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The hardest freakin' game ever created

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've never played the original Shinobi games, but I heard they were cool. Then I bought a magazine that came with a demo disc featuring the highly anticipated rebirth of the Shinobi game. After getting home, I put the disc in and began the demo level (I think it was the second level in the final version), anyway, the first thing I noticed was his scarf, which is like a big wisp of blood running from his face and following him everywhere. Which was pretty cool, then I started fighting.

Now the game isn't bad. But it's certainly not stellar. And one of it's downfalls is the fighting. Not so much the button configuration or anything, but the delay of action after you do something. For example, if you swing to slice somebody in half, and you know there is an enemy ready to strike from behind, after you attack the first guy, there is a bit of a pause and you get hit. There is no avoiding this, even when you scoot across the screen like in all the magazine ads. Somehow, enemies always seem to hit you if they want. I just wish it were that easy for the player.

While not incredibly long, the game certainly isn't short. And the extras it provides are a real challenge to unlock. Mainly the ones that require you to first beat the game. Which, in itself, is one of the most difficult tasks no gamer should have to suffer. My friend and I would stay up all night trying to beat some of the later levels, and still not win. In the beginning though, it is fairly easy. Until you get to the platforming levels that is.

This game's camera acts like an alcoholic behind the wheel Jaguar. If it's not directly on you, it's nowhere. You might be on your 100th attempt at a frickin' hole you're supposed to jump from panel to panel to get across, and you'll be doing fine, until an ungrateful bastard of an enemy pops up and canstantly attacks you until you kill him. But wait, he has friends, so you have to kill all of them too. And of course they are flying, so you find yourself over a bottomless pit, cutting up enemies when all of a sudden you trigger this "tate" cutscene, which is supposed to make you look like a badass as all of your enemies fall to pieces at the same time in the background, but guess what, you can't see those aforementioned foes because the camera is directly on top of you. So all you see is your character sliding his sword back in it's sheath, making some "badass" remark under his breath, and the blackness of the pit you find yourself hovering over. So as soon as you regain control, you must frantically try to find somewhere to land, which you will find only happens ten percent of the time. Which, in turn, will give you the urge to slice up your television and everything else in your room. And that's just the first couple platforming levels, you haven't even begun to feel pain yet kids.

The later levels are vast and sprawling, in the most linear terms possible. They are quite large, and you'll actually see alot of them in great detail as you find yourself searching for enemies to kill before your soul-sucking sword kills you. Enemies are few and far between, and the ones you do find, will either kick your ass, or find some friends to help kick your ass. Sure, you could try and use some skill and dash all over the area, slicing and dicing, but you WILL get hit. And as far as skill goes, there is none involved in this game. The only way you can beat this monster of a title is to get pissed off, yell at it, then hope for some incredible luck. Which, by the way, only works about half the time.

On the graphics side, they're decent. Nothing special, kind of bland (the environments especially). The only thing that really sticks out is that cool looking scarf, which is more distracting that the monsters, but in a good way, I suppose. Well, you can probably find the game for around 15 to 20 dollars, so it's not too bad a deal. I recommend it to anyone looking for a challenge, but be careful, you might break it before you beat it.

Oh yeah, that difficulty I was talking about, that didn't even skim the surface of the insanely hard bosses, which thankfully, don't come until atleast halfway through the game. Well, that's all I have to say. Buy it if you are massochistic, pass it if you like your sanity.

Graphics-3 (the scarf gets a 4)
Sound-3
Control-3
Overall-3.5

plays like a rock in a hard place, but still rocks

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Ok before i give my two cents on whether the quality and fun value is above par, i just want to note the things in this game that might be difficult and down right annoying.

- rallying up enemies during a boss fight to execute a tate on it using one hit
- platformless levels that require adequate execution of jumps and dashes
- progressing on in a level, with too few of enemies while trying to maintain your health and appease the life sucking sword
- trying to aquire as many secrets in the game and pass the level without losing in order to save it
- figuring out to whether keep going or just die and go to sleep.

Whelp, that sums up the pains and aches of the game. And yes, as much as i hate to use codes in a game, this game requires it in order to access the secrets that are damn near impossible to get. But I love this game more than any other game on the PS2, (ZOE2 comes second) I guess because of it's simplicity, great color pattern of levels and the art work. I only own one the older shinobi titles, which they all bore me except for Shinobi Legions, but this game's got speed and drive. A drive to kill or be killed not only by enemies but also by the sword you wield. I come from an RPG world of games, and after playing this, I was instantly hooked, yes it will piss you off and cause your brain to tell you things you normally would think is insane, like throwing your PS2 out the window or biting the controller's cable, to check if there is a problem with either your controller or your fingers due to endless deaths of pit falling. But if you like a SERIOUS challenge, just play it and enjoy.

Shinobi, a waste of time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: July 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have heard that people really liked the game play of Shinobi, but I felt it was really lacking in some areas. Althought the fights were very interesting and actually fun to go through, it ended up being the same thing over and over again. Also, the story progressed nicely, but it you really had no hand in how the story progressed. It was as if you were in a maze and your objective was to get to the other end of the maze, but the only problem is the maze only consists of a solitary line, going from beginning to end.

I just do not see any re-play value in the game!

I'm getting REAL sick of falling down pits!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I like most of this game esp. with the graphics(shinobi's flowing scarf)and the gameplay(all of the quick/flash moves).I also had alot of fun throwing knives/stars at enemies and seeing the random cut scene when you slice up four or more bad guys!

Only thing I got sick of was falling down so many pits and getting the GAME OVER CONTINUE? screen!Shinobi can cling to walls,so why can't he save his butt and land on the ground?It would have made more sense esp, since this game is 3D to have flat ground underneath the buildings instead of a black bottomless void to instantly die in.

My last gripe was that I felt some of the bosses were just a pain in the ... Some of them had WAY too much of an advantage over me!As for the cut scenes and the rating system at the end of each level,I felt they weren't needed.But I guess some people will like them.This game was almost a perfect return to old school hack-and slash,but didn't quite make it.Still worth checking out though.

Enemies pop up out of nowhere

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

When i bought this game one of my expectations was that it would have some sort of stealth involved.I mean Ninja=stealth right? they were assasins and spies in fuedul japan, there had to be stealth involved. I was disappointed to find that all you do is go around slaughtering enemies, that literally pop up out of no where! And the reason you kill is, for revenge.Wow! How original. If you like the older sega and nintendo games then this game is perfect. You get: enemies pop out of nowhere, massive slaughtering, nintendo style techno, and levels with the same scenery.

From an old school gamer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm a big fan of the old shinobi games. This lastest one sort of dissapoints me. The new Shinobi is meant to be a very straight forward action hack'kill'kill'jump style game, but missing to me is the fun I used to get when I played the old shinibo games. Like alot of reviews have mentioned, this is a really difficult game! Some of my problems with the game are:
-The levels just weren't designed very well. You keep running and passing the same turn or same hall over and over. They could have been a little more creative with the level design.
-Voice acting is terrible! I'd rather have just plain subtitles then hear the voices in this game. The sound the main character makes when he walks over a spider web, uggggghhhh.
-There's more emphasis on using the sword rather then throwing shirikens. The old games usually were opposite, meaning you did most of your damage by throwing the shirikens rather then using the sword. I understand why the developers would want to change that because sometimes it make killing your enemies way too easy in the old games. It's just not the same though with all the sword action.

Overall, the design of the Shinobi character is very cool. It's a very stylish design. If you're thinking about buying this one because you liked the old shinobi games, you might just want rent it or demo it somewhere first.

Hard

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is way to hard and repetitive. Your sword eats away at your health if you don't feed it. The graphics aren't that good. The levels look alike. Hard to master the controls. The story is stupid.

Shinobi means Stealth...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: April 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just wanted to correct the guy below me, often people have IQ's of 20/15, but then again some people just don't know. Anyways Shinobi means Stealth. This is a great game, I got the Sega Master System version of this game.

Fast & Furious

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've never played any of the Shinobi games except for this one so I consider myself a non fan. But I am a fan of Samurai/Ninja games (Tenchu, Way of the Samurai, Kengo, Bushido Blade). The only thing Shinobi has in common with prior games of the genre is that you fight with a sword. That's it. Shinobi is the fastest Samurai/Ninja game I've ever seen. This game is not about deep thinking or stealth. It is about speed and finesse.

What I liked about the game:

- Good graphics, high frame rates, and beautify cutscenes- though the cutscenes don't really move the plot along in any interesting way.
- The hero is very cool.
- Hero can pull off a wide variety of moves using very simple controls. To a spectator it all looks very cool.
- It's really your skill in finessing these moves that determines if you survive in this game. You have to master the rapid sequential kills (called TATE) in order to defeat the later bosses. This is not a Quake game, hacking at a boss repeatedly won't kill it. The controls are designed to assist you in reaching this state of "TATE-ness" but you have to allow it to happen- ie use the R1 button frequently.
- Also watch the demo screens when the game boots up, they are useful in figuring out what kinds of moves your character is capable of.

What frustrated me about the game:

- I was warned by prior reviews that this was a difficult game- it really is very difficult. It took me about a dozen tries to get through level 3. That's before I found out that I can cut through some of the walls in the Mall to reveal health bonuses. Fortunately if you get killed at a boss level you resume in the boss fight level, not at the beginning of the level.
- Camera has a mind of its own sometimes- especially in the most awkward times- like when you are trying to deal your death blow to a boss.
- Graphics is repetitive. For each level you enter, the textures are reused an aweful lot.
- There are no save points until an entire level (including boss) has been killed! This is the most frustrating thing about the game, but if you think about it for a moment, you'll quickly realize that being able to save the game at an arbitraty point would in fact kill the pace of the game.

Question

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: January 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Ok, I havent really played the game yet cause i cant get it to work. When I put the game in the system it goes through the blue and black screen then it shows PlyStation2 in white on the black screen and then that dissapears. Then a little whie box with wthite writing on the inside comes up that reads some junk about u need a "memroy card for Ps2 with atleast 370KB of free space to save this game" and i have a memory card for PS2 with 2,040KB of free space and i think thats more then enough. And at the bottom of the screen it shows the x button and the o button and continue written next to it. I've tried to every x and o combination but bothing seems to work. My question is how do u get passed that screen to play the game. If thi has happened to you and you know the answer please write a revie titled answer so i can know. thanx....

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