Or simply go at it hammer and tongs - by killing the highest-ranking officer in an area the rest will stampede around like headless, armour clad chickens.Īll in all, there's a welcome degree of personal choice in how each situation can be overcome. What's refreshing is that the game doesn't have to be played this way, you can use Kurenai's other abilities (ninja staples like poison blow pipe darts and, uh, a black widow-like seduction move that can lure many a lowly footsoldier to his demise). Sneaking across rooftops to nail targets is just as satisfying as open combat, and stealth is encouraged by virtue of enemies seemingly going literally to pieces more easily when you catch them unawares. It's extraordinarily fun, despite an unnecessary and tedious lock-on system that slows the action down, to its extreme detriment.įurthermore there's an interesting stealth bent that works relatively well when Kurenai isn't being her usual clumsy self. With the former you can bury a small anchor in the enemy and give it a vicious yank to easily confiscate troublesome bodily extremities.Īlternatively, the second attachment affixes a hook that lets you drag enemies around, tying them up around a handy pillar or just hanging them cheekily off the nearest rafter, hacking helplessly at you below.Īdd to this Kurenai's acrobatic capabilities that let her run up walls and indulge in a little Prince of Persia-style rope swinging, platforming action and you'll soon find yourself flipping around the battlegrounds, happily slashing at enemies up close before bounding away with torsos aplenty in your wake. Tenchu aside, you've never seen anything quite like the Tetsugen - a length of wire with a choice of attachments to hook on to the end. So no, it's not the desperately tacked on buckets o' blood that make the combat entertaining fare, but Kurenai's tasty arsenal of weaponry. Not that the decapitations are particularly shocking - it's remarkably tame due to cop-out PS2 graphics and cartoon levels of animation. How a slutty, nubile, attractive, innocent (you get the picture) female ninja became such a lethal killing machine is explained somewhere in the half-inched-from-The-Last-Samurai plot, but it never fails to raise an eyebrow watching this petite, naive-looking young lady gutting and cleaving her way through entire armies. So what are we left with? Well, suffer the controls, the tear-inducing, atrocious camerawork (no lateral invert - a shocking oversight) and some markedly bland level design, and surprisingly, you'll find a slab of likable hack-n'-slash action to get stuck into. Maybe ignorance rather than arrogance, then. Making the jump button and the drop-off-ledge button both A, or putting both the long range and short range attacks on one contextual button, which, in a pitiful attempt to be accessible to today's disposable gaming audience, merely results in you hacking thin air when you meant to lob a long attack.įrustrating? Not half. Oversensitive movement juxtaposed with offensively slow stealth/crouch walking does not make for a welcoming entry to a game, nor does a control set which makes the mistake of varying from genre standards - criminally making it harder for the gamer to accustom themselves, and - worse - suggesting improbable levels of arrogance from a developer who thinks they know best.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |