Written by: Alex

 

 

 

Despite a few attempts to reboot the series as a 3D brawler on the PS2, for me Shinobi was a series that peaked with the Mega Drive's 'Revenge of Shinobi', an epic 2D slash'em-up platform game. It was an epic tale of shadowy organisations and ninjas, which took me on an adventure across the world.

 

The new 3DS reboot of the franchise, simply called "Shinobi", ignores the last few attempts at 3D brawling, and returns the game to its traditional single plain platform action.

 

 

Shinobi is the simple tale of a ninja on a quest for revenge. It begins some time in the thirteenth century with the hero (presumably still Joe Musashi assuming this is still the same Shinobi of my youth) out to track down the attackers of his clan. After the first level the action quick jumps into the future, before taking Joe on a quest with no seeming grounding in reality.

 

Barely animated comic cut scenes framed by a voice over spouting generic ninja wisdom do little to clarify the bizarre events as the action quickly switches location; but somehow it all feels right. Admittedly it is ridiculous (especially towards the end where the possible origin of ninjas’ is discussed), but in keeping with the original arcade game the story does not matter. All that is important is that there is a pissed off ninja on a mission, and nothing will stop him.

 

 

As with its earlier incarnations Shinobi is a fairly standard 2D platformer/slasher, requiring some route memorisation to really excel. Guiding Joe through levels is (for the most part) a simple matter of jumping between levels of play and attacking or avoiding anyone in your way. While it is a simple formula Shinobi injects enough variation in its level structure and action to keep this feeling fresh throughout. There are levels that seem like mazes, multilevel tower areas, horse chases, boss fights and any number of other twists to keep the action constantly varied as Joe sets out to avenge… what ever it was he was meant to avenge. Its fair to say nothing it does is overly surprising or subtle, but the constant switching and movement between areas sets a fantastic pace for the arcade action.

 

 

Controlling all of this action is a strange mix of new and old. It takes the core elements of the earlier 2D games, but struggles to ignore all of the extra buttons on the system and feels compelled to add new moves to make use of them. It is an odd complaint, but when I played old Shinobi games the most I had at my disposal was jump, attack and magic. With all of the controls now available it seems the designers wanted to complicate this once elegant system. This is not to say it is bad, as it all controls well, but it did cause me trouble at times as old muscle memory kicked in. Separating out kitana and kunai attacks was the first big change as previously a kunai would be thrown automatically when an enemy was at a distance. Now, with each attached to different buttons, there is more versatile allowed (including the addition of combos) but when things really heat up it can at times feel a bit too complicated.

 

The next huge change was the addition of the grappling hook. This was attached to the X button and proved my biggest sticking point with a control system that I could otherwise find little flaw with. Grappling itself actually functioned well building on the pixel perfect jumping that has always been part of the series, with the extra lift provided by the mechanic allowing Joe to reach new levels. Regularly however the combination of jumping, dropping and grappling felt a forced in their interaction (partly due to the jump and grapple buttons being on opposite sides of the cross of control buttons). All of this was particularly troublesome when such sequences were regularly positioned over areas of instant death so the pressure of nailing the sequence (especially at the harder difficulties) felt borderline unfair.

 

The X buttons other functions also serve to confuse matters further. Used for a variety of functions including switching between levels and for a number of sneak attacks the already rarely used button always felt trick when called on.

 

 

But the few control niggles I have listed here are more issues with me than the responsiveness and function of the controls themselves. It's a good thing too as precise action requires split second reactions that can frustrate and delight in equal measure. So bar the odd concealed instant kill, deaths were nearly always the fault of my own inability to react leaving me mad at myself and the level designers but not the game.