The last Shinobi title I played was on the NES, as part of this 1001 list. We've come a long way since then, but apparently, the title is iconic enough to stick around, and so it's time for the PlayStation 2 to have its Shinobi take our attention.
Sharpen up your sword and fish out your best scarf, because we're going to need to schwing our way through the undead before we run out of time.
Oh, and for those of you who need to be forewarned:
Smashing. Let's go going.
Fun Times
After a quick configuration of some buttons (namely putting jump on X, where it belongs), I was ready to dive into Shinobi, as blind as I usually am with these games. A moonlit cutscene opens the game, showing us two young chaps getting prepared for a fight.
Seeing the result of the fight isn't important, though, as we're pulled into the future where Shinobi takes place.
Frustrations
Riiiiight. So we've got some traditional ninja fellas fighting each other just a few years removed from a very modern-looking Tokyo that has been subject to what has to be a magical earthquake. I'm not sure what's going on, but I know it doesn't make sense, and that making sense isn't the focus of this game.
This clearly villainous bloke is the kind of character that makes my eyes roll. Laughing at your own evil scheme is very rarely done well. The big bad guys often look stupid when they chuckle, and this one is no different - whoever he is.
We (are we called Shinobi? I don't even know that) are on a helicopter heading into the heart of Tokyo to deal with this crisis. Or we were until the helicopter got hit by evil magic and blown up while we were in it.
Luckily, we're a ninja, and leaping out of helicopters and sliding down skyscrapers is no big deal.
The voice acting for the evil guy, despite the laughing, was done well enough for you to know that this character was not the hero of this story. I suppose the whole destroying Tokyo thing gave that away too, but at least the voice more or less matched the character.
Not for our protagonist here, though. Not by a long shot. If you want your clearly muscular, battle-hardened super ninja to sound like he looks, mute Shinobi and voice the lines yourself. You'll do a better job.
Further Fun Times
Luckily for all of us, the gameplay is better than the voice work. A whole lot better. This third-person action title gives you one main attack button, a stealth dash to get into and out of trouble, as well as the ability to double jump.
Locking onto an enemy will switch your stance and slow you down, ensuring that your attacks count - and they will. It takes no effort at all to slice through an opponent, and once you've felled all you need to, the next segment of the stage opens up for you to move through.
In a similar way to Devil May Cry, Shinobi is about style. While you're not scored on it and don't have much of a say on what attack you even unleash until you hit the square button to find out, you are rewarded for killing a group of enemies in succession with a clichéd ninja pose kill. With enemies frozen in place, you strike a pose, stash your sword, and when it finally clicks into place, you're victims fall into chunks.
Most of the red you're seeing isn't actually blood, but your long and ever-flowing scarf. It rivals that of Journey as it follows your movements through the level. Maybe it symbolises something, but it has yet not even been mentioned by anybody.
The first stage has you go up against reanimated ninja corpses, grizzly looking dogs, and some kind of biological tank or three. They seem a bit out of place, I must admit. They're like the music, in that regard, as it too feels like it has been stuck over the top because, late in the day, someone was reminded that something ought to be stuck over the top of this gameplay.
So far, Shinobi has a style of its own. It's not über stylish, but it has a look at least.
Further Frustrations
Speaking of looks, the camera...
Inverted by default and a bit of a pain to use, its first test is the first boss fight against a helicopter. Can you think of a target more testing of a camera than a highly mobile object that is primarily found up in the air?
If that wasn't enough of a hassle to deal with as you dodge rockets, how about some more undead ninjas getting in your way?
Now that's a challenge worthy of a super ninja. I'm not a super ninja, however, so I had to beat this helicopter the only way I knew how - to cheese it from below.
After another cutscene that still didn't intrigue me in any way, we're given a splash screen of our score. It is still weird to see this type of thing in games. I'm not fussed about how badly I'm doing, I just want to have a good time and find out what happens. So far, camera issues aside, Shinobi isn't bad when it comes to fighting, but the plot leaves much to be desired.
Before the next stage can begin, we're shown the result of that fight, four years ago.
A new flying enemy is introduced in this stage, but it was gravity itself that would turn out to be my real foe.
Running up the wall is easy - I think. I don't quite know how it works, but you have a Spiderman-like ability to stick to walls. You can't plonk yourself onto the wall and run up and down it, only along it, but you can literally stick in place and even fight from the walls. It looks a bit bonkers, and I'm not comfortable with the mechanic at all. I eventually made it passed the wall-running test corridor and onto the next section.
Some walls you don't stick to, and plummeting to the floor, despite what has been shown in various cutscenes, results in a Game Over. Oh well, where do we restart?
At the start of the Stage. Nice. A couple of minutes back, no big deal, we'll be back into the action after this short delay.
Or not.
Final Word
So I didn't give Shinobi a whole lot of time to impress me but in the twenty or so minutes I played, I saw a weird plot, heard awful voicework, fought with the camera as much as my opponents, watched far too many 'hey look at me kill everything by putting my sword on my back' scenes and failed to see a reason to continue.
But not because it was awful. It wasn't terrible. It was different. The gameplay really is the selling point of Shinobi, because the story is anything but. I don't care for the characters at all. I haven't even been given a reason to care for an Earthquake-stricken Tokyo.
Here's what I read about that gameplay: after the first couple of levels, it gets brutally difficult. Only the dedicated and the persistent will continue playing it, and that doesn't really describe me. Apparently, the idea of this game is to slice through your opponents so efficiently that you can fell them all in a single attack. You have a sword which is hungry for blood and will gladly drain your life if you don't satisfy its thirst. Kill, kill and kill again, however, and it gets sharper and more powerful, enabling you to down huge enemies with one cut.
Why was none of that revealed to me before I quickly lost interest in the game?!
Maybe I'll learn of this rather vital piece of information after I manage to jump over the bottomless pits I'm attracted towards, who knows? Will I play a little bit more of Shinobi to know for sure? Uhhhmmm... I dunno about that.
As neat an idea as that sounds, combine it with much-increased difficulty out of nowhere and you're driving me further away, not bringing me closer in, and with the plot that has been presented so far, you need to do a lot to bring me closer in.
I'm not quite sure what to think of this incarnation of Shinobi. It's certainly more playable than the last time we played Shinobi for this 1001 list, but fifteen years of innovation in video gaming will do that. Playable enough for another go? Yeah, I suppose so. Enough of a good time to warrant its place on the 1001 list? I've really no idea at this stage, but I think it just might.
How I'll find out, I've no idea.
Fun Facts
A single issue comic book of Shinobi saw the light of day to coincide with this, the first 3D Shinobi title.
Shinobi, developed by Overworks, first released in 2002.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2002, via emulation.