If you have been eagerly anticipating the US release of Tenchu Z to live out your secret fantasies of being a ninja, you’re going to be in for a letdown. Tenchu is a mess of bland graphics, repetitive missions, and just plain bad game design that sucks all of the fun out of the experience from the moment you load up the game. Rent it if you are desperate, but don’t buy it.
Quick Hits
- Title: Tenchu Z
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
- Developer: K2
- ESRB Rating: “M” For Mature
- Genre: Stealth action
- Pros: Playing stealthily can be fun
- Cons: Too easy; braindead AI; last-gen quality graphics; repetitive missions; stealth isn’t required
Features
Tenchu Z packs 50 missions that tells a fairly basic story of a drug dealer who wants to take over your town, but since you only have to play a handful of specific missions to advance in the game, you don’t get any of the small details and the story just seems disjointed and uninteresting. This wouldn’t be a bad thing if the gameplay was good enough to keep you motivated to play through the rest of the missions so you could piece the story together but, unfortunately, Tenchu Z plays pretty poorly. You can play Tenchu Z cooperatively over system link or on Xbox Live, but good luck finding other people that actually want to play with you.
Gameplay
Microsoft
The core gameplay (sneaking around, using ninja gadgets, etc) isn’t all that bad, but the overall experience suffers from a few key design flaws. This is supposed to be a Tenchu game with a focus on ninja skills and stealth, but you don’t actually have to use stealth to beat the game. You can just run through most levels and actually ignore the enemies until you get to the person you are supposed to find. Normally, I like having the choice between forced stealth and straight on action, but it feels really out of place here to be able to just either ignore everyone or even just kill everyone on your way towards your objective. It makes the whole game just feel pointless. If you do buckle down and try to play the game stealthily, the game can be more fun, but the AI is so stupid that they stop looking for you very quickly and just return back to their post. Also, when you‘re trying to be sneaky, you’ll have problems with the camera as it becomes practically worthless in tight spaces. The final nail in the coffin for Tenchu Z is that if you die, you have to suffer through long load times, and then you have to completely re-equip your character before waiting through some more load times and getting back into the game. This is just plain obnoxious, and if you weren’t already fed up with it, having to wait around for five minutes after you die will seal the deal. None of these issues are particularly game breaking, but when you combine them Tenchu Z is a pretty lackluster experience.
Graphics and Sound
As far as presentation goes, Tenchu Z is pretty disappointing. Individual aspects of the graphics can look okay – characters look decent, buildings look okay – but then you realize that there are only a handful of different buildings and the enemies all look the same. There is an overall lack of detail and polish, which makes the game look and feel more like an original Xbox game rather than something made for the Xbox 360. The sound is similarly bland and uninspired.Bottom Line
Microsoft
Overall, Tenchu Z is flawed in pretty much every respect. The presentation is about as far from “next-gen” as we have seen so far. The core gameplay isn’t horrible, but suffers from design flaws that just suck all of the fun out of it. Sure, there are 50 missions, but they all play pretty much the same way. And while I usually like having a choice between stealth and combat, being able to kill everyone in a level or just run right in front of everyone in a level, and still succeed, is pretty goofy. It can be fun if you play the right way and actually use stealth, but new problems such as a bad camera and completely braindead AI pop up and spoil things. Tenchu Z is just a bad game that isn’t really worth your time.
