You knew it was coming! I told you it was coming! When you think Tenchu, you think ninjas, right?!

...

Wait... Tenchu means "Heavens judgment" so ninjas shouldn't have ANYTHING to do with... whatever. Anyway, Tenchu: Fatal Shadows is a fast-paced stealth action fighting game (Paradox?). Is it any good?! Let's find out.

Plot: Your classic ninja drama. Girl sees entire clan slaughtered when she gets back from training and wrongfully accuses another ninja who was just minding her own business trying to avenge her friend or something like that. If you do a lot of ninja stuff, you see at least one of these plot elements in every ninja anime or manga.

Graphics: So-so. Not too spectacular. I just find it strange that a fountain of blood splurts from the spine of someone who has a broken neck. Kind of like how people pee blood after a headshot in Hitman or Metal Gear Solid. You sometimes get some frame rate issues.

Gameplay: The gameplay gets very frustrating at times because it seems somewhat out of synch when it is most important (Example: the stealth kill indicator is active but pressing square does nothing). You have your classic Tenchu weapons. Shuikens, poisoned rice cakes, caltrops, exploding arrows, bombs, smoke bombs, blowgun, and other stuff. Strangely, your ninja CAN'T perform an instant kill with a long-ranged attack without making a lot of noise. Shot placement seems to have no real effect in the game. Your ninja can run around with a !@#$ing arrow in her head and seem to have no negative effects. You'd think that she'd at least get a hematoma and go limp on that side... the lack of common sense in the injuries seems to be really annoying.

Another thing is a small pet peeve of mine which a lot of Japanese games and animes always seem to mess up. The primary function of the SPINAL CORD. In several animes you see people with lacerated or completely severed spinal cords moving around as if nothing happened. No, that doesn't work. In this game, one of the stealth kills perforates the enemies spinal cord. Instant kill! Wait... it doesn't work that fast!! And people can't sound like that when their carotid artery is slashed!

...well... if it was too realistic, i guess it'd get the AO rating. The game has you sneaking around, trying to avoid being spotted so that you can carry out your objectives of sneaking around, killing, sneaking around again, and an occasional boss fight. You have a meter that tells you how aware the enemy is to your presence (Think the tension meter from Hitman or alert phase indicator from Metal Gear Solid). A question mark means you sense a nearby enemy, but they don't know where you are. A single exclamation point means that an enemy sees you, but hasn't IDed you as an intruder. A !? mark indicates that the enemy is alert, but doesn't know where you are. And !! indicates that the enemy knows where you are and has half the mind to rip your head off! But your ninjas combat system is kinda basic. And also, your ninja can fall prey to stealth kills herself. Really, the only thing your ninja can do is look flashy for a few seconds while doing the stealth kills.

Music: If you like the oriental music, you're going to love this game! Voice acting is okay also, except the same three lines over and over again. And some of the sound effects are kinda overkill. I mean, between the grappling hook and obnoxious sounds that play between blows, i'm surprised that the screen doesn't randomly have a word bubble going "POW" when you do a kick attack.

Difficulty: Once you memorize the enemies positions and can outcheat the out of synch stealth kill indicator, there is no difficulty. Bosses are predictable and the enemies are so easy to hide from once you've been spotted. But in that process, expect a lot of random game over screens.

Overall: My my how ninjas have fallen. This game delivers on action and music, but no where else. It's a good game for renting, but buying might be overkill.

My rating: 5/10