Nightshade Preview

Nightshade is developer Overworks' follow-up to last year's Shinobi, which updated the classic Sega franchise on the PlayStation 2. While not a flawless endeavor, Shinobi's approach to fast-paced 3D action featured several promising gameplay elements that merited some exploration. Overworks apparently had similar sentiments and has offered up Nightshade, a 3D action game that shares the spirit of Shinobi but refines its gameplay in an original adventure. We had the opportunity to take a closer look at the upcoming title and talked with two members of the team--both of whom are currently working on the game--to find out what to expect from Nightshade.

Nightshade serves up some fast-paced she-ninja action.

Nightshade, formerly known by the same moniker as its Japanese counterpart--Kunoichi--takes place one year after Shinobi and focuses on she-ninja extraordinaire Hibana. While Shinobi hero Hotsuma's triumph over evil was all well and good, it would seem that wicked folk are much like roaches and turn up where they're least expected. This point is amply proven at the start of Nightshade, which finds Hibana assigned to getting to the bottom of some trouble that's been brewing and threatens to unleash hordes of demons on Tokyo. It seems that the cursed blade Akujiki, last seen in Shinobi, has been broken into pieces by the government, which used the shards to create barriers around the city to shield it from demonic monsters that are eager to "get their mindless destruction on." Unfortunately, representatives of the Nakatomi Corporation have begun snapping up the sword's shards for a mysterious, but undoubtedly evil, purpose. Your task, as you step into Hibana's white and red ninja suit, is to figure out what Nakatomi is up to and stop them before Tokyo is overrun by demons. (City officials are hoping to avoid any more razings of the city, what with all the damage caused in the original Shinobi--not to mention the regular "visits" by Godzilla and company.)

If you played the original Shinobi, you should be fairly familiar with what to expect from Nightshade's core gameplay. The game's basic structure is fairly close to last year's game, although there have been some notable refinements. You'll still explore areas that are separated into chunks by mystic barriers that will only fall once you've defeated all nearby enemies and once you've destroyed all the special mystical artifacts that power them. Every so often, your adventuring will lead you to face off against assorted bosses who will test your familiarity with Hibana's moves. However, while it may sound as though Overworks has cooked up a note-for-note rehash of Shinobi, that's simply not the case. Level design features a bit more variety and peppers the exploration and boss fights with new sequences that will offer some surprises. You'll now find "on rails" sequences that will find you duking it out on the deck of a stealth bomber and also making your way through clusters of moving cars in a freeway sequence.

You'll be able to kick your troubles away thanks to some new moves.

Overworks producers Masahiro Kumono and Ryutaro Nonaka are quick to point out that, while the game does, in fact, share similarities to Shinobi, a number of tweaks have been implemented that are based on user feedback. While the team was pleased with what they accomplished with last year's game, it was also just a start. When the development of Nightshade began, they reexamined many aspects of their approach and opted to implement some changes to provide a better overall experience that would be challenging but not as brutal as some of the latter sequences in Shinobi (Hello, moth boss!). For example, positive reaction to the tates in the first game--essentially a combo system that rewarded you with cinematic kills if you managed to defeat enough enemies within a set time--has resulted in an adjustment to the system. A new open-ended tally system now lets you string together an unlimited number of kills, and you can rack up some impressive sequences. The combo system has also been beefed up, thanks to the inclusion of a pair of short swords that Hibana wields. The pair of weapons can be quickly worked into combos, thus increasing your score bonus by having extended your combo sequence. Along the same lines, Hibana possesses a kick that can be used to home-in on enemies when airborne, which is invaluable for creating long air combos.

The emphasis on combos in the game's combat system is due to two key gameplay elements in Nightshade--new special attacks and unlockable extras. As you play Nightshade you'll notice a new meter in the game's heads-up display. The "chakra gauge" is segmented into three chunks and slowly charges up as you attack enemies. Once you've filled up one segment, you're able to perform a special move, called a stealth dash, which does a great amount of damage to whatever or whoever Hibana unleashes it on. Due to the crippling damage it doles out, we expect this special attack to become a vital resource when battling the game's bosses.