Tenchu Z

June 12,2007 - Tenchu Z is the long awaited follow up to the Tenchu franchise, a staple in stealth gaming since the days of the first PlayStation. As with the years its once respectable credibility has passed, as other stealth action games have come and gone; blazing new paths and standards along the way. Tenchu Z is a "functional" game, but nothing you'll be discussing with friends for days after playing; a gaming experience waiting to be forgotten with dozens of other unimpressive titles amongst the standouts such as the "other" ninja game for Xbox consoles, Ninja Gaiden.

Tenchu Z follows your path as you slash your way through the criminal ranks of ancient Japan as a ninja enforcing lethal justice. The game’s story, however, feels supplementary to the action and while recurring characters and locales imply there being a long interconnected plot, either because of a lack of interest or the God awful dialogue we couldn’t spot a coherent story at any point during the 20 or so hours we slogged through the game’s missions.

Those familiar with the original Tenchu titles and other stealth-based action games will be treated to the standard fare. Creeping around corners, watching your visibility, and tip-toeing your way to another helpless victim with an inhuman amount of blood to be spilt are all to be expected in a title such as this, but while Tenchu Z delivers those basic requirements gamers ask of a stealth game, it does little to nothing to separate itself from other options already available in its own genre. In fact, the most interesting tool available in game is the grappling hook which has been a part of the series since its inception. So basically the game offers nothing more than different angles from which to kill anonymous henchman/guard/ninja/samurai/pirate (yes, you heard right) number 347 in its more than 50 missions.

The problem with Tenchu Z isn’t so much from a technical standpoint, but with the actual tasks assigned to you in the game's mission. Poor character design and touchy mechanics can always be somewhat overlooked by mission based games with tons of variety and interesting objectives. Given the game’s very rudimentary gameplay – as the additions of purchasable combo attacks and special skills add little overall experience – the lack of diversity in the mission objectives is excruciating. About 85 percent of the missions require you to stalk from rooftop to rooftop, dropping down and killing a multitude of guards, and finally slipping into a room with the “mark” and assassinating him. There are admittedly some other missions but most of them just require you to recover a document, intelligence from a source, reach a checkpoint, or tail someone. To add on top of the repetitiveness of the game’s missions, many of the locales are recycled several times with a very loose connection to the story, which comes off as lazy designing more than anything else.

Missions in Tenchu Z are unnecessarily frustrating due to the lack of checkpoints or an in-mission save option, so if you die at any point during the mission you have to start over at the very beginning. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal since the game’s imbecilic enemies put up very little challenge, but there are cheap deaths galore thanks to the trap doors indiscriminately placed all over the levels. In the middle of caves, in rice fields, inside houses, hidden in patches of bushes; seriously these damn things are everywhere and you rarely see them in time to save yourself before plummeting to your untimely demise – and by untimely, we mean just minutes before you make it to the end of a given level. Sorry, but those trap doors are the work of a sadistic game designer.

There are some redeeming qualities to Tenchu Z, including some decent stealth kill animations and some challenging areas with multiple enemies guarding one spot, making it difficult to simply run behind one and kill them without being spotted by another, but the grappling hook virtually takes away any and all challenge as it can be used to easily escape. If you get into hot water, simply jump onto a roof or grapple onto a higher rooftop and wait for the enemies to stop looking for you. It's almost 100 percent effective, unless you jump to a low rooftop against an enemy ninja, since they have the ability to jump to that rooftop as well. But even then you can just grapple onto a higher area to get out of their sight and reach.

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