PlayStation 2 Review
Shinobi

''You can't hit what you can't see.''

Shinobi is built around these words, and it does live up to them. In this iteration of Shinobi, the first one created in 3D, you play as Hotsuma, the leader of the Oboro Clan. He's as quick as a hiccup, just like the gameplay. Fast, furious action with more style than you can throw a shuriken at (that was so lame), Shinobi is definitely a game to look into.

Story: Shinobi is made up of a decent story. It's not the best one you've ever heard; nothing coming close to anything seen in such games as Final Fantasy X or the Legacy of Kain series, but this story gets the job done and gives the levels a purpose.

To start you out with the basics, a long-in-running tradition in the Oboro clan, though detestable, is a fight for the right of glory. The game starts you out watching this fight. Hotsuma and his brother, Moritsune, must fight for Akujiki, and the right of passage to be leader of the Oboro Shinobi clan. When the brothers heard of this, they both feverishly trained for 10 years. At the end of this time, they gave their final farewells and dueled.

Suffice it to say, Hotsuma wins this battle. After a slight struggle, Moritsune comes in with an overhead slash, while Hotsuma sidesteps and simultaneously delivers a quicker slice to Moritsune's stomach.

After the intro, you quickly find out that Tokyo is being ravaged by a force of demons known as ''Hellspawn''. With an old sorcerer governing the vile beasts, he sends them out to do his bidding, and Hotsuma, leader and last of the Oboro clan, must set out to destroy this threat before the one behind it destroys the entire world.

But beware: with Hotsuma's death, so dies the last of the Oboro...

Gameplay: The core issue of Shinobi, and just about any other decent game out there. As Hotsuma, you've got several tools at your disposal, as you would expect from a ninja. You've got Shurikens, ninja magic (Ninjutsu), a double jump, a 15 foot long scarf, your trusty sword, and last but definitely not least, your Stealth Dash.

The Stealth Dash (also called ''Shadow Dash'') is one of the most important aspects of play. By simply hitting X, Shinobi picks up the pace and dashes a short ways, moving ''faster than the eye can see''. Thus, he becomes a blue blur and jets forward quickly, leaving a blue silhouette behind in the place where he was standing. Very cool. Not only does this move serve as your sidestep, it also moves you across the ground faster, gains you extra time in the air, and confuses your enemies. Every time you leave a shadow image, your enemies run after it and attack is as well, which is a very nice touch. If you ever find yourself surrounded, zip around, make a few shadow images, and then commence your attacks.

Another thing we've got is the air dash. When you're in the air, you can use the Shadow Dash once. You can also double-jump. If you find and enemy in the air, and slash him, the game allows you to dash in the air once again, as long as a successful slash accompanies the dash. One dash, one slash. So if you find a bunch of enemies in the air, you can dash to one, slash it, dash to another, slash it, dash to another, slash it, until they're all dead. And you've never even touched the ground. If you're over a bottomless pit? Simple, dash to a wall and grip it once all your enemies are dead, or use your double jump to get back to safety.

Wall gripping? Yep, that's part of the game to. Jump toward any wall that isn't darkened (this specifies the wall is damaged or inaccessible, and you can't grip it) and Hotsuma will latch onto the wall. He can also run along the wall horizontally, surprisingly faster than he runs on flat ground. This plays into gaming enormously. In many levels, there will be an Oboro Coin or Ninjutsu you need to get, but you'll notice it'll be over a massive bottomless pit. Wall run over there and carefully jump to it, and bingo, you've got yourself an Oboro Coin.

Oboro Coins are emblems that allow you to unlock different things in the game. These emblems are hidden across each stage, and you can nab so many to open up galleries and such. When you go through Hard and Super modes, the emblems will become more numerous, allowing for more goodies to be acquired.

In the second level, the game changes. Your sword, the legendary Akujiki, awakens to its true nature and becomes a sword that devours the hatred of enemies (read: their life essence), also known as Yin. All of the enemies you fight are either undead or very hateful, so there is much Yin to be found. Basically, what happens is you've got a meter, and it drains over time. Once that meter drains all of the way, it starts eating away at your health to sate its hunger. In order to fill its bottomless tummy, you must kill enemies and thus absorb their Yin, feeding the ravenous sword and curbing its hunger. This keeps the game moving along at a quick pace, as it should be.

The fighting is simplistic. Lock-on with R1 and attack with Square. You can throw in a jump if the situation calls for it as well. Basically, Hotsuma uses the same 4-hit combo throughout the entire game, with the addition of a spinning attack to knock enemies away from you and give you a little breathing room, and an electric shock kick you can use to knock a blocking enemy off balance and open them to further attacks. But otherwise, it's that 4-hit combo. The thing is, it really doesn't matter, since the gameplay is so fast, you don't need anything else. You'll be hitting one enemy with a few slices, then zipping right to the next enemy and taking him out all in a blur, so there's no need for a fleshed-out fighting system, and it works fine. Plus, you've also got a limited, though abundant supply of Shurikens (throwing stars, or knives in some cases, such as this game) to use. Throw one and it'll stun the enemy it hits, giving you a little more time to focus on other enemies. Double-jump then throw the Shurikens, and you'll unleash a blast of Shurikens that stuns every enemy on the screen (including some bosses). I didn't use it much, but hey, at least it's there.

You've also got 3 different Ninjutsu spells you can use: one makes you invincible for a short while, another allows you to slice the air and limitedly fire out condensed energy waves, and the last one creates an enormous explosion around Hotsuma and decimates almost everything it touches.

Now we come to one of the most interesting and stylish parts of Shinobi: Tate. Enemies in Shinobi come in waves. Sometimes one at a time, sometimes nine at a time. If you kill an enemy and there's another enemy standing (or floating or crawling or scuttling or whatnot, whatever), the enemy will enter what I like to call ''Death Freeze'': just like it sounds, the enemy freezes in its position and can't be attacked any longer (they stay there for about 3 seconds). Your targeting reticule will then focus on another enemy and you'll go to kill that one. With each enemy you kill, the Death Freeze countdown restarts, so the baddies won't fall apart before you're done. If you kill 4 or more enemies before they all fall apart, you're treated to an ultra-cool and very stylish ''cutscene'', in which the camera takes a dramatic angle and Hotsuma performs one of 5 poses, often accompanied by a quip (such as ''I shall have my revenge...''), and when he's finished, the enemies simultaneously fall to pieces around him, accompanied by moans, screams, and shrieks. Extremely cool, even after beating the game several times. It never gets old. And on top of that, the way the enemies fall apart gets even more flashy (though only slightly), the more enemies you kill. Awesome.

Another thing to accompany and help speed the battles right along is that Akujiki strengthens with each enemy in Death Freeze. Kill one enemy and the sword will grow hungry and glow blue. Kill 3 and the sword turns purple, and so it goes. Not only does the color change, but the sword's power also grows. So if you see a huge giant with an immense weapon staring you down, surrounded by several smaller enemies, you could either hack away at the giant for 8 seconds, or quickly zip around in a blur and death freeze them all, kill the giant in one super-powered slash, and watch them all fall to pieces while Hotsuma poses. Nice touch. However, the sword's power does fade whenever Tate is completed, or whenever the enemies in Death Freeze fall apart. That way, the game never becomes too easy.

Boss fights are also here, and they're a lot of fun, and pretty challenging. I've been stuck on some boss fights, going through over 10 rounds before I win. It's frustrating, yes, but the sense of reward is immense. They've given boss fights a little help, too: the boss randomly spits out smaller enemies to aid it in killing you. You could go on fighting the boss and be annoyed by these nuisances, or you could use them against it and slash them all, death freeze them, then hack down the boss with a super-powered sword. I'll tell you, there are few things as awesome as taking out 8 enemies, zipping behind the boss and killing him with one swipe, watching the camera blink from enemy to enemy, then watching Hotsuma strike a pose and say, ''Rest in peace,'' while the screen bursts out a small explosion and everyone splits in two amidst a cacophony of screams and shrieks.

But like I said, don't think that this makes bosses too easy. The enemies you kill don't just sit there; they'll spit fireballs and other manner of attacks out at you, often slowing you down just enough to break all of the enemies in Death Freeze and stop your smooth progression. Not only that, but the bosses themselves are no slouches. They've got attacks that will often kill you extremely quickly, whether it's by sending you off a cliff or by sheer force. Not only that, they're often times very quick and block well, so getting to them even after all the enemies are in Death Freeze is no easy feat.

At the end of each stage, you're ranked on how well you did. You get points for speed, how many enemies you killed, the damage you took, the magic you used, and so on. While not necessary, it's always fun to go back and try to top old scores.

The game's real challenge comes from punishing mistakes -- and hard. The later levels are littered with bottomless pits, and the last level actually has more vertical walls that horizontal ground, making wall-running essential. Dive into a bottomless pit, and you're dead, game over, back to the start of the level with you. Even if you're right near the end, if you fall into a bottomless pit or lose all your life, you're back at the start. This is extremely frustrating, but does give the player incentive to become the perfect ninja -- the game can't punish your mistakes if you don't make any. Plus, consider that Shinobi is essentially the same game the entire way through. It's deliberate hack-and-slash gameplay. I don't tire of it, but you might.

All-in-all, this game is the absolute epitome of a 2D game in 3D. It's as old-school as it gets, and that's why I love it. A good thing about this game is that all of it blends together so smoothly. You can customize the controls to your liking, but the default ones are optimal and very easy to get used to. So the game moves along very quickly and flows very nicely.

Be aware, however, that this game is exceptionally linear. There is the secret Oboro Coin stashed away here and there, but most of them only involve jumping to a certain ledge or slashing away a covering to get to. There are no alternate paths and no branching ways you can go. If you want exploration, give Grand Theft Auto III or Vice City a try, but this game is straight-forward action, so don't expect to be doing much exploring. And besides, if you could explore you really wouldn't be able to, with Akujiki always picking away at your health, so it's actually a good thing that there isn't room to get lost in this game.

Graphics: Shinobi's graphics are a mixed bag. On one hand, character and enemy animations are phenomenal. Hotsuma himself is decked out in what is perhaps the coolest-looking attire I've ever seen in a game or real life alike. Each arm has 6 shurikens jutting outward, knife end facing away from him. Slick black material covers most of his body, with grey parts here and there. One of his coolest parts is his helmet, which is black with a grey portion on the front, with what appears to be two pairs of glowing blue slits (almost like eyes). On his back, a giant emblem using the Oboro clan symbol holds his sword sheath in place, which Akujiki fits into. The most noticeable part of his ensemble is his flowing red scarf, which reaches lengths of around 15' when stretched out, and follows Shinobi's movements perfectly. This is an optical effect that's extremely cool to behold, and even fun to play around with when you have a moment to spare.

To add to that, the framerate is as smooth as silk. Running at 60 FPS, I've encountered only a few stutters in it, and these were extremely brief and only managed to pop up when the screen was filled with enemies, a busy background, and a fast-moving Shinobi. In essence, any jitters in the framerate whatsoever are extremely rare and cause not so much as a hiccup when they do appear, lasting no more than a second.

The Tate combos are very sweet looking. The camera takes dramatic angles whenever Tate is triggered, but these random angles aren't always the best. Most of the time, you'll see it from an excellent angle, watching the enemies all fall apart with Hotsuma in the middle of the action. Other times, you'll be up against a wall and it'll show you Hotsuma's back and you'll never see much of anything. Other times, the good and bad mix to make some pretty sweet angles. Example, you'll have the camera pressed up against a frozen enemy, but then it falls apart and reveals Hotsuma striking a pose behind it. Very cool.

Camera itself is easy enough to maintain. A simple tap of the L1 button sets the camera behind Hotsuma, and the right analog stick adjusts it up or down, left or right at your impulse. The only real gripe I had, at some points, is that when falling, the camera doesn't always zip above you and show where you're going to land fast enough. This has caused me many an unneeded death. But hey, I'll live. ...Sort of.

Bad parts of the graphics are the mixed backgrounds. Some of the backgrounds are pretty decently done. But some levels are bland and un-intriguing. Some of them blend a lot of colors and interesting architecture in a way that it makes the level pretty cool, but others overuse certain textures, colors and shades to the point of monotony. The first level, for instance, is made up of city buildings, one after another, painted with a silverish-chrome like color and all having the same look over and over, with signs and posters hung up. Trash cans and street lights also dot the landscape, but don't really change it up enough to make it all that interesting. In stark contrast, level 7 is a beautiful area with water, grass, trees, waterfalls and the likes, making it very easy on the eyes. Too bad they couldn't have maintained this level of creativity throughout the entire game.

Also, before and after each level, the game presents you with an FMV, which is a very nice touch.

Sound: Sound is also a mixed bag. First and foremost, the voice acting is a little off in some areas, and does excellently in others. I found the English voice actor of Hotsuma to do a very good job, saying things in a quiet but decisive tone, and adding in comments after Tate combos sometimes, like ''I shall have my revenge'' or ''Rest in peace'', that sound very nice. Some of the other voice actors, however, sound utterly pathetic and embarrassing. Good news is, they've preserved the option of allowing you to switch between English and Japanese voice acting, and the Japanese does a much better job. Then again, how would I be able to tell if the Japanese sucked if I can't speak the language? Ah well, I marvel at that which I don't understand, thus, I think Japanese is cooler.

Music is great on the whole. Boss music is excellent, I think, as is the main theme song of the game (those of you who have watched the trailer will undoubtedly know this tune). A lot of the levels have some nice Japanese jigs going on, as well. Sound effects are nice also. Everything sounds just as you'd expect it would, from the faint flick of Hotsuma's shurikens to a connecting sword slash, to Hotsuma sheathing his blade. It's all here, and it's all good.

Replay Value: Shinobi has great replay value. Right off the bat, there are things to do. One of the biggest pastimes in Shinobi is to go back through and find the missing Oboro clan coins you haven't found. With the help of a level select, you can go to any level and pick up the coins you missed. The level select also tells you how many coins there are, and how many you have, so you won't have to guess. But there are only so many coins you can get on Normal difficulty, and once you start Hard, there are more to be had. After Hard, there's even a Super mode, for those crazy enough to accept the challenge.

Each coin you get unlocks more goods. You've can watch any FMV you've seen in-game, and with so many coins, more concept art appears in the gallery for you to look at. There are also a few hidden characters to be found, if you acquire enough Oboro coins. If none of this interests you, you can also go back through levels and try to achieve a higher score. After each level, you're ranked from C to the elusive S rank, and each little thing helps your score. Taking no damage tacks on a large amount of points, as does not using any magic and killing all enemies in Tate. Every little factor adds to that score, and I find it fun to go back and try to beat my old time and rank.

Rent or Buy: Sometimes I wonder why I even include this section anymore. Give it a rent, like any other game out there, unless you're sure this is the game for you. If you rent and you don't like, no harm done. If you buy and you don't like, sell it on eBay or trade it. It all depends on what you feel like doing. Also, it's just nice to have around in your library because that's some pretty slick box art there.

At the end of it all, I love Shinobi a lot. Fast-paced and unadulterated action keep the game moving fast, and gives you more style than most games out there can afford to give. Good replay value, decent story, great graphics and sound, and a lot of fun to play. If you're in for a game with puzzles and slow-paced exploration, this isn't for you. But if you're in the mood to kill anything and everything that moves, check this game out.

Overall: 8/10

By: Cory McGray