a great big sword. Using Benkei's charged-up attacks, we were able to knock a huge chunk of his armor off, opening him up for a few fatal slash combos from Yoshitsune.

While we like what we've seen of Genji: Days of the Blade so far, it doesn't exactly scream "next-gen" to us. It's beautiful, in a generic sort of way, and its action is solid enough, but the glitchy demo we played looks like a prettied-up PS2 game. Again, though, there's a lot we haven't seen, so we'll keep an open mind as we move nearer to the game's rumored November release.

Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.