Nightshade
Sega's Shinobi sequel is improved, but is it enough to make the game good?
Published: February 22, 2004
2002 saw more than a few updates to classic games, and Sega's Shinobi upgrade that saw Hotsuma and his world make the leap into 3D was certainly one of the higher-profile updates. The problem was, most of the attention lavished on the game wasn't for good reasons. Developer Overworks' treatment of the series was somewhat faithful, but the jump to 3D did more harm than it ever did good; an incredibly high difficulty level, cheap deaths and a camera that never seemed to point in the right direction all conspired against you, and when you finally did die, you'd have to start the level all over again.
The sequel, Nightshade, does plenty to try to break from the encumbrances that hampered what could have been a great update in the first place, and introduces a few key improvements like mid-level checkpoints and a overall lower difficulty level, but the camera is still impossibly difficult to juggle while zipping through levels (and especially while fighting bosses) and there are still more than a few cheap deaths.
To understand what would keep anyone playing a game that literally makes only a modicum of effort to change things up from level to level, you must first understand what makes the game attractive in the first place. It's not the story, really, which essentially picks up where the first game left off, with uberhottie Hibana working for the Japanese government in search of the shattered pieces of Hotsuma's demon sword as another portal into a demon dimension is breached, spilling tons of vaguely insectoid baddies into the still-recovering futurescape of Shinobi's Tokyo.
Instead, Nightshade's attraction lies in the key gameplay mechanic, which carried over part and parcel from Shinobi; the ability to zip at incredible speed from enemy to enemy in a particular area, picking off more and more enemies at a time. Kill more than three of them before an always-dwindling timer runs out, and you'll perform a Tate, which snubs the life of all the linked kills in one cinematic moment. It's oddly fun, and essentially the only piece of strategy the game offers to offset one of its biggest flaws: each level is just a succession of dashes from one group of enemies to the next, with very, very little in the way of window dressing to keep you entertained.
Things certainly do require a bit of finesse, of course, and Hibana has a handful of cool moves borrowed from her ninja brother Hotsuma and a few of her own that at least give her a varied attack repertoire; she can toss out shuriken one at a time or release eight at once in mid-air with a slick attack pulled off at the apex of her standard double-jump, she can kick enemies, either to break their defenses or juggle them into the air who can then be turned into an earthbound bomb of sorts if the juggle is followed up with a quick air attack, a pair of quick (but less powerful) daggers can be used to rack up higher combos when you tire of using a sword to dispatch enemies, and the usual wall running (Hibana can attach and run along nearly any flat surface in the game), dashes and Ninjitsu magic can be unleashed at will.
By holding R1, Hibana locks onto a nearby enemy and can then zip directly towards them -- even in mid-air. If she can connect, she's granted an additional mid-air jump and dash to complement the original double-jump and dash allotted to get to an enemy in the first place. This often is the only way to cross a chasm or wide hazardous expanse, and if it weren't for the camera that constantly requires readjusting for the best angle, it'd allow for some relatively breezy, if mildly challenging exercises in working Hibana's skillset. Instead, it can turn jumping over pits (or failing to see them) into a needlessly difficult exercise. It's already been pointed out in previous reviews, but nowhere is this more apparent than in a tunnel level where you have to jump from car to car, and smacking pavement at high speed means instant death. The camera does its best to obscure your next jump nearly every time, and it takes a Herculean act of control over dash-jump moves, chained Tate strings and deft mastery of the right analog stick all at the same time to make it through the level.
This is Nightshade's biggest problem. For all the little advances that were made to ease the controller-chucking frustration of Shinobi, still plenty has been left untouched, chiefly that damned useless camera. While it's understandably nearly impossible to craft a perfect camera that can take into account the order in which a player will attack enemies, I'd still take the view pulling away from a locked-on enemy to highlight a pitfall below any day.
Should you manage to hold it together to make it through some of the latter levels, you'll find some modest rewards for all your hard work. Boss fights are fun (if a little on the easy side once you learn the boss patterns and realize that the randomly spawning enemies are meant to be used as part of a Tate string that will add a huge amount of damage to your normal attacks), and the swath of destruction you cut through a given level is graded not only in voraciousness but in finesse, meaning nailing a high grade as you attempt to combo through every single group of enemies is a game in its own right. It's probably not enough to entertain most gamers, but those of us who are perfectionists already know how Sega loves to appeal to that flavor of our compulsions.
While Shinobi boasted a mesmerizing gimmick in Hotsuma's cape, the overall look of the game was barren to say the least. Nightshade offers a little more in the way of destructible objects, but the same sparse approach to level design and graphical detail is still there. Sega WOW tried to break free of Shinobi's painfully linear and repetitive sequence of boxes, but Nightshade's levels are really only cosmetically altered. The same boxed out sequence of rooms is largely at play here, and while things stay pretty silky framerate-wise throughout the game, they likely should for all the lack in effects and detail.
That's not to say there aren't the occasional flourishes you'd hope for from Sega. Hibana's twin streamers that leave elongated pink trails are even more fun to watch than Hotsuma's cape, and the random odd effect like the magical barriers impeding progress until all enemies (or in some cases objects) in an area are destroyed are dispelled are nice, if a little simplistic. Hibana's overall design, while a little more form over function, is certainly pleasing to the eye, and her animations are every bit as silken and catlike as any game you're going to find on the PS2. It's obvious that the focus in art design was put on her (and, to a lesser extent, the enemies) rather than the architecture, which may have been a conscious artistic move, but most would consider it a poor one.
The CG sequences (and they are rather plentiful for a 3D game these days) are well done, providing plenty of detail for Hibana and other characters, but much like the game proper, they usually skimp on world detail in favor of the occasional slick effect, opting rather to focus on making every action by the heroine and her protagonists look gorgeous. In the CG sequences, there's enough eye candy where it's not as bad, but in-game things are just a bit too bleak visually to excuse the overall look.
Aside from the decent voice acting (it's all rather low-key and for the most part lacks excessive emotion, which saves our ears from random overzealous anime-style outbursts), and the familiar clean, crisp whoosh, clang and slash effects, the audio manages to execute on par with your typical 128-bit effort. The music alternates between enjoyable and painfully basic on some levels, but it's nothing that requires any real effort to describe. It's good overall, yes, but only in that you don't feel the need to turn it down in the options halfway through a level.
Much like Shinobi, I wanted desperately to like this game. My rejection in the end took far, far less time than my nostalgia-addled brain wrestled with in Shinobi, since it was blatantly obvious from the start that the first game's problems hadn't been addressed as a whole. Yes, the addition of checkpoints eases the frustration, but only a bit. This is a series that can absolutely end up being great, but to get there, it still needs a better scope on varied (and, hopefully, jaw-slackeningly beautiful) level design and for the love of God, Sega, fix that damned camera. Should those two things be fixed on a grand scale, there's every reason to believe that the next game, if there is one, could be something to really show Sega's move to a software-only company wasn't a bad idea. As it stands now, though, little about Nightshade warrants anything but a casual rental.
The sequel, Nightshade, does plenty to try to break from the encumbrances that hampered what could have been a great update in the first place, and introduces a few key improvements like mid-level checkpoints and a overall lower difficulty level, but the camera is still impossibly difficult to juggle while zipping through levels (and especially while fighting bosses) and there are still more than a few cheap deaths.
To understand what would keep anyone playing a game that literally makes only a modicum of effort to change things up from level to level, you must first understand what makes the game attractive in the first place. It's not the story, really, which essentially picks up where the first game left off, with uberhottie Hibana working for the Japanese government in search of the shattered pieces of Hotsuma's demon sword as another portal into a demon dimension is breached, spilling tons of vaguely insectoid baddies into the still-recovering futurescape of Shinobi's Tokyo.
Instead, Nightshade's attraction lies in the key gameplay mechanic, which carried over part and parcel from Shinobi; the ability to zip at incredible speed from enemy to enemy in a particular area, picking off more and more enemies at a time. Kill more than three of them before an always-dwindling timer runs out, and you'll perform a Tate, which snubs the life of all the linked kills in one cinematic moment. It's oddly fun, and essentially the only piece of strategy the game offers to offset one of its biggest flaws: each level is just a succession of dashes from one group of enemies to the next, with very, very little in the way of window dressing to keep you entertained.
Things certainly do require a bit of finesse, of course, and Hibana has a handful of cool moves borrowed from her ninja brother Hotsuma and a few of her own that at least give her a varied attack repertoire; she can toss out shuriken one at a time or release eight at once in mid-air with a slick attack pulled off at the apex of her standard double-jump, she can kick enemies, either to break their defenses or juggle them into the air who can then be turned into an earthbound bomb of sorts if the juggle is followed up with a quick air attack, a pair of quick (but less powerful) daggers can be used to rack up higher combos when you tire of using a sword to dispatch enemies, and the usual wall running (Hibana can attach and run along nearly any flat surface in the game), dashes and Ninjitsu magic can be unleashed at will.
By holding R1, Hibana locks onto a nearby enemy and can then zip directly towards them -- even in mid-air. If she can connect, she's granted an additional mid-air jump and dash to complement the original double-jump and dash allotted to get to an enemy in the first place. This often is the only way to cross a chasm or wide hazardous expanse, and if it weren't for the camera that constantly requires readjusting for the best angle, it'd allow for some relatively breezy, if mildly challenging exercises in working Hibana's skillset. Instead, it can turn jumping over pits (or failing to see them) into a needlessly difficult exercise. It's already been pointed out in previous reviews, but nowhere is this more apparent than in a tunnel level where you have to jump from car to car, and smacking pavement at high speed means instant death. The camera does its best to obscure your next jump nearly every time, and it takes a Herculean act of control over dash-jump moves, chained Tate strings and deft mastery of the right analog stick all at the same time to make it through the level.
This is Nightshade's biggest problem. For all the little advances that were made to ease the controller-chucking frustration of Shinobi, still plenty has been left untouched, chiefly that damned useless camera. While it's understandably nearly impossible to craft a perfect camera that can take into account the order in which a player will attack enemies, I'd still take the view pulling away from a locked-on enemy to highlight a pitfall below any day.
Should you manage to hold it together to make it through some of the latter levels, you'll find some modest rewards for all your hard work. Boss fights are fun (if a little on the easy side once you learn the boss patterns and realize that the randomly spawning enemies are meant to be used as part of a Tate string that will add a huge amount of damage to your normal attacks), and the swath of destruction you cut through a given level is graded not only in voraciousness but in finesse, meaning nailing a high grade as you attempt to combo through every single group of enemies is a game in its own right. It's probably not enough to entertain most gamers, but those of us who are perfectionists already know how Sega loves to appeal to that flavor of our compulsions.
While Shinobi boasted a mesmerizing gimmick in Hotsuma's cape, the overall look of the game was barren to say the least. Nightshade offers a little more in the way of destructible objects, but the same sparse approach to level design and graphical detail is still there. Sega WOW tried to break free of Shinobi's painfully linear and repetitive sequence of boxes, but Nightshade's levels are really only cosmetically altered. The same boxed out sequence of rooms is largely at play here, and while things stay pretty silky framerate-wise throughout the game, they likely should for all the lack in effects and detail.
That's not to say there aren't the occasional flourishes you'd hope for from Sega. Hibana's twin streamers that leave elongated pink trails are even more fun to watch than Hotsuma's cape, and the random odd effect like the magical barriers impeding progress until all enemies (or in some cases objects) in an area are destroyed are dispelled are nice, if a little simplistic. Hibana's overall design, while a little more form over function, is certainly pleasing to the eye, and her animations are every bit as silken and catlike as any game you're going to find on the PS2. It's obvious that the focus in art design was put on her (and, to a lesser extent, the enemies) rather than the architecture, which may have been a conscious artistic move, but most would consider it a poor one.
The CG sequences (and they are rather plentiful for a 3D game these days) are well done, providing plenty of detail for Hibana and other characters, but much like the game proper, they usually skimp on world detail in favor of the occasional slick effect, opting rather to focus on making every action by the heroine and her protagonists look gorgeous. In the CG sequences, there's enough eye candy where it's not as bad, but in-game things are just a bit too bleak visually to excuse the overall look.
Aside from the decent voice acting (it's all rather low-key and for the most part lacks excessive emotion, which saves our ears from random overzealous anime-style outbursts), and the familiar clean, crisp whoosh, clang and slash effects, the audio manages to execute on par with your typical 128-bit effort. The music alternates between enjoyable and painfully basic on some levels, but it's nothing that requires any real effort to describe. It's good overall, yes, but only in that you don't feel the need to turn it down in the options halfway through a level.
Much like Shinobi, I wanted desperately to like this game. My rejection in the end took far, far less time than my nostalgia-addled brain wrestled with in Shinobi, since it was blatantly obvious from the start that the first game's problems hadn't been addressed as a whole. Yes, the addition of checkpoints eases the frustration, but only a bit. This is a series that can absolutely end up being great, but to get there, it still needs a better scope on varied (and, hopefully, jaw-slackeningly beautiful) level design and for the love of God, Sega, fix that damned camera. Should those two things be fixed on a grand scale, there's every reason to believe that the next game, if there is one, could be something to really show Sega's move to a software-only company wasn't a bad idea. As it stands now, though, little about Nightshade warrants anything but a casual rental.
