Master the Ancient Art of Stealth (Tenchu Z (Xbox 360))

Member Name: Goldensummit

Product:	Tenchu Z (Xbox 360)
Date:	11/06/08 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Graphics | blood/water effects | creating your own ninja

Disadvantages: Generic missions | Lack of effort in development | Awful gameplay | Repetitive stealth kills

Difficulty: Medium
Learning Curve: Around half an hour.

Tenchu Z, a highly anticipated game, bringing stealth ninja action to next gen (now being current gen), but unfortunately this game went in the completely wrong direction, and making everything just seem so generic.

With the power of the XBOX 360, games should be able to exceed the normal limit, and those big fans of the Tenchu series will be disappointed with this abysmal attempt at making a good stealth game. However, there are some good elements, albeit not really improving the game, but does show some good signs for future instalments.

Tenchu Z offers a 'create a ninja' mode, which you have to do before you start the actual story. You can be male or female, choose what clothes they wear, hairstyles, accessories and what-not, and as you progress through the game, you can unlock and purchase new equipment and options for you to change mid-game of how your character looks. This is the best part of the game, and would be great to see this feature in the next Tenchu game.

The game itself is based on stealth and ninja skills, where you sneak around small little villages, caves, towns, and more to kill all who oppose you, and to defeat the enemy that's on your 'hitlist'. But the main problem, with over 50 missions, each mission is practically the same, in gameplay, environment, objectives and enemies. There are around five or so different varieties of objectives, and very few environments for you to explore. It just has on big feel of it being generic, and you'll be constantly thinking "déjà vu?"

The stealth kills in this game look pretty decent, which you pull off by sneaking up behind an enemy, and choosing to attack them, this will lead to a short cut-scene of you killing this man in a vicious violent way. But after a while, these scenes get very repetitive, and how the combat when you've been caught is so awful, your forced to go through with these stealth kills. It is quite hard to stay out of view, enemies can spot you easily enough from seeing you, hearing you, seeing your shadow, and what-not, which atleast shows that the game is rather sensitive to realism. You can hide from enemies by crouching in shrubs, hiding under water or in the shadows, but really it just gets stale ever so fast.

Gameplay - 4/10
The stealth kills are nice, but gets very irritating after repeating it several times, and the combat when spotted is just absolutely dreadful, you're forced to run and hide and go back to the repetitive stealth kills.

Design - 7/10
Being supported by 1080i, the graphics are pretty decent. The design of your character is also good, with the variety of changes you can make. You even get water effects on your character when you've been in water and blood effects when blood sprays on your clothes.

Sound - 6/10
The soundtrack is nothing to boast about, except for the opening movie song, which is fairly decent. The voice acting isn't too shabby, but there really isn't a lot of it, except through some of the cut-scenes which don't really play much of a part in the game.

Value - 3/10
With the generic levels, and the boring gameplay, there isn't really much making you play this game for too long, especially when it isn't rewarding to force yourself through all of it.

Overall - 4/10
Graphics are good, and the amount of customizable features for your creating a ninja is decent, as well as the water and blood effects, it really sets you in the ninja atmosphere, but with all the other faults, and the down right lack of attempt in making this a decent game, just isn't worth dealing with.

Summary: Creating a ninja, water/blood effects and the graphics are decent, but the lack of effort isn't