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Dom Robinson reviews
Sony 
- Price: £29.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: Yes
- 60Hz: Yes
- DTS sound: No
Shinobido: The Way of the Ninja has many a moment that makes you want to shoutwith joy as you play it,but if your character was to do this then he’d soon be dead as the way of the ninja is to remain as silentas possible as you go about your deadly business.
It’s the late 16th century and the back story tells us that at the end of the Muromachi Period there’s a civilwar about to break out, including the Utakata, long peacefully ruled by the House of Icihjo (why is Jo itchy?).Yes, you get the impression that the storyline does tend to be the kind of thing that’ll be instantlyforgettable so I’ll be brief. The fact is that your House used to be in alliance with the Asuka Ninja Clan,but now they’re all dead so, as you might expect, it seems to fall to you alone to get done everything ofwhich you’re asked.
Yes, that’s right, it’s one man against the world, heading off to kick ninja butt, but bear in mind thatwhile you’re meant to behave in a stealth-like fashion, if you do get some people’s backs up and theycall for back-up (ooh, that sort-of rhymed), then you’ll be swamped and the Help FAQ tells you torun away from heavy fights that you can’t win. You’re there to accept missions and get rewarded in cashwhich you can use to purchase additional health packs and items to attack such as shuriken.Oh, and the ‘How to’ helpfile, in the form of advice scrolls, makes all forms of combat look easy,but certainly not in a fast battle.
Shinobido is a game that requires patience and dexterity similar to that of theHitmanseries, even though it doesn’t quite reach that game’s heights, otherwise you’ll attract such unwelcome attention, soit’s best to plan out your method of attack as to who you’re going to kill first. Watch the way theywalk back and forth like a sentry, then enjoy the great fun as you creep up behind them and slashtheir throat and, thus, kill ’em! You’ll hear a ‘swish’ sound of your sword as you approach and,effectively, know that you can perform the deadly deed.
If you kill someone in a building then try and drag the corpse out of the way if there’s likely tobe someone walking by any time soon. If you’re out and about in a town square when you’re committingmurder then you definitely don’t want this to be discovered. As such, they can sometimes be dumpeddown a nearby well so no-one will be any the wiser.
One of the first things you’ll notice as you inevitably get into trouble with the locals is that thecontroller vibrates when you’re panicking, to simulate your heartbeat. This is quite handy becausethat, coupled with the music that you hear, will give you an indication of whether you’re likely tobe safe if you think you’ve escaped the eye of the enemy. In fact, at times it can get very fast so inone sense it’s quite difficult and will take a long time to master, leading to great longevity here.
However, unless you’re being followed by some of the more expert types across the enemies you’ll face,you can jump up and run across rooftops to avoid being seen by them, which highlights the often poorAI as you can easily hide away and they soon forget about you. I found this particularly daft in areconnaissance mission I passed because four ninja guys were following me and I evaded their stares andswords by jumping up onto the roof of a wooden hut. Once they’d got on with their own business againthere would often be one just standing about not paying attention to what was going on behind him uponwhich I could strike. Naturally, this disturbed the others and we went through this cycle until theywere all dead and the mission was therefore complete.
Of the items available to you to use, the sword is easily the weapon of choice. It can get you out of abind if cornered by simply thrashing it about and, when you kill someone, you can grab their sword anduse two at once. This doesn’t work for too long as your man has a tendancy to throw one of them awaywhen you’d rather he held onto it. The grapple hook is good fun, used in similar fashion to Spiderman’sweb-slinging antics, but the control system used to select an item and then use it by focusing on whatyou want to grapple onto can get too complex at times and if you’re being chased by someone then forgetit – just leap onto a wall and there’s bound to be a roof nearby.
Similarly, in the heat of battle, to select and throw accurately certain items you’ve boughtbeforehand, such as a shuriken. It’s so much easier to just hack’n’slash with your sword.
That said, once you’ve got the jist of this title, and it will take a few hours to do so, you canperform pretty cool moves and a few different attack combos like jumping about and snapping someone’sneck or grappling with them. Try to avoid the latter if others might be nearby since if you don’t killthe one with which you’re grappling, you’ll both spend a moment to catch your breath and it’s at thatpoint where the others will strike.
One slightly annoying this is the game’s autosave feature so if you screw up a mission you can’t redoit, you lose ‘trust’ and have to soldier on and rebuild that trust, by either doing some easier,less-rewarding missions or staying home and defending your garden from baddies. Without checking again,I think this is turn offable but the missions and locations do get a bit repetitive, as do the backdrops,so the same one will come up again in some form or another if not the same mission again itself. In fact,I killed some bigwig a second time within the space of a few missions, thinking it couldn’t really behim again, surely? The names of them aren’t easily memorable so I just made an assumption. Still, it wasgood fun to slash his throat again…
In this title’s cut-scenes, the mystical stuff does tend to ramble on a bit. Inbetween assignments, youcan also read letters on scrolls but they don’t seem to add anything to the experience unless you reallybuy into the atmosphere as more than just an enjoyable fighting game. And if you do then what will spoilit is not only some weird camera angle issues when involved in a heavy fight by a wall, but also the factthat all the enemy ninja sound like Mick Jagger, such is their accent; and when you jump and strike out,you make a sound similar to when Pete from Big Brother 7 would knock out a quick “Wank!”
Overall, Shinobido: The Way of the Ninja is a great piece of gaming fun but might not be toeveryone’s taste so you may wish to try a rental first, particularly since the graphics are far fromthe best we’ve come to expect on the PS2. They move fast, but there’s jaggies aplenty more frequentlythan is good for a console that can avoid them when it wants to.
The assassination missions are far more fun to play than deliveries or collections. If I wanted thelatter two I’d get a job as a courier(!) After all, who can pass up the chance to be even more sneakythan I’ve described so far and stab through paper-thin walls to kill a baddie? Either way, whichevertype of mission you’re setting off on, if you get stuck then pay heed to the compass Arrow at thebottom-right of the screen which will show you the way to go.
GRAPHICS
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALLReview copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.