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By Mike Hofler C
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Hiding in the shadows, striking swiftly and silently to eliminate your mark, all without anyone being the wiser. This is pretty much what you would expect of a stealth-based ninja game. Unfortunately, it seems that your targets, along with their guards, are residents of an old folks' home. It slightly diminishes your sense of achievement when you pull off that perfect stealth-kill, only to realize your victim was virtually blind, deaf, and knocking on death's door regardless of your katana sliding across his throat.
But I digress. Tenchu Z is the latest iteration of the Tenchu series, this time from developer K2. It follows closely along the road laid out for it by its predecessors, and does little to improve upon them.
You play the part of a ninja whose clan is trying to prevent a neighboring country from invading your own country. You will set out upon several missions, over 50, in order to assassinate key officers and spies for the opposition, steal items and plans from the enemy, talk with spies behind enemy lines, and other various tasks. Out of the 50 plus missions, only a dozen or so are necessary to further the storyline; the rest can be skipped if you so choose. Of all the different mission types, assassinations are the most common. In this type of mission you sneak in and kill one particularly important person, whether it be an enemy spy, general, or some other important figure. Unfortunately, these missions get very repetitive, as do the maps they take place on. Often you’ll know where your target will be because he or she is in the same building as your targets in the last five assassination missions you completed.
Some of the gear is fun to play around with, such as using the grappling hook to get up high, or using the staple of any ninja's arsenal, the shuriken. The character customization is a nice touch as well, as you have a good number of options to change your ninja's appearance. You can also change your stats around a bit, taking away from your health to give yourself more agility if you prefer to be sneakier, or taking away from agility to add to strength and health if you would prefer to get into a few scuffles.
The game does do a good job of making you feel like a ninja as you creep through the shadows and jump across rooftops. There are some tense moments as you’re creeping along, and suddenly hear enemies shout out in surprise as they hear you and come over to investigate.
Unfortunately, the enemy AI takes away from the game quite a bit. Enemies with the attention span of a two-year-old and a line of sight that would make your grandma look good quickly do away with any sense of fear at being caught. If any enemies spot you, simply ducking behind a corner right in front of them, or even hiding in a bush within their sight will leave them looking around befuddled, then running off in a different direction. They may call out for help, and others may come to investigate; but even at the sight of a dead comrade this alert will only last for a few moments. Then they will calmly walk away, leaving the body to rot, and go about their business as if nothing had happened.
Another problem with the "ninja feel" of the game is the scoring system. You get most of your points for performing stealth-kills. So unless you go around and stealth-kill every enemy on the map, you’re not going to get a very high score. This doesn’t make much sense as it seems more ninja-like to sneak in, kill your mark, and then escape without anyone having known you were there, rather than slaughtering everyone in sight.
Face-to-face combat is very poorly executed, and since you get penalized for the amount of time you remain in view of an enemy, it makes more sense to run off and hide somewhere and then come back and stealth-kill your foe.
Overall, Tenchu Z can be fun if you really get into the 'sneaking-around-and-hiding-in-the-shadows' aspect of it. However, the AI takes away too much from any sense of danger that should be present in a game that relies so heavily on stealth gameplay. So if you're itching for a stealthy ninja game, you may be better off just playing the demo mission several times. The only thing you'll be missing at that point is the story, which is lacking in the full game anyway.
