Put me to sleep. Tenchu has become synonymous with tedious.
So you can imagine the scene: I see the advert for Tenchu Z: a ninja game with stealthy killing, and you can dress up your ninja. But wait, there's more! You can fine-tune your ninja too. Make 'em strong, fast or tough, or any combination thereof. To top it off, there's brand-new ways to dispatch your foes including shoji killings, killing while hanging from ledges and from around corners and even killing clusters of enemies who are in close proximity in rapid succession. All in Next Gen graphics!
And what's this I hear? It has a story, 50 missions and even a custom partner who plays along with you in the story? Say no more. Maybe I should have known it would be too good to be true. It's not like Tenchu has a track record of originality.
You play a custom-designed ninja, male or female. Your partner goes the opposite sex. My first disappointment was the apparent lack of options when it came to clothing. Of course I rationalised it away with "I'll get more as the game progresses." Your character is a 'silent protagonist' like Ryu from the Breath of Fire games. Ayame is nowhere to be seen and Rikimaru is limited only to handing out your missions. This was one of the departures I was looking forward to: All the previous games from the second game onwards were boring clones with different stories (which, admittedly, were fairly good). With a clean character, it is truly possible for me to assume my role, and not simply sit back and watch Rikimaru or Ayame follow a plot.
Between missions, you are in the ninja 'village' (a village is two huts and a camp fire? Really?) where you can either visit the hut which contains items, clothes and abilites to buy, or Rikimaru's hut where you choose your mission. Once you actually get into the game, things start to go downhill.
Each mission is revolves around a set of objectives; kill somone, kill everyone, collect something, collect a bunch of things, meet someone. Fine. But what's wrong here is the setting of the missions. You only get a total of about 10-12 different maps, if that. And you play them repeatedly during the 50 missions. Some missions have the same objective, located in the same place and the only difference being slightly changed guard positions and patrols. What the hell? By the time you get to the big show down with the boss, you've already been to the very room in the very castle he is in five or six times. The missions aren't even that nice-looking. The mission settings are also dull and uninspiring. Bottomless pits sitting in the middle of a garden? Cesspools dotted in seemingly random locations? To make matters worse, the missions are absolutely pathetic in terms of difficulty. Seriously, if you died on anything below hard, you suck. Big time. I played the entire game on hard and only died a few times on the end boss.
"But wait, what about the killing? that's the whole point!" I hear you say. Well, I admit the killing was fun for a while. You can grab guys from behind and do one of three things: toss them to the floor and snap their neck, toss them against a wall and implae them against it, or just stand there and impale them from behind. Not exactly a wealth of options, but there is tactical considerations here: Tossing them to the floor makes you harder to see and can reduce the risk of being spotted by other guards while dispatching your foe. You can, of course, just kill them the old-fashioned way: approach them in a specific manner with your sword drawn and away you go.
Of course, it would be more satisfying to kill them if they had a semblance of a brain. They're stupid, predictable and require no effort whatsoever to escape from. The only reason you would get into a fight with one is if you actually wanted to fight. They can't see you a foot away in bushes with your head sticking out like a boil on a nose, but if you happen to have them on alert, they will spot your toe a a mile away hidden in a haystack. Tenchu never has had anything but abysmal AI, but come on! You've got the power of Next-Gen! You've had nearly 10 years to get it right! Metal gear solid made an ungodly leap in AI behaviour in a single game and managed to outstrip you only using the PS2! And you're still **** on us with this garbage!
The sound is boring and nothing original. There's no real music except in certain cutscenes. I do like the music played during the intro, but other than that, the sound has advanced very little since the original games. All the voice acting is in Japanese as well, so I can't develop any interest in what's happening.
The graphics are garbage. In comparison to other games being brought out, I wouldn't have guessed I was playing an 360 game.
But what galls me most is the thing I was most anticipating: Customisation.
I admit, there was some good clothing. There was some awe-inspringly stupid clothing like a hot-dog sheath, massive chibi lion heads and stupid looking cutesy fox tails and ears. Some of the accessories were just plain idiotic. Why would your ninja walk around with a dirty great scroll stuck in their mouth? Or a knife? Or pinwheel? Disregarding the truly idiotic clothing, there was in fact a very limited selection of stuff available.
Skill customisation was pretty useless too. The only reason you really need high health is in a few select boss battles. All the rest can be playe through with agility set to max. You can't really customise your fighting style since there are a set few combos that aren't really any different. Your special skills are mostly useless. I don't remember ever actually needing to use 'wall running' or 'eyes' (which allow you to zoom your vision in) or 'badger'. They're cool to use, I admit, especially if you bounce from wal to wall, but that's all; you never actually need any of them.
And I never even bothered checking the items except to take a look once in a while. Apart from a few health powerups here and there, I never needed to use anything. I used a few items for the fun of it a few times but I never really needed anything.
The plot itself was utterly uninteresting. They didn't even try. Your partner is dull, says nothing to pique your interest and is generally a substitute for your own character speaking. There was the sterotypical Japanese 'dark and brooding' villain al la Sephiroth (Christ, they even had a "stares at you moodily through flame before turning round and walking away" scene that came straight from FF7!) who was the servant of a big, burly nutcase guy. Of course, mister moody turns out to have an ulterior motive and... Oh what's the point? If you watch anime, it's the same recycled stuff they put out in any given anime show.
Why did they bother with a partner? Why bother with customisation? You only see them three or four times. Finally, online was the same missions, only with additional human players. It makes the game go from 'very easy' to 'you'd have to be a Creationist to cock this up'. Your enjoyment of online games depends greatly on wether or not your teammates play along with stealth and assassination. It does add an interesting element: more players = greater opportunity for mistakes and mayhem, adding some unpredictability to the mix that is never there in the main game.
I was tempted to put 'Disastrous' as the Classification, but that's too strong a word. It implies a spectacular failing of some kind on the part of the game. But it changes virtually nothing from the previous games. It learned nothing and tried to spice up the same old stuff with ultimately meaningless gimmicks. It even took a step back by including a neutered story.
Rent? Only if its free.