Back in 2009, Afro Samurai received its first video game iteration for the Xbox 360 and PS3. As a longtime Afro Samurai fan myself, I was stoked to get my hands on a copy for 360 when I got off of work on the day of its release. The music was decent, the artistic style was impressive, but the controls were too loose, and the most basic of entry-level enemies were far too over-powered and took forever to kill. I thought being in the shoes of Afro would make me a badass who could cut down anyone, but instead I sat in the same area for twenty minutes taking on the same 4 nameless thugs with no progress made. Eventually I got bored, so I put it on my shelf and let it collect dust.
That being said, I really hope Redacted Studios can do a sequel justice. The manga and anime are very well done, and listening to Ninja Ninja yammer on to the otherwise silent Afro Samurai is hilarious and well-voiced by Sam Jackson.
Former Namco Bandai senior producer David Robinson, recently sat down with Polygon and shared details on the sequel titled Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of the Bear. Robinson, who left Namco Bandai a couple of years ago, left to create Redacted Studios, a company with only 17 developers who are currently working on this next Afro title. He and his team were able to obtain the rights to Afro Samurai (and all future installments in the series) when he left Namco Bandai, so this would appear to be the first major title from Redacted.
In Revenge of the Bear, players will be given the opportunity to once again pick up the sword of Afro and hack away at enemies while venturing out on an all new storyline focused on the character Kuma. Co-op will be available along with the option to play as characters not available to us in the first title.
As of now, not a whole lot of other details are known about the game, not even its hosting platforms, though both Playstation and Xbox are likely.
Afro Samurai the Game Trailer:
http://youtu.be/6RiaIfPPtSc
