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Tenchu Z Review - Microsoft Xbox360

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  • Tenchu Z Review - Microsoft Xbox360

    Tenchu Z, released as Tenchu Senran in Japan, marks the first and so far only traditional stealth action entry for the franchise on the current generation of systems. Offering up an immersive atmosphere, comprising a wide array of feudal Japanese environments, and a pleasingly minimalist soundtrack, the game stays true to many of the elements of the earlier titles but ultimately fails to capitalise on the potential offered by the newer hardware. The developers have instead concentrated much of their time on expanding the character customisation options with players able to upgrade and dress their own ninjas in all manner of different outfits, so that you can express yourself like the true individual you are, whilst engaging in the online co-operative mode with up to three other players.
    Tenchu Z screenshot.
    If you like to stab people with swords this game has that.
    While most stealth games take the player down a linear route, tasking them with utilising carefully laid out pieces of scenery in a pre-planned manner to avoid the patrols of enemies, Tenchu Z instead throws you into larger, more open environments such as a small town, castle or mine complex and leaves you to get on with it. These areas form your own mini-sandbox and thanks to the speed and ease of movement, which see the player able to scurry around rooftops like some kind of crack addled monkey and zoom up the sides of buildings in an instant with a grappling hook, you're able to take your own paths through the levels. The developers have also thrown in a wide variety of items, skills and upgrades that you can purchase over the course of the game, with money earned from kills and completing mission objectives. These include simple bombs and weapons but also more exotic abilities such as the chance to grab onto walls and run along their length before leaping off.

    On paper such concepts can seem quite exciting but in reality their execution is handled poorly. Why bother with cool weaponry like the throwing stars and stun explosives when they are just as likely to alert the guards to your presence as to actually take one down? It's simply more effective to leap in and take them out with an instant kill from your basic sword than to bother messing around with the more exotic options available to you. The same goes for many of the abilities - when the player is afforded such ease of mobility, able to leap between buildings with abandon and scale anything they like thanks to the grapple, there's absolutely no incentive to bother with the more finicky techniques such as wall running. Especially when none of the levels have had any elements of their design built with these options in mind.
    Tenchu Z screenshot.
    Wall running is a good looking, but ultimately ineffective technique.
    Players are able to pull off some cool looking executions such as killing an enemy while leaning off the edge of a roof, hiding up against a corner and impaling them as they approach or taking them down as they pass by on the other side of a paper door, but again most of these more varied aspects of play are made downright unappealing from a game consequence perspective. In the case of hanging over the roof ledges it can be downright awkward to line up the attack due to an overly constrained first person view and the same result can be achieved just as easily by simply dropping down and attacking the enemy from behind using the standard attack. Corner strikes are also pointless as many times the enemy will see you as they approach, but if you instead just run straight at them, thanks to a very generous stealth kill window, you can still get the kill in before they have any time to react. And in the case of plunging your blade through the fragile, paper thin doorways of many of these buildings, while admittedly triggering a rather nice animation, you'll score more points by just opening the door, walking up behind them and waiting for the appropriate moment to trigger a 'total' stealth kill which is worth significantly more points and money. To say that the AI is forgiving in such situations is putting it mildly.

    That's not to say they are complete idiots; if they see you run under a building they might on occasion throw an explosive under there or run around for a few minutes before returning to their posts, but because you can instantly soar to the tops of buildings at a moment's notice (where you are almost untouchable) it does make it rather difficult for the enemy to pose much of a challenge. Of course that's before you factor in the scoring mechanisms, players are rewarded for stealth kills and penalised for both the number of detections and the amount of time they remain visible. Fairly solid stuff you might think but the points awarded for kills are so out of proportion to the penalties that you can still get top rankings without any pretence of stealth or strategy. It's actually possible to run around constantly with your sword out, stabbing enemies in the face even after they've seen you and have them count as stealth kills due to their overly long animation sequences of surprise.
    Tenchu Z screenshot.
    The open level designs provide a refreshing degree of freedom, but the rooftops are just too safe an option.
    There are some nice ideas with regards enemy detection mechanics though. Rather than being based purely on sight you also have to worry about what sounds you are making and whether you have travelled through anything whiffy that might make you smell. It's just that you really do have to go out of your way to develop a scent as the game never throws any risky dilemmas at you by offering extra goodies or quicker ways to finish the level in exchange for the added risk of detection. Like so much of Tenchu Z these are great ideas that have been added into the mix but they just haven't been developed enough and incorporated sufficiently into the core experience to work successfully. On the positive side, however, the game does do a good job of providing a satisfying feedback loop when pulling off the basic stealth kills; there's a nice use of chunky sound effects and some slick animations and stylish anime-style blood sprays.

    The developers haven't made much use of the extra grunt the current crop of consoles can provide with environment detail-levels distinctly last generation standard and it's disappointing to see such large, flat surfaces, particularly on the tiled rooftops. That said despite the game's technical shortcomings where it does succeed is in the immersiveness of its art direction. Some of the more urban landscapes can appear a little barren but others such as a beautiful mountain temple which is surrounded by trees and bamboo, with dramatic twilight skylines and banners of rich colours, evoke a far richer aesthetic. This is true of many of the more rural locations which mine classic images of Japan to provoke a deeply calming response in the player. An effect enriched by the ambient soundtrack full of wooden blocks, deep intermittent drum hits and subtle mixtures of string and wind instruments which combine to make for a rich tonal experience.
    Tenchu Z screenshot.
    While the graphics are basic on a technical level, the art direction and ambience is often spot on.
    The game features fifty levels in all with a mixture of different mission types such as kill a guy, kill a bunch of guys or find a bunch of things. However the scoring is based entirely around the number of casualties caused, so even the object searching levels still see you primarily running round and putting all the enemies down just like the others. Out of these fifty there is but one, single deviance from this tired set of objectives, 'The Pursuit of Echigoya'. The player must follow their target without alerting him or any of the other guards as he makes his way along a pre-set course. If you fall too far behind or get spotted it's game over but conversely to get the top ranking you also have to rack up the body count by judging opportune moments to scurry out of sight, make your kills and get back to the road before Echigoya moves on. In this one, singular moment Tenchu shows what it could have been, a tightly constructed mixture of speed, stealth and timing. But the rest of the game simply doesn't follow this excellent example and instead you get level after level of poorly equipped, moronic enemies just waiting to let you take them down. The developers have done a good job of gradually introducing new maps as you play to keep things at least a little fresh but as satisfying as scoring those stealth kills are, monotony will set in a long time before the final battle.

    The multiplayer mode is a big feature here, supporting Live play and system link for up to four players. The netcode can be a little shaky at times, if you play with more than two people in the room it becomes impossible to make out anyone talking over the voice channel and if one player triggers an alert whilst you are in the midst of a stealth kill, it can actually trigger retroactively, thereby negating your attack. It's a bit of an awkward glitch but it can be mitigated to a degree if the whole team adopt a more cautious approach and allow only one player at a time to actively engage with the AI. As a result of having to work around the game's quirks in this way it's unfortunately not quite as compelling as it could have been had the entirety of the single player experience been preserved and on top of this is the fact that it even further exposes the game's lack of difficulty with four death dealing ninjas flying around the level.
    Tenchu Z screenshot.
    The character customisation options represent months of painstaking historical research on the part of the designers.
    Tenchu Z is middle of the road gaming ? it doesn't look great, although the art direction gets it by; the scoring mechanism is broken and stealth is entirely unnecessary, but the kills are satisfying; and while there's a ton of missions to do, after a while they all merge into one and it gets very repetitive. If you come into this expecting a stealth game you'll have to roleplay it and if you come in looking for a ninja based action game you'll be disappointed by the poorly implemented weapons and abilities, making their use feel stuttered and ineffective. But, if you want a game with a relaxed pace that lets you spend a few hours engrossed in the world of feudal Japan there's not too many of those going these days and the core gameplay mechanic of walking up behind a guy and stabbing him with a great big sword is solid enough in its own right to entertain, if otherwise very basic.
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