Play as The Dishwasher and cut your way through a blood soaked adventure
Going into my experience with Dishwasher, I knew nothing about it except it was about some sort of zombie dishwasher who kills lots of things. I downloaded the demo, and after a day, I smacked down the 800 points to play the full game. Even though the difficulty in the game increases quite dramatically, and you risk controller cramp in your fingers, the game plays well.
The standard single player game sees you as The Dishwasher, cutting his way through levels for some apparent reason. The narrative is told through obscure comic strips, detailing a disjointed narrative. Personally, this feels refreshing, mainly due to how sick and tired I am of everything being explained to me in a game. Good story telling comes from carefully crafting your story so everything isn't just jammed down your throat. Even though this game doesn't seem to have a very understandable plot, I applaud it for trying something totally different.
The gameplay is fairly solid, built around the 2D beat em up models seen as early as the 80's. The gameplay may be from a time that is long forgotten, The Dishwasher brings it to life on screen in a splash of style and artistic presence.
As mentioned before, the difficulty can be harsh, and the best course of action is to play through on normal before attempting the higher settings.
Dishwasher has an interesting soundtrack, a blend of eerie Japanese Samurai with heavy guitar chords, create a fantastic atmosphere that compliments the art style beautifully.
One little feature in relation to the soundtrack is the guitars the player finds lying around certain levels. Pick it up, and you belt out a short tune by pressing buttons on the controller as they are presented on the screen (much in the same way as Guitar Hero). This little in-game mini game is a fantastic example of how music can be used in games without the need of complex fret arrangements and pricey plastic peripherals. Just something to thing about.
All in all, The Dishwasher isn't great, it's just fun. The simple beat em up gameplay does begin to wear thin, especially if your getting killed by enemies every 2 minutes. The artistic presentation is possibly the best aspect of this arcade game, while possible the style of story telling is a close second. Cheaper than some of the popular arcade titles out there, The Dishwasher will entertain you with its blood soaked walls and massive amounts of gore.