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Ten-chew on this. Hey, I made a funny!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 6
Date: December 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ninja Gaiden changes things. Before I played it, Tenchu: Return from Darkness probably would've gotten four stars. But after I dipped into the pot of Ninja Gaiden-ness, and I returned to Tenchu and saw how limited the game was. Well, I didn't use those words exactly; I think I said, "Holy crap! This game sucks compared to Ninja Gaiden!"

But I'm here to talk about Tenchu, aren't I? Yeah, I guess so. Tenchu is a tale of two ninjas, namely a creepy looking ninja-dude, and a hot ninja-chick. There is also a dumpy bald guy, but that comes in later. As these ninjas you fight thru feudal Japan and gain spiffy weapons and crazy abilities. Rikimaru (the dude. Not the Big Lebowski dude though) and Ayame (I forget how to spell it) fight this old dude who is totally whack. Yeah, that makes sense.

What makes Tenchu suck is a lot of things. For starters it has bad graphics. I suppose that could be because it was originally a Playstation game (which I did play with an old buddy of mine who eventually went sort of insane), and after adding "new levels," the tech boys kind of forgot to make the mouths of the characters move when they spoke.

The multiplayer sucks. You can only play with one other person, and not against the machine itself. That really sucks for people like who have no friends (remember? He went insane). And the co-op thingies are stupid.

But, there are enough saving graces to make this game worthwhile. Heck, the "B-side" soundtrack on the Rikimaru storyline is worth the package. The storylines are varied in theme. The Rikimaru and dumpy guy stories play kind of samurai movies (Lone Wolf and Cub and Zatoichi movies, respectively). The Ayame one plays like a...ninja video game plot outline. It seemed a little less creative to me, and the B-side is not a funny as the other two.

The visual graphics are very nicely done. They are stark, high in contrast and somehow reminiscent of a comic book.

Without a doubt, however, the best feature in the game is the following procedure: after you've gained the "animal noise maker" use it with your ninja stars: 1) Toss ninja stars at enemies. They become alert and start searching for who threw that shuriken. 2) Blow the animal noise maker, which will sound like a random animal. (This is normally used when you make noise and alert guards, so as to fool them into thinking it was an animal that made the sound.) 3) Laugh your head off when said enemy reassures himself that it was "just an animal" that attacked him. Also works great when guards find decapitated bodies!

(If you liked that, get the bears to fall down the temple in the Buddhist temple level of the dumpy guy storyline. You'll figure it out.)

Tenchu gets a 3-star rating because it's an average game. It's not evil; it's just stupid at times. Not that that's a bad thing. So Tenchu lovers out there rejoice. I just can't comprehend why.

Neat concepts, but could've been better..

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: March 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First off, why do you morons review something before it is out? What a disservice to have to read! This game should have borrowed heavily from splinter cell, I think any hardcore fan of stealth games would agree. I found the camera adjustments frustrating and some of the AI to be laughable. The only part that I liked was the stealth attacks. I have yet to find a game ported from ps2 to xbox that has been done well, with the exception of Grand Theft Auto.

So here's the thing.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I love the Tenchu games. I'll say now, I am biased in favor of these games, like, a lot. This one is my absolute favorite, for the PS2, and that's the thing; On the PS2, you can actually play this game. The control scheme for this game simply isn't friendly to the xbox controller, so the whole game feels clunky and awkward.

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