Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

You can’t kill what you can’t see.  Ninja games have been a staple of the gaming world since the early days of games like The Last Ninja from System 3, Shinobi from Sega, and a three-screened arcade title called Ninja Warriors from Taito.  In September of 1998, Sony Music Entertainment Incorporated (the studio that eventually became Acquire Studios) developed Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for the original Playstation.  Then, in 1999, they developed Tenchu Shinobi-Gaisen and Tenchu: Shinobi Hyakusen for Japan, with Activision acting as publisher.  Acquire and Activision teamed up again for Tenchu 2, Birth of the Stealth Assassins in August of 2000. In March of 2003, Activision turned to K2 LLC to develop Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven for the PS2, with Tenchu: Return from Darkness coming just one year later on the Xbox.  The Live play on the Xbox was heralded as a great direction, but yielding marginally lower scores.  Sega acquired the rights to publish and again employed K2 LLC to handle their PS2 title Tenchu: Fatal Shadows, but it too received a fairly weak reception from the press and public in February of 2005.  As we move into June of 2007 we see K2 LLC return to develop the next game in the series, Tenchu Z, but once again under a new publisher – Microsoft.  Can Tenchu veteran K2 LLC bring this series to the Xbox 360 platform, or does it only deliver smoke and mirrors?

Ninjitsu is the art of stealth, and to that end, you are being put through a short training exercise to prove that you can make it into the field solo and not dishonor the clan.  It is entirely optional, but it does acclimate you to how you’ll be conducting yourself against the enemy. 

Having passed your training, you are accepted into the Azuma Ninja clan.  Your first mission, Path of the Ninja, is to infiltrate the Echigoya Residence in the country of Goda.   You are to locate Rokube Echigoya in the Merchant’s Manor and assassinate him.  This would be a simple task, but there are many guards between you and your prey.  Before the mission starts, you see your adversary is selling blunt swords for easy money.  His actions undermine the security of the country of Goda as he floods the market with inferior weapons.  This will not do.  As you uncover what seems to be a simple matter of taking down a corrupt merchant, you discover that the plot runs deeper – the country of Ogawara is positioning itself to devour your small country of Goda through subverting their weapon supply, flooding the locals with drugs, and using terror tactics like explosives placed in a residential district.  Since the civilians lack the power to fight back, you’ll need to use your cunning and Ninjitsu to stop Ogawara.  A great many people will silently die before your day is through…

It is fitting that we start off with where Tenchu Z is weakest.  Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way so we can talk about what works.  Tenchu Z doesn’t push the Xbox 360 by any stretch of the imagination.  Some characters are moderately detailed, while others are sparsely detailed and flat.  Additionally, the textures in the environments suffer some of the same effect with the insides of buildings looking sharp and detailed while the surrounding areas are sparsely detailed and rife with clipping issues including shadows that poke through walls, ruining any surprise that the enemy may have sprung on you.  Put plainly, other than some of the fancy texturing and lighting engine, this title could have easily been on the original Xbox. 

The other area where the graphic engine falls short is the animation system.  Being a ninja means cutting through your enemies with grace and power, but the animation system of Tenchu Z makes all that seem clunky and canned.  Given the animation and detail of a game like Bioshock or Gears of War, it is hard to believe that Tenchu Z is running on the same system. 

The pre-mission cutscenes are fairly decent, keeping with the style of the game and acting as the primary vehicle to bind the storyline together.  Since there are 50 missions, you’ll almost always get a cutscene before and after you deploy against your enemies.  Unfortunately, most of the mission cutscenes use the game engine so you’ll get the same clunky animation instead of the far superior CGI used in the intro.

I don’t speak Japanese so it is hard for me to comment on the speech in Tenchu Z.  The characters sound overly excited or incredibly angry as their stereotype would suggest, making for the videogame equivalent of a cheesy dubbed movie.  Similarly, the sound effects are fairly generic and simple with over-the-top clangs of metal on metal combat and the usual grunts and mumbles. 

The music in Tenchu Z is decent, if a bit sparse.  The music is reactive to the environment – that is to say that it amps up after you’ve been spotted.   I didn’t expect 50 tracks for 50 levels, but the handful available end up being turned down after a while in favor of a quieter environment for Ninja action anyway. 

Controlling whichever character you happen to chose is pretty easy.  There is a short (but skippable) tutorial that gives you the basic mechanics for Ninja combat.  You’ll learn how to stick to the shadows, close range assassination, using a body shield, ranged weapons, acrobatics, and grappling.  Your conduct and proficiency as a Ninja will produce a ranking at the end of your mission, setting the pattern for the rest of the game.  You’ll get monetary rewards based on your ranking, so sneak accordingly. 

The actual mechanics of Tenchu Z are fairly straightforward.  You’ll use the left analog stick to walk, run, or sidestep (when combined with the right trigger).  The right analog allows you to look around in first person perspective.  The right bumper allows you to crouch, while the same button combined with the B button makes your character crawl.  The left bumper uses an item that you’ve selected with left or right on the D-pad.  Jumping, sheathing or drawing your weapon, and attacking are performed with the A, B, and X keys, respectively.  These basic mechanics create a base for more complex attacks such as grabbing enemies and chain assassination attacks.  Not that the AI looks that closely (more on that later), but you can also pick up corpses and move them out of obvious places to conceal your covert actions. 

When you eventually slip up and reveal yourself to the enemy, you’ll find that the mechanics of the game begin to get a little dodgy.  Aiming and using the bow is counterintuitive, asking you to stand still, press the analog stick to raise the bow, place your reticule over your target, then tap the left bumper to fire.  Since you can’t do this while moving, you’ll probably find that it isn’t worth the effort. 

Swordplay is fairly basic with the X button getting extra hours of overtime.  You’ll hammer this same button into oblivion as you rip enemies to shreds.  What is odd is that the enemies die with canned animations, meaning you can hack them almost indefinitely and they won’t actually die and fall until you stop.  Couple that with a camera that can be less than accommodating and you’ll probably find yourself hammering the Y button to reset the camera just as much as the X button to down your enemies. 

I love stealth games.  I love lurking in the darkness and stalking my prey as they patrol unaware of their impending death.  I love the satisfaction of a completely clean mission where I leave zero residual trace that I was even there.  Tenchu Z offers this type of gameplay, but sadly doesn’t deliver on it as much as you might like.  As the game unfolds across 50 missions, you are expected to assassinate evil merchants, samurai, and pirates (commence eye rolling), only to vanish in a puff of smoke like you were never there.  Unfortunately, other than a handful of gold that you can use to buy additional clothing options and some toys like smoke bombs, you’ll yield the same results if you simply dash across the rooftops to your objective.  The guard A.I. is observant but also has an incredible case of attention deficit disorder.   Running across the rooftop, enemies will spot you and raise the alarm, but after just a few moments they will cease to care, resuming their normal somnambulistic patrol route. 

The deviation from traditional stealth doesn’t end with the comatose A.I. though.  Simply completing a mission without being seen won’t grant you a high rating and the gold that goes along with it.  To get the highest rating you must slaughter literally every enemy in the area, avoiding any innocent deaths.  Leaving a trail of hastily hidden corpses and completing the mission without being seen, and in a timely fashion, is more important than not leaving a residual presence.  This is unfortunate as it really does prolong missions that are otherwise straightforward.  Even though you don’t have to play through all 50 missions to complete the game (which can break the storyline a bit), you’ll still feel like you’ve played through some of these missions already. 

A bit of restraint is required to play Tenchu Z to its full potential.  Playing quiet and fast is far more rewarding than the run-and-gun gameplay that the game permits.  You can purposely handicap yourself to ensure you remain in the shadows by using the stat adjustment system which allows you to adjust strength, agility, and vitality.  Through the game I never found a pressing need to touch the stat system as even near the end the enemies are fairly easy to kill. 

There are some new gameplay elements introduced with Tenchu Z.  Instead of just sound and visibility, you can also be detected by how you smell.  Keep this in mind should you fall into an open sewer – you’ll probably have difficulty sneaking up on anyone stinking to the high heavens.  The same A.I. caveats mentioned above apply, but this feature could become a useful gameplay element in the next Tenchu installment. 

Speaking of falling into the sewer, there is one mainstay Tenchu ‘feature’ that has made another appearance – invisible and undetectable traps.  Trap doors that kill you instantly (and sometimes in the most odd of places) can open up under your feet dropping you into oblivion.  Simply put, it is a cheap and frustrating gameplay element that should have died with the last generation. 

Tenchu Z ships with a multiplayer system, although it is a little bit limited.  You and three other people can team up to play through missions from the single player campaign, although you can’t advance the story and complete the game as a team.  Unfortunately if you are playing with a pickup group, most players are too busy screaming obscenities at you for moving at a Ninja’s pace to really enjoy the game.  Most players are content to fly through the levels as quickly and noisily as possible. 

The 50 levels of Tenchu Z are best played in small doses.  If you are playing the game as designed you’ll find a reasonably decent storyline spread over a great deal of missions that are engaging enough to enjoy.  Unfortunately, the shortcomings in other areas will cause most players to rightly balk at the $59.99 pricetag. 

Tenchu Z hits the shelf as a title that was almost great.  The concept is solid and new elements like sense of smell are great ideas, but the execution and lackluster A.I. just don’t add up to the cohesive product it could have been.  The half-baked multiplayer doesn’t add as much as you might hope, which makes this title hard to recommend for purchase.  Try out the demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace and make sure you can overlook the minor gameplay issues to reach the game underneath.

Gaming Trend Score

64

1. Graphics: 65
2. Audio: 65
3. Controls: 65
4. Gameplay: 65
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:64