Ninjas are the ultimate in cool. Their history and purpose is surrounded in myth and mystique. Secret assassins of the Shogunate and Japanese nobility, they have enraptured the minds of the Western world in film, books, comics and video games. So it’s always a big let down when a game starring ninjas turns out poor. And poor is the perfect adjective for Tenchu Z.

The story of Tenchu Z begins in feudal Japan, and involves you, a ninja obviously, being hired to take out various marks for your Ninja master. There is some kind bad blood between various villages, and you have to kill people because they’ve done bad things to other people. It’s one of those annoying Japanese stories, kinda like Dynasty Warriors, where you’re not sure if everything in the story is connected or not, and if it is, it’s lost in translation anyway. For example, you get to create a fellow ninja who appears occasionally in the story, but doesn’t seem to do much except spout some weird Confucian crap now and then in cut scenes.

Many Japanese games have odd, hard to follow stories, but make up for that with cool action or great graphics. Unfortunately Tenchu Z has neither. You are given a mark to kill, and you’ll find them within a complex, usually a Japanese temple. They’re not always temples, sometimes it’s a restaurant, sometimes it’s a dock, and other times it’s a whole village. But the design from level to level is so similar that it doesn’t matter what it actually is, it looks like a Japanese temple. You’re never told exactly where that mark is located though. You see a cut scene that gives a basic idea of what the character looks like and the surrounding location in which they’re to be found, but that’s it. They’re not marked on a map nor are any other clues given. I suppose that, despite to all the evidence to the contrary, ninja organisations had really poor intelligence back in the 1600s.

Now, initially this doesn’t seem like it would pose a problem. You’re a ninja, right? You can sneak around and scout out the place yourself. And to aid you in that endeavour you have a meter that shows you how hidden you are, how aware the enemy is of your presence, and how far away to you are from each other. Whilst good in theory, in practice this fails due to the most frustrating game AI ever encountered in a game.

On the one hand the AI can spot you through walls and roofs. This makes sneaking about and avoiding being detected a little difficult. And if you open a door and there is an enemy in the room, you instantly alert them to you presence. The problem is compounded because the mark is nearly always in a room with a door that is closed. Open the door and the mark is alerted to your presence, and you’re rushed by guards. At first I thought this was just me, maybe I was doing something wrong, but time after time, door after door it happened.

Yet on the other hand the AI has the memory of a gold fish. Run behind another building, or jump over a wall, and the alarm is dropped. Worse still is that AI will automatically go back to its predictable patrol path, meaning you can attempt to sneak past or kill the enemy again and it will be rather blasé about the whole thing. What this does allow you to do is race through the whole level until you find your mark without much hassle. It doesn’t matter how many alarms and guards you alert, there is no punishment apart from the fact you get less gold at the end of the level.

Gold is used to buy new outfits, weapons and skills, including new stealth kills. Whilst these make playing the game slightly more interesting, this is no real incentive to play through the game stealthily. The AI is so poor that the pay off to do a stealth kill never seems worth it. And with all the stealth moves you’re meant to be doing, when it comes to the boss levels, such as the one on the docks that was in the demo, you’ll find that all gets chucked out the window and you’re forced into confrontation. Because you’re used to sneaking about, the direct confrontation is a jarring jump in terms of gameplay.

The control set up has to be one of the worse ever. You need to press a button to draw your sword, and another to strike it. When sneaking if you see a guard and pull out the sword, he hears and is alerted to your position. But if you don’t have your sword out, you can’t do half the stealth kill moves. Likewise, to throw a star or grapple you have to press a button to go into first person view, then press another button to throw the star / grapple. Again, this is frustrating as you will often get seen before you have a chance to position yourself well. On top of that, the camera is horrid. It’s free moving to allow you some sense of situation awareness, but it feels completely awkward as it never snaps back, so you can get thoroughly disorientated.

Graphically the game is the very ugly stepsister of Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. Although the locations are quite well realised, as mentioned they all pretty much look the same. Considering you’re on the rooftops most of the time, a bit of variety might have gone a long way. Although the character animation is smooth, the overall feel is of a PS2 game. The enemy characters all look the same, with textures and models reused over and over again, sometimes making it impossible to tell a mark from a guard from an “innocent”. In fact, I didn’t even realise there were “innocents” in the levels until I saw in my end of level screen that I had killed one. And even more incredibly, there is no facial animation for any character in any cut scene. They talk, but mouths and eyes don’t move. I was stunned by this – I thought we were in the next generation of console gaming!

Sound is probably the best aspect of the game. Drawing your sword has a satisfying ring as it emerges from the scabbard, and the footsteps of your enemy get louder as they approach, giving you a greater sense of your surroundings and situation. When you do battle the stereotypical ninja battle sounds can be heard – swords classing, yelling out “Kiiyyaa!” and so on. The music is also as you would expect from a ninja game set in the 1600s – lots of oriental flute and harp.

Conclusion:
Tenchu Z is pretty craptacular. Admittedly there is a bit of fun to be had here when you do stealth around maps, but as soon as the AI sees you through a wall, or you open a door and it alerts the guards, the fun is over. Moreover, the fact you can run through a level, alerting everyone to you presence, and still complete the level makes a mockery of the whole concept of a stealth game. Unfortunately for Tenchu Z there are games that do the stealth action genre a hell of a lot better, and with nothing else going for it other than ninjas, this one is best left alone.

Pros:
You play a ninja
Lots of customisable outfits
Nice sound

Cons:
Worst AI you’ll find in a game
Can complete levels without being stealthy
Really bad controls and confusing camera
Looks terrible

49/100