If you like to stab people with swords this game has that. |
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.
Wall running is a good looking, but ultimately ineffective technique. |
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.
The open level designs provide a refreshing degree of freedom, but the rooftops are just too safe an option. |
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.
While the graphics are basic on a technical level, the art direction and ambience is often spot on. |
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.
The character customisation options represent months of painstaking historical research on the part of the designers. |