When Power Rangers first became popular in the US in the early to mid-90’s, my little brothers were at that perfect age to really get into them. When one of my brothers was going through potty training, we told him that the Blue Ranger uses the potty, and he didn’t have any accidents after that! Another one of my brothers dressed as the Green Ranger for Halloween, but he was so little that the costume swallowed him whole and everyone though he was an elf. He was so angry that nobody knew who he was supposed to be! We rented the Power Rangers SNES game several times, and I think I had nearly every line memorized from that stupid first Power Rangers movie because they watched it so much! Now my brothers are all nearly grown, and I was surprised when I got this new Power Rangers game to review. “The Power Rangers are still around?!?” I thought. Well apparently they are, and now you can join the newest Rangers on an adventure on the Wii and DS.

Power Rangers Samurai plays a lot like an old-school side scrolling beat ‘em up. Pick one of the five colored Rangers and dash through city stages, slashing rubber suited monsters along the way with your samurai swords. Two can play at the same time, and you can use combo attacks and special moves against the enemy. Using powerful moves decreases your special meter, so you’ll need to pick up blue and red orbs along the way to fill your special move and health meters.

Be on the lookout for special icons on the ground, too. Step on certain ones to temporarily increase your speed, jump, or refill your health or let you switch Rangers. At the end of the stage you’ll fight a tough boss. But it’s not over there. Just like in the TV show (it’s a little comforting to know things haven’t changed much since my brothers watched it), the boss grows big and you must fight it in the hulking robotic Megazord. To activate your giant robot, you must first draw a symbol on screen with the Wii remote to power it up. Unfortunately the drawing symbol parts of the game don’t work very well. Then you must time shaking the Wii remote and nunchuck as symbols pass over a line to effective attack, block, and counterattack the giant boss.

The DS version of the game is practically the same, except it is more 2-D in nature. And the Wii remote sections are replaced with drawing symbols with the stylus. You can also power up your Ranger by rotating a disc on the bottom screen with the touch pen, but it doesn’t work very well. In Megazord battles on the DS, you rotate a disc to power up your robot, and tap buttons on screen to block and attack. At least the bosses are easier on the DS version, as they are pretty tough on the Wii.

Speaking of which, the only problems with this game are the tough normal sized bosses on the Wii, and the poorly implemented drawing mechanics on both versions. But other than that, the games are pretty decent, if a bit uninspired. With movies, voices, and photo clips taken straight from the TV, each stage feels like an episode of the show (although a lot of the levels look similar). Probably the only people who will really enjoy this game, however, are huge fans of the Power Rangers TV show and toys.

Kid Factor:

Power Rangers Samurai is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Comic Mischief. You do hit enemies with swords, but they just fall over and disappear when defeated. Reading skill is helpful for some of the menus and story text, and some younger players might get frustrated at the tough bosses on the Wii. But if you’re OK with your kids watching the TV show, they’ll be OK with the game, too.

Tags: Game Reviews