Chambara (PlayStation 4) Review

Some sincerely missed thing from many a gamer's childhood is those glorious Donkey Kong 64 deathmatch sessions that lasted from the moment the school ended to late in the evening, and those fun hide-and-seek games during the breaks at school. Chambara takes strong elements from both to create a fun hide-and-seek arena title in this small, but right on the spot, piece of software.

The gameplay is extremely easy to grasp, and yet it shows one of the biggest strengths of many of the most iconic local multiplayer titles; gameplay that is extremely simple and stripped down to its very core. The goal is simply to hit the opponents, but there is a catch. Each player is just a shadow in one of two colours, the very same two colours that the entire stage is made up off in one way or another, which adds a lot of stealth element and sense of tag hide-and-seek.

It is very entertaining to consider staying to camp in that spot where no one can see you or going out on a hunt, risking entering fields of the other colour and getting exposed. Or maybe to simply do the ye olde screen peek, which the gameplay strongly seems to actually encourage and thrive off as it helps punish campers a lot.

Few modern games come close to the local multiplayer experience Chambara can offer to the right crew of friends, but there comes a problem. This is the only way to play this. It offers no single-player nor online multiplayer, which is something worth to notice for people without the ability to regularly get friends together to play, but the playoff if able to is a very entertaining, albeit, short experience that truly rewinds time a couple of decades, both in gameplay and mind set. Because who can resist a fun game of hide-and-seek?