Apparently this game is kind-of a sequel to Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, an animated movie featuring the voices of Michael Pena, Ricky Gervais and Samuel L. Jackson!
The temple of Kakamucho is under attack by the Shogun’s cat armies! You play as Hank, a dog samurai in a world of cats. After an inexplicable change of heart, a sinister plot by the Shogun leader must be defeated and Hank must save the day, samurai-style, with lots of hacking, slashing, bow & arrowing and chucking barrels of TNT!
It's up to you to master Hank's skills, protect Kakamucho, rescue Hank’s friends, and discover who is actually behind this evil plot.
This is a decent-looking game that runs at 60fps, even when in the excellent split-screen co-op mode, in which the 2nd player takes the role of Jimbo, a large tom cat who looks a lot like me in cat form. It has tight, responsive controls with a basic attack button ('X') a dodge roll move, jump, jump-smash, double-jump and air dash move ('A'+'A' & 'B'), with aiming (your bow) on the Left trigger/right stick (I absolutely HAD to turn the bow aim sensitivity down though). If you get to the second village (and it isn't easy) you'll gain the ability to grapple to certain items with 'Y', and this includes the mysterious blue "paw" targets–the purpose of which had me baffled.
Samurai Academy Paws of Fury is a weird one. At first glance and play session it's a cute, cartoony world full of catty enemies to kill. As you progress through Kakamucho, Dookiehill and on to Pippishore you'll be up against some seriously tough game design and AI, with the Challenge Trial levels (simple looking 2D side-scrolling obstacle races) being particularly hard. I'm going to suggest that 99% of gamers WON'T be able to complete all of these, because they are, for want of a friendlier term, COMPLETE BASTARDS. This makes me wonder who the game is aimed at–kids surely? So why make some sections SO damn difficult?
Exploration and fetch & carry busy work is a major part of the gameplay, as are the siege defence missions that earn you the scrolls to advance to a new location. These are good fun as you don't just hack & slash, you can also set up booby traps to assist your anti-cat defences. If Gears of War horde mode was a gore-free cartoon, it'd play something like this–it's frantic, panicky action at its best, where quick thinking and wise use of the perks supplied will save the day–these missions are much easier (and fun) in the split-screen co-op mode.
The game has some difficult-to-find collectibles in the form of Foxtails, which I found most of simply by bumbling into them, the others (cat targets) are marked on the map, but still not easy to find.
I really like Paws of Fury but it's just too hard. A lot more testing and balancing was required, you have to make a game playable and fun, and a large part of the game, the Raid Rush defence missions, are too hard and fraught for kids, but this is another case where the split screen mode saves the main game as Mum, Dad, Grandad/Grandma or Big Brother/Sister can help.
Many thanks to Maximum Entertainment, Zerolife Studio and Fishing Cactus