Chainsaw Man is deserving of its own game, and here’s what I want from it

To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have a Chainsaw Man game. Not one, there isn’t even a mobile game that I’m aware of, which is highly surprising considering its popularity. Still, a Chainsaw Man game feels inevitable at this point, and I have thoughts on what I’d like to see from it. I’m especially keen for this after watching the recent movie for the Reze Arc – playing as her would be a whale of a time.

Yes, that’s your first clue as to what I’m after, as I’d like to be able to play as a wide variety of characters from Chainsaw Man, as many of them boast intriguing powers that are sure to offer quite a fun experience in the right game. It goes without saying that anything that features Denji, Power, Aki, Makima, Reze, and the rest of the cast should be hack ‘n slash by nature. So, with that in mind, I think a Chainsaw Man Warriors game is in order.

I’m a massive fan of One Piece, and I get a huge kick out of the Pirate Warriors games, because not only are there thousands of enemies to defeat and environments to break (as of Pirate Warriors 4), but also all the characters you get to play as. I love using the love-love fruit as Boa Hancock just as much as I love playing as Luffy and the other Straw Hats. Chainsaw Man is similar to One Piece in that its characters all have unique powers and abilities, and the success of Pirate Warriors shows that a CM iteration would work really well.

Chainsaw Man: Devil Warriors has a nice ring to it if you ask me, and while the anime is quite far behind the manga and still in relative infancy with just two arcs out there, there are some epic battles that you could experience. For starters, the tutorial level could be Denji fighting all of those zombies after Pochita turns him into Chainsaw Man – that would be an excellent way to introduce you to the mechanics of the game.

Then there’s the iconic hallway scene at the Morin Hotel, where Denji goes ham on a whole bunch of enemies as he fights to take down the Eternity Devil. It’d translate well into the hack ‘n slash nature of a warriors game, and the presence of other characters means you’d naturally have options (even if Denji solos this thing in the end).

Granted, not all of these encounters involve fighting hordes of enemies in the anime and manga, with Reze causing all sorts of problems for Denji with just one singular ally (the Typhoon Devil), but you can take some creative liberties with a game and add a bunch of enemies for you to fight anyway, culminating in a showdown with Reze. Then, after the Reze Arc, you have the International Assassins portion of the story, and that’s rife with opportunities for a Warriors game.

However, if creative liberties by adding hordes of enemies isn’t your thing, I do have another game series (or two) that I think a Chainsaw Man game could learn a great deal from – Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. Those two are the pinnacle of hack ‘n slash goodness, and I think controlling Denji through an adventure akin to those would be a lot of fun.

The caveat to a game along the lines of DMC or Bayonetta is that you don’t get to play as a wide cast of characters, with you more than likely controlling Denji the entire time, maybe with brief levels in which you get to play as Power or Aki. Still, that leaves out an impressive cast of characters with unique abilities that would make a fun combat experience. We all hate Makima, but you can’t tell me you don’t want to experience what it’s like to be the Control Devil.

Regardless, thinking of the combo counter and the power-ups and abilities that you could use is a fun concept, and the levels spread through Tokyo and other locations would be fun. Heck, this type of game would actually give a chance to tell a story in Chainsaw Man that we don’t know, and wouldn’t that be fun – there’s surely all sorts of adventures these characters get up to that we don’t see.

What I absolutely don’t want is a fighting game. Anime fighting games, outside of those for Dragon Ball Z, don’t exactly have the best reputation – they certainly don’t do it for me, at least, and it’d be a shame to see Chainsaw Man’s first videogame be marred by being a mediocre at best fighter. Yes, it’d feature a wide cast, but it’d fail to fully embrace the chaotic nature of Chainsaw Man – plus, it wouldn’t tell much of a story.

Chainsaw Man’s popularity mixed with Bandai Namco’s love of anime adaptations convinces me that a Chainsaw Man game is on the way. I just hope and pray that even if it’s not a Warriors game, it fully embraces the chaotic hack ‘n slash nature of Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. Please, if anyone with any sway is reading this, don’t let Denji’s first videogame be a fighter, or, god forbid, a subpar mobile game that closes down one year after launch.