The wrong way to be a ninja

It’s been a long time since I’ve played a Tenchu game. Starting with 1998’s Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for the PS One, the series took a still-burgeoning idea in modern games at the time—stealth—and dropped it in a feudal Japanese setting.

Aside from the promise of playing a ninja, the game also introduced gruesome “stealth kills”—cinematic death scenes shown as rewards for methodically taking out baddies from the shadows—that were icing on the cake. As a result, the series debut was violent, original and like few other games at the time.

The past 11 years, however, have not been kind to the series. Tenchu has swapped hands with development teams and publishers several times since Stealth Assassins, and subsequent games in the series have suffered for it. 

In fact, I had lost all interest in the series in the games until recently, when I found out that the original development team, Acquire, was working on Tenchu: Shadow Assassins for the Wii, which sounded like it might revitalize the series’ now-stale formula into something more fresh and enjoyable.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Shadow Assassins is not enjoyable.

It’s a poorly programmed piece of garbage masquerading as a game that plays like it was made eight years ago. It actually may be one of the shoddiest designed games I’ve played in years.

After a brief, forgettable intro story sequence, you’re thrown into the first level as the series staple protagonist Rikimaru, a white-haired ninja. The game looks surprisingly good for a Wii game, with good lighting, large, well-rendered character models and environments and what seems to be a pretty good soundtrack.

Believe me, the initial excitement wears off quickly.

Within the first few minutes you dispatch a handful of guards, who all look identically (and all bear the same striking resemblance to Toshiro Mifune). There’s an annoying disembodied “guide” voice telling Rikimaru what to do and where to go that sounds weirdly like Edward R. Murrow. 

Everyone has atrociously emphasized American accents—seriously, the voice actors don’t even try to sound like they’re from Japan. These might sound like middling complaints, but they’re just the beginning.

As with any Tenchu game, the real fun lies in performing various stealth kills. But in the game’s first level, I noticed that Rikimaru was not carrying a katana, or any other kind of blade for that matter.

“OK,” I thought to myself.  “It must just be because it’s the first level.  He’ll get a blade soon enough. These unexciting choking and martial arts-based stealth kills must just be what happens when he doesn’t have one.”

Well, much to my dismay, neither Rikimaru, nor his female ninja partner, Ayame, are ever able to carry swords throughout the game’s 10-plus levels. (Unless you count a more-or-less throwaway item that can be used to slice open doors and deflect enemies’ blades until it breaks.)

Instead, you can steal an enemy’s sword and stab them to death with it, either running them through or slashing at them from the front. Rather than having a wide variety of stealth kills, this puts the total number at around four.

On top of that, the kills are terribly dull, and only show a streak of blood on rare occasions (although it often sounds like a geyser should be coming out). Great. Shadow Assassins just castrated itself.

The game’s myriad problems don’t end there, either. Many basic elements of a stealth game are woefully and inexplicably absent. Enemies rarely seem to be aware of sound, you can’t arouse suspicion by knocking on walls, and deadly items like shurikens are only deadly if enemies happen to be near a precarious cliff edge or open well, which often makes little sense.

For instance, one particular feat involved getting past a guard who was patrolling an area near a small cliff (why is there a cliff in a middle of an entrenched military camp? I don’t know). A direct attack only ended in failure, and after puzzling about it for awhile, I tried throwing a shuriken … which hit the guard in the chest.

Since the cliff was ahead of him, it would make sense that the guard would stumble backward, away from the cliff. Instead, he did the opposite and fell to his death. Great game design, Acquire.

The most maddening thing about Shadow Assassins is what happens when you get caught by an enemy. In Tenchu games of old, you would have to flee and hide until their guard was let down. Not so in Shadow Assassins. If you have a blade, which you rarely do, then you can meet the enemy in battle, deflecting attacks by twisting the Wii remote in various directions, which is surprisingly responsive.

What happens the other 99 percent of time is that your foe yells something at you, at which point you retreat to the beginning of whatever stage you’re on in a cloud of ninja smoke. After you’ve escaped, you’re treated to an unskippable scene of the enemy sheathing his sword and saying the same line, over and over again.

Given the touchy, glitchy AI, this happens far too often. I don’t know about you, but waiting for a guard or swordsman to slowly patrol into an area where you can strike only to have them somehow see you and have to do it all over again countless times is not my idea of fun.

Yet, that’s more or less what Shadow Assassins forces you to do, time and time again. The bottom line is, this game feels more like a chore than anything fun.

I don’t care if it’s on the Wii, home to the casual friendly gamer and countless crappy games—this new Tenchu isn’t just a waste of time, it’s entirely unacceptable in this era of console games.

I’d rather commit seppuku than subject myself to one more minute of Shadow Assassins’ repetitive and cheap game play. Or perhaps the developers should, if they don’t feel like going back to the drawing board.