Frayhua Reviews: Tenchu: Shadow Assassins

Tenchu: Shadow Assassins Review

Is this a great return or epic fail?

System- Nintendo Wii and PSP
Style: 1-Player Stealth
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Acquire
Release Date: February 5, 2009
ESRB Rating: Mature

Story- Tenchu: Shadow Assassins story is about someone wanting to start a war with Lord Gohda. His right hand man Sekiya, arraigned for a fortune teller to predict the future for Gohda’s kingdom. Unforntanly, the fortune teller is really a kunoichi(female ninja) named Rinshi, who kidnaps Princess Kiku, Lord Gohda’s daughter. Rikimaru wants to rescue Princess Kiku, but Lord Gohda has him help him eliminate threats to his kingdom. While Ayame goes to rescue Princess Kiku. You’ll later learn that there is a traitor is in the Asuma clan. After the first part playing as Rikimaru you play as Ayame to make the story come full circle.

Graphics- Tenchu: Shadow Assassins looks great with richly detailed environments and excellent use of lighting and shadow effects. The lightning looks fantastic and can eliminate darkness for a short time like and real life.

Sound- The voice acting in English is good, but I wish you can have the option to switch to the original Japanese voices to fit well with the setting. The music and sound effects are great, but generic later in the game.

Gameplay- The game is about stealth so you sneak around unnoticed to eliminate guards by using a hissatsu or quick kills to get to the next part of the stage marking by blue flames. They are fun to pull off and work well with the Wiimote and Nunchuk. Rikimaru and Ayame have slightly different hissatsu techniques. I wish there was a little more differences between the two to feel that you really are playing as two different ninjas. The stealth is now ground only meaning you can’t use a grappling hook to get up top a building. The inventory contains three items to use. Your ninja arsenal contains: shurikens, bamboo tube, smoke bombs, poison, etc. The main problem with the stealth is if you seen by an enemy you’ll go back to the beginning of that section of a stage. If you carry a katana in you inventory you will fight one of the guards in a one-on-one sword fight in a first person perceptive. The problem is the fights are not balanced out when fighting regular enemies because you’ll lose by not reacting to the fast enemy attacks on time so you’ll also go back to the beginning section of that stage. Boss Battles are a little more balanced out so the player has a chance to win.

Controls- The Wii controls for Tenchu: Shadow Assassins are simple. The A button is for interacting with objects and performing hissatsus. Movement controls feel like the Resident Evil controls with the holding of the B button to run. The C Button is the jump button. A flick of the Nunchuk moves your character in a 180 degree turn. The Z Button is your Mind’s Eye or ninja vision which helps you find enemies and revealing places to hide and at some points you can perform hayates. Hayates are great from going bush to bush undetected, but sometimes they can lead you into seeing an enemy and having to restart that part of the stage from the beginning. You can switch items in your inventory with the left and right of the D-Pad. The FPS style sword fights want to defend or attack with the Wiimote in an Attack or Defend phase.

Value- The graphical effects, sound, music, good cutscenes, balanced FPS style sword fights while fighting bosses, and hissatsus.

Cons- Stealth mechanics when enemies see you and irritating FPS style sword fights with standard enemies

Frayhua Reviews: Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Falling Point: Great concept, Terrible execution

System: Playstation 3 , Xbox 360, and PC
Style: 1-Player First Person Shooter (Up to 8-Player Via Playstaion Network,Xbox Live, or PC Internet)
Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Spark Unlimited
Release Date: February 26, 2008
ESRB Rating: Teen

Story- What would happen if Winston Churchill died after being hit by a taxi? Nazis would invade America. You play as Dan Carson, a construction worker who becomes America’s hope for freedom.

Graphics- First, falling point is the graphics because they look like they could have been done on the Playstation 2 or the original Xbox. The explosion effects are cool, but the character models and the environments aren’t interesting because even though this game used the Unreal Engine 3 it’s not really cutting edge like Gears of War. The animations aren’t great, they are poor and framerate issues happen for no reason. There are a lot of glitches like bodies disappearing, rare obscurer hit detection when shooting enemies( example: You shoot someone in the head , but they don’t die. Also if you shoot someone even though you aren’t aiming at them they die instantly.), dying for no reason (including falling down from something that can’t kill you. What’s really interesting is that you can survive a fall from a nearly 50 ft drop from the slowest elevator with a scripted enemy shooting sequence trying to be cool? Getting stuck at places and having to start the entire mission all over again is annoying.), after dying you’ll sometimes see guns, dead bodies or Carson floating up into the air. This is similar to Hour of Victory another bad World War II First Person Shooter.

Sound- The voice acting is ok, but the original score for Turning Point is fantastic like in HOV.

Gameplay- The next fall point is the gameplay with Carson on top of a building construction site watching Nazis destroy 1953 New York and escape to ground level unhurt. There are no melee attacks, but you can perform executions which are the best part of the game. This and the platforming elements are borrowed from the close quarters melee combat quick time events from Call of Duty 3 and the excellent transition from first to third person action when doing an action from The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. The vertical aiming sensitivity is x2 as fast the horizontal aiming sensitivity. You can change aiming sensitivity, but it still doesn’t feel right. The story is another falling point because the developers wants players to travel to boring environments with objectives from going from point A to point B killing Nazis. Some of them rip of the Helghast from Killzone by wearing gas mask. The glitches explained earlier combined with real bad checkpoint locations equal a terrible gameplay experience. The multiplayer is another falling point because it only has Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. Also connecting is lame because nobody wants to play online. Does Spark and Codemasters really think anyone who has played the campaign will play this slapdash multiplayer?

Value- Executions, the original score, And turning Points short length.

Cons- Broken, Busted, Buggy Graphics and bad hit detection.