Pray for a full frontal assault. That's the way the Sudeki advertisement was proclaimed, while one of the four main characters stands in a partially seductive pose with less than an ounce of clothing on - it's a blatant attempt to appeal to the male demographic, with a cute girl whose digital ass you can stare at for fifteen to twenty hours depending on if you ever play the game instead of ogling. Oh, you can do that, of course, but if that's not why you intend to play Sudeki, be forewarned - it may be all the developers wanted you to do in the first place.

The plot is, well, fairly pedestrian in its presentation. It's bad enough we can only get an original plot once, maybe twice a year if we're lucky; but when a standard narrative is sped up by bombarding the player with all the main characters introduced in the first few minutes, making any twists predictable and development unnecessary, it's incredulous to think I'm going to be intrigued by this hackneyed drivel. If that's not enough to push your buttons, just wait until you hear about the combat.

It's bad enough that there's no real challenge to the battles. Remember the days when you'd click your mouse to vanquish enemies in Diablo or followed the guaranteed 'Press X to Win' victory strategy of Final Fantasy X-2; it's certainly a true homage to that style of play. The fact is that the only things the battles will test is your ability to find the cracks in the system to speed up the monotonous repetition, which makes for ten minute battles that have no real business in a role-playing game of the action variety.

Another foreign mass that's wormed its way into Sudeki is the inclusion of a first person shooter. Not only does it make for some wonderful moments where you question the cognitive abilities of the developers, but times where you're forced to go around blasting enemies with your amazingly inadequate engineer and witch. It's not like we're against changing up the role-playing genre, as previously mentioned we pine for new plots and stories.

However, the implementation of these new ideas into role-playing games, or any game for that matter, have to be done well, or risk seriously crippling the experience the player has with the perspective title. In this case, we don't want to be associated with the two characters forced into a permanent first person shooter mode in combat. It's shoddy in design, prevents us from getting a good view of some of the larger fields, and doesn't allow for watching for enemies coming from behind us.

It's not like Sudeki is devoid of any accomplishments, though. The graphical composition in Sudeki shows off where the true efforts of the team were allocated in development. The landscape, cities and character designs are really top notch and are as they should be on the Xbox hardware. Of course, even scantly clad girls are only a mere fraction of the game and can't really save a title from its shortcomings.

Sudeki is a game that is extremely deficient in many different areas. The combat is far from stellar, and is easy to exploit after a few battles to ensure continued success. There's a lack of challenge outside of dealing with the frustrating first person shooter that was mistakenly lodged inside the title. Then there's the plot, which is as thought provoking as the nutritional labels on water. Sudeki is so awful at points it seems that it strives to excel in mediocrity. It's an average game, and laying $50 on the counter for Sudeki is just something we can't recommend.