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Thursday 6 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
This game does a good job making you feel like a bad-ass. The game gives you the opportunity to perform stealth kills given that you're able to get the drop on your enemy. The type of stealth kill you perform is dependant on your position in relation to your target. If you're directly behind them, you'll slit their throat, but if you come from the front and you manage to attack right before they see you, you'll plunge your blade through their heart. The coolest one, by far, is the "death from above" kill where I jumped from a rooftop and impaled the guy as I landed.
Sneaking is easy enough. The camera gets in the way quite a bit, as my control over it is limited. It's really easy to get lost. Each level is like a maze. There's an item that allows you to mark you path on the map (colored rice), but you shouldn't have to rely on something like that to get through a level. In any case, I'm having fun, so hopefully, I'll learn to adapt with time.
DESIGN
Ah, the ninja: today's most misconstrued and fictionalized beings. A good chunk of what people know about ninjas is either completely false, or just plain stupid. Thus, a game like Tenchu, where an attempt is made to portray ninjas realistically, is more of a history lesson than a game...at least it is until the logs appear.
You start every game with a grappling hook that you can use to almost teleport to higher ground. If an enemy is one the ground and you're on a rooftop, your enemy won't be able to see you, especially if the sneak button is held down. Actually, I take that back. I was running on a roof and was spotted by an enemy guard. All I had to do was press the sneak button and it was like I was like it never happened.
The game's reward system is very well done. You're rewarded in small ways for almost everything you do. If you're able to perform nine stealth kills in a level, you're rewarded with new moves. If you're able to stay hidden, you're rewarded at the end of the level with new items. And it's not like you're given the key to the city for every step you take, so there's great incentive to perform well.
Now to what you've all been waiting for: what's bad about it. Who the frag thought up the camera system for this game? It's like the game designer was made fun of in school and became bitter about it then sought revenge, but all they could think to do to get back at society is make it so people who play this game won't be able to see the cool stuff that happens. When hugging a wall, you're not able to move the camera freely, unlike while just walking. Instead you can only choose angles, like left, right, and ONLY if you're at the corner of a wall does the cameral focus on your character, allowing you to see around corners. Even when you're given control of the camera, you still can't see anything. You can only circle around your character, you can look up or down. The game has a view button where the stick that controls movement controls the camera...but you have to sacrifice being able to move! I guess being able to do both would have been too forgiving. Then you have indoor levels. When you're outside, sneaking around is great, but inside it's a completely different story. There's a meter that gauges how close you are to an enemy, but it's only based on proximity, so factors like height are impossible to take into consideration. This game was made in a time before surround-sound was standard, so you can't detect enemies by sound. When you're outside, enemies are far away and you can memorize their patrol patterns, but inside, confrontations are so up-close and personal that all you can do is turn a corner and eat cold steel. Mmm, my favorite...nothing fills me up quite like a sword rammed violently into my abdominal organs.
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