Allow me to preface this review by stating some ground rules. #1: I am a freaking ninja. That about covers the ground rules, so keep them in mind while reading my opinion. I'm going to tackle the main points of the game in the same order that they are presented in the numeric review. Starting with Gameplay; this game suffers in the gameplay department on numerous levels...levels being one of those areas. Level design is key in any game, but even moreso in games that allow you to have free roam of an enviornment. All of the levels in this game look as though they were developed by a band of monkeys that were strapped into the old Tenchu 2 level editor. Then those levels were ported to an Xbox demo unit to spruce up the graphics a bit. The way the camera interacts with the geometry in the levels is overly frustrating. There are multiple times throughout the game where you find yourself in tight quarters, this is the most frustrating part of the game, since the camera simply does not do what you want it to. The ability to flatten against walls and sneak up on opponents is almost non-existent since you are much better off learning how to straight challenge all of your opponents. (that is in these close-quarters situations anyway) The controls themselves might not be to bad if there was some refinement stage, or if the devs ever playtested the game themselves. I thought it was anoying that you had very little control in the way of minute movements. In a game like Splinter Cell you have the ability to move very, very slowly. A sneaking game, or assasination game, you would expect to have some pretty tight movement, well don't look for it here, you will be dissapointed. I'm going to move on to graphics before I have an aneurysm. The graphics in this game were an obvious improvement from previous titles, but I saw little in the way of actual progression. One of the things that bothers me most about series like Tenchu is the apparent lack of growth from the devs. It seems like the guys that built Tenchu 1 have locked themselves into closets except to come out and work on thier next Tenchu game. the particle effects remain cheesy and uninventive, the huts and most other geometry all look as though they were again dropped in from the old series and then touched up with some better textures. The character models, have definitely recieved the most substantial face-lift. They appear to be a bit more styled than before, and definatley have an appealing look to them. Again though not alot in the way of creativity. The sound has and remains to be pretty bad in these games. The sound, like all the other aspects of this game, are taken directly from the PSX versions, and these received no facelift whatsoever. The music remains largely similar to it's predecessors. This game gets a 2 in sound simply because it has sound. This brings me to value. I just have to wonder what the devs are thinking. The third time is definitely not the charm in this installment. It's practically nothing more than a port from the PSX games. I hope it only took them two months to create this game, because that's the only way I could justify the cost to produce it. I gave this game a 4 hour learning curve, solely because of how impossible it is to "master" these controls...just forget about it. Now stop reading this review, Tenchu has officially wasted enough of your game-time, go move on to better things. .d
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