Despite the awesome anime-like visuals and celebrity-backed story, Afro Samurai is basically a hack-n-slash fighting game, albeit a baddass one.

At its core, Afro Samurai is a hack-n-slasher. Afro can unleash huge combos consisting of light slashes, hard slashes and kicks. As you kill people you gain experience, which unlocks more and more combos. Afro can also perform focus slashes and other focus attacks which slow down time and allow you to dice up enemies with single slashes as long as your timing is right. The dialogue can get real comical and real niche; I nearly peed my pants when Jackson called me a "button-mashing mother f%&#$r!"

I loved the fact that there are so many different maneuvers and combos but the one thing that chafes my thighs is the fact that when you're low on health you have to kill enemies to regain it. This proves very difficult and you have about 20 guys coming after you. Even if you're slick enough to cut up a few guys to get some energy back, other enemies have a tendency of slashing you up from behind, knocking you back down to the energy level you worked so hard to climb up from. Thankfully, there are stuffed bears that are hidden throughout levels, which replenish your health when you find them.

The vulgarity and sexual innuendo are extremely over the top in this game. Yes, I know, the anime was the same, but in a game it not only becomes a distraction but also prevents you from taking the game seriously at times. Sometimes it will come to the point where you will see something and cynically say, "Oh, come on. Are you serious?" If you can look past these issues the game turns out to be a good hack-n-slash title. You won't find any content outside the main story mode but the game is fun to play and even more enjoyable to look at.

With Big Bang Mini using fireworks as weapons, protecting a small shape from evil-doers, what are the developers at SouthPeak smoking? © SouthPeak Games.

Big Bang Mini for the Nintendo DS; Publisher: SouthPeak; Developer: Arkedo; Release Date: January 21, 2009; ESRB Rating: E for everyone; Genre: shooter; Players: 1-2; Support: single-card multiplayer; Online: N/A

I'm really starting to like the SouthPeak guys. They only make two kinds of games: hardcore games that are meant to be real serious and games that make you think that these guys must be smoking something crazy. Big Bang Mini makes you think the latter. I mean, just look at the box! The box art is one of those animated pictures that moves when you tilt it from side to side. It has things like a dancing DS stylus and a golden pig tied to a bunch of balloons floating by and then getting blown up by fireworks! That is absolutely classic.

The idea behind Big Bang Mini -- from what I gather -- is that you are someone riding in a train and traveling from place to place and as you look out your window you see some crazy stuff happening. The window of the train looks like the top and bottom screens of the DS. You protect a small geometric shape on the bottom touch screen while enemies appear from all sides of the top screen and sometimes the bottom screen as well. You attack these enemies by striking the bottom screen like you would strike a match, which then shoots up fireworks in the direction that you strike. You use the fireworks to blast enemies out of the sky. As enemies shoot down projectiles you have to drag the small shape away from danger with the stylus. When you destroy enemies, they will explode into beautiful looking fireworks and drop a rainbow-colored star, which you need to pick up by dragging the shape to the slowly-falling stars. This is how you complete levels. If you miss enemies with your fireworks then the fireworks rain down projectiles that can harm your shape, so it's actually very possible to lose at your own hands.

This acid trip of a DS title makes great use of the touch screen and has gorgeous graphics.

The graphics of Big Bang Mini are gorgeous and abstract at the same time. Dazzling fireworks and creative and colorful enemies are constant throughout each locale. Speaking of locales, the game is divided into multiple locales and as you complete the levels of each locale, you will come to a boss battle. Winning the boss battle advances you to the next locale. Boss battles can get pretty hard and pretty weird at the same time. The bosses are about as weird as you would find in games like Power Stone 2. Be prepared to fight a wire frame King Tut head and -- my unconditional favorite -- a walrus wearing punk rock sunglasses with a rainbow Mohawk and riding a flying carpet. I swear I am not making this stuff up. The art style of the enemies, shapes and fireworks change with each locale and you will come to many different areas such as an ice level, and Egyptian level, a Japanese level and so on.

Big Bang Mini makes perfect use of the DS's touch screen capabilities and offers players a unique and, often, challenging experience. The levels are rather short and so you will probably plow through the entire game in just a few hours. Thankfully, there is a multiplayer mode which allows players to go head to head with just one cartridge. The multiplayer is actually amazingly good and gives players abilities to use against each other, which are not found in the main game. Not only does Big Bang Mini offer matchless gameplay but also the multiplayer aspect alone is worth the purchase of the game, and at a release price of $20 there is every reason in the world to play this gigantic acid trip of a DS title!