Samurai Shodown

Developer/publisher SNK

Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One

Release Out now

is a game in which you think you’re doing okay, then look at your health bar and realise you’re about to die. In this wonderfully attractive and vividly animated game, even light attacks look like they hurt. And they do, to a point. But medium slashes hurt more, and heavies even more than that. Then there are dashing slashes, and counter-hits, and a variety of other ways to increase the damage output of a certain attack. You can spend 40 seconds chipping away at an opponent, playing the match perfectly, at least in conventional fighting-game terms. Two heavy hits later you find yourself fighting for survival.