Swinging swords and defeating your enemy is a gameplay element that all motion sensing devices have drooled to accomplish. We've seen games for the Wii and other small attempts to capture the feeling of swinging a lightsaber or slicing with a katana. Now it's the iPhone's go with iSamurai. The game takes the capabilities of the iPhone and puts them to the test by allowing players to literally swing and block using their phone as the hilt of a sword. To me it sounded like a gimmick so I had to try it out.

First off, I wondered how it actually would work. The developers stated that you could actually have sword fight with your friends via a wifi connection using two iPhones or iPod Touches. It works by sensing the position your device is in. Each move puts the device in a completely recognizable position that then can be used to counter another position of the opposing device. Swinging from the right, will hit the defender unless they hold their phone face open to their left. With each position countering the other, a sort of rock paper scissor game can be played.

I grabbed my friends Jake and Nick to test out this interesting mechanic and I must say, for the most part, it worked well. Hits registered as they were expected to and the game became crazy. But it was not without its problems. Besides the occasional contact with our hands, the game sometimes struggled to recognize blocks if the move was executed too quickly and would send out an attack instead. This becomes annoying when the fight becomes a little too fast. We found that if the two players were to attack slower and almost take turns attacking and defending, the game would flow smoother.

Either way, the concept is great and really is fun to use with a friend. The game is very cheap in the appstore and there is even a free version that cuts out some single player and removes one move. But the functionality is still there. Try it out with a friend, it'll be good for some laughs. Just don't get to close too each other and hold on tight!