Though your typical hack 'n' slash game at heart -- complete with typical camera angle problems, pacing issues, the odd graphical oddity, level design snags, and random audio glitches -- Afro Samurai is nonetheless well worth playing.

As a game adaptation of a harsh yet highly regarded manga series (seen in North America on SpikeTV), it plays much like an animated graphic novel. With you as the cigarette smoking, slouching lout named Afro, it's an attractively, stylistically gory, tongue-in-cheek play on classic Chinese way-of-the-sword/vengeance quest legends fused with urban hip hop sensibilities and more foul language than you'll know what to do with.

Indeed, the voice work and the story they voice is superb, underscored by a seriously listenable, moody groove hip hop soundtrack. Just know that with Samuel L. Jackson as the game's narrator (and sidelined sidekick), there be f-bombs a-plenty, often preceded by "mutha," which Mr. Jackson might as well trademark, so effortlessly lyrical is such prose as it rolls off his tongue.

Not a game for kids, obviously.

Afro Samurai marks one of the few instances where the narrative and the creative audio/visual method of its delivery are superior to that actual game being played.

In fact, if you play only a chapter a day as you might a serial, you'll likely forgive the game's mechanical shortcomings and slasher redundancies and enjoy the rich, stylish, and artistic tale at hand as digestible episodes.

Afro Samurai TIP: In Afro Samurai, big boss Daimyo actually tells you how to defeat him when he prattles on about the art of the parry. When his sword sparkles, hit the block/parry button. If timed right, he'll stumble back unguarded and you can get a few slashes in. Repeat as necessary until he falls.