Featured Content

Tenchu Z (X360)

• Developer:
• Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
• Genre: Action
• Official Website: http://www.microsoft.com
• Score: 1 of 5: Save Your Cash

Ninjas are sneaky, stealthy, quiet, and a blast to play as. That's the theory, at least. It's difficult to feel powerful and cunning when your opponents are staggeringly dumb. They don't look up when I'm crouching on a wall after alerting them to my presence. When one does manage to climb the wall he promptly does an about face, falls off of the wall, suffers a bout of amnesia causing him to walk off thinking, "I don't know why I was on that wall, but man did it ever hurt when I fell off." The Tenchu series is on its eighth game, and it really ought to be better than this by now. And it's not just the AI that's sub-par. Tenchu Z looks like a game from the PS2 generation, controls like a game from the PS2 generation, and features AI from the PS1 generation. Guards walk their preset path and if you're not inside the vision cone then there's no chance they'll ever find you.

Tenchu Z does offer a few innovations over the previous installment, but they're all cosmetic and none of them really does anything to address issues from previous installments. Chief among Tenchu's visual upgrades is the ability to create your own ninja. The options are few and none of them really make a difference. You can pick a face and a body type, choose a hair color, and then you can even pick your ninja's clothes. Somebody on the development team wasn't paying attention because very few of the outfits available are standard ninja fare. As a matter of fact some of them are downright bright and showy. And what's worse? Wearing bright clothes doesn't make the guards more prone to notice you in shadows.

Along with choosing from the stock of cosmetic choices, you'll also have the option of assigning your ninja's attribute points between Health, Power, and Agility. No matter how you spread these points, the game plays the same. Swords cut guys, and it doesn't much matter if you've got one more point in Power or in Agility.

If you decide not to spend your points on Power, Agility, or Health (and why would you?) you can instead purchase new moves. This is a great idea - on paper. And it would work well if the purchased moves and abilities were even remotely easy to pull off. What this creates is an excess of useless points. You won't need the stat boost, and you won't use the moves because the stock list of moves does the job just fine.

Multiplayer is also a disappointment. In an astonishing step backwards, Tenchu Z has removed the Deathmatch mode from prior installments and features only a cooperative mode that adds no multiplayer objectives and, instead of pushing the players to cooperate, pushes them to compete for the most kills.

Tenchu Z is simple. It's also uninspired, and it lacks the best feature of its predecessor: online deathmatches. Combine this with a menu screen that's pretending to be an RPG hub and you've got one disappointing game that tries its hardest to drive you away by forcing you to confirm that you really do want to go on that mission more than three times. It's not enough to select the mission and press A, Rikimaru has to ask and then make sure you meant it and then ask if you're really ready to leave. I am ready to leave, and I'm never going to turn this game on again. I suggest you avoid turning it on at all.

Jul 6, 2007 | 2 comments
Justin Last