What Is Sakeworld?
From Sakeworld’s official Twitter: “Sake is a clothing brand created by Jack Phoenix. Sakeworld is a side-scrolling beat ’em up game inspired by Jack’s artwork”.
One of the problems with this concept is that Jack’s artwork is fundamentally, unequivocally awful. This was immediately evident once I had seen the game’s splash screen; however, horrible art does not a horrible experience make (just look at most Adult Swim shows), so I figured I’d give it the benefit of the doubt. My initial optimism failed to take into account that for every low-budget masterwork that the terrible art of Adult Swim provides (think 12oz Mouse), we get about a thousand soulless, craven, hideous cash-ins (think The Nutshack).
This is a Nutshack-type game.
The Main Problem
Sakeworld is a a beat-em-up wherein you play as either D Savage, Chief Keef, Trippi Redd, Rucci, or Yung Bans. This distinction is almost purely cosmetic as, aside from ONE special move per character, they all have the exact same set of moves.
Speaking of moves, let’s explore that for a second. Beat-em-ups (especially modern beat-em-ups) are deceptively difficult to make well as there’s a litany of considerations to be made as to how to distinguish the characters from one another through their moves, frame data, looks, attributes, and combo-strings. Sakeworld seeks to circumvent that problem by having a total of 3 (technically 4) moves: a punch, an uppercut (which sometimes comes out when a punch is thrown anyway despite there being no combo strings), a kick, and a special kick which has a cooldown. Not even a grab, which puts this gameplay firmly in the 80s alongside any number of NES games which were swept into the great dustbin of gaming history.
As well as all of that, while Sakeworld has a rank and combo system, there is no combo counter, nor is there any way to actually string together moves; because of this, I found myself burning through levels which were doling out A and S ranks like candy. The only challenge here comes from either wrestling with the awful controls on higher difficulties, or losing due to sheer boredom.
How’s It Look And How’s It Sound?
Sakeworld (surprisingly) has a number of original songs for it’s soundtrack, as well as a jukebox on the main menu wherein you can listen to the entire soundtrack at your leisure. This is a surprisingly competent feature to include here and, while the overwhelming majority of the soundtrack is terrible to me as, aside from Shakewell and the occasional Fat Nick track, this ad-lib heavy, post-glam era pseudo-mumble rap isn’t really my kind of music, but it is here if you want it, so that’s gotta count for something.
Though the game has a decent amount of visual variety, as the backdrops of each level are at least distinct, it all completely collapses under the weight of how awful the gameplay is. To it’s credit though, the game also has a boss rush mode. This mode is incredibly tedious and just has you fighting every boss in a row, in the tutorial area no less, but it does at least exist.
Should You Buy It?
Ultimately, Sakeworld is a pristine example of how quickly and lazily an Android game can be ported to Playstation; however, it should be noted that while this game is undoubtedly terrible, it AT LEAST does not have a platinum, so it is at least better than the mountains of ‘2-minute platinum’ shovelware that is seemingly dumped on the Playstation store every time you open it.
This game is impossible to recommend, but it’s not a 0, the aforementioned ‘2-minute platinum’ games are the only games that are worthy of a zero in my eyes, as they have nothing to offer anybody. But then of course we circle back around to the question of who this game is actually for, and I have no idea. As I see it, it is a game bereft of any charm, full-to-bursting with incompetent design, and absolutely hideous to look at, BUT it is only 12 dollars. I suppose the choice then is whether you would rather spend 12 dollars on this, or a comparable amount of money on an actual good or great beat-em-up. This game isn’t a 0, but with all of it’s problems, and with so many better alternatives, there’s no way it’s any better than a 2.
