TENCHU 3: WRATH of HEAVEN (PS2)


The best Tenchu game yet?

By MARTIN KINGSLEY

The Tenchu series of games started out, way back in the mists of time, when the big grey box known only as "the Playstation" had just touched down and the Sega Saturn was still haunting the back shelves of Cash Converters.

We were still agonising over Ecstatica 2 and bouncing around with glee over Quake: Men were men and polygons were jagged.

At this time, when the only games available for the fat grey rectangle came in Abe's Odyssey and V-Rally flavour, in sauntered Tenchu.

Actually, it descended via the skylight ala Mission Impossible, lobbed a few smoke grenades around the place and then quite happily assassinated my goldfish, leaving behind only a lingering smell of silicon and a few solitary scales floating on the watery surface of my ornate Harley Davidson-motif fish bowl.

With an emphasis on sneakiness and dirty tricks, Tenchu was packed with more violence, ninjas, Tokugawa-Shogunate style bribe takers and horribly off-kilter humour than you could shake a shuriken at.

Tenchu followed the adventures of 2 dedicated assassins, Rikkimaru (the nasty looking dude with the white hair) and Ayame (a complete rip-off of Ninja Scroll's girl-ninja). As samurai under the command of your retainer Lord Gohda, you are dispatched on missions to keep the general peace in Gohda's cosy little part of Japan, for example killing a merchant who has been trafficking village girls to illegal brothels.

This generally involves you ending up getting blood all over your nice clean sword, but hey, what can you do?

As these missions require subtlety, you had to plan out your approach and time everything just right, or you could be facing an angry unit of pike-toting guards before you could say "Banzai!" ala Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

In fact, little grasshopper notes with interest that Tenchu could even be considered a spiritual ancestor of sorts to that sneak-em-up classic, Metal Gear Solid. Unfortunately, and to Tenchu's detriment, the control system was…funky, to say the least.

Minor but still quite annoying bugs plagued the controls and clipping issues didn't help in the slightest. The AI could also go from dramatically dumb to downright insane in less time than it takes to hire a hibachi chef. Nevertheless, it still maintained a core following and became a sort of cult classic in its own right.

Anyway, this core following must have bought enough copies for someone to commission a prequel because, if you fast forward by 2 years, Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins (BotSA) has been released, to a general outcry from the citizens of Planet Politically Correct and a general cry of "Yay!" from all the Tenchu fans.

A prequel of sorts, BotSA improved on its predecessor in nearly every way, with more detailed graphics, way better controls and cooler stealth kills. The storyline was also fun to play out, but not nearly as intricate as the first, detailing how it is that Rikkimaru and Ayame came to be retained by Gohda and how they started off their careers.

And now, after a spate of silence from those nice boys and gals at Sony, we once again get to ninja our way back into medieval Japan, bowls of poisoned rice at the ready.

First off, it's worth mentioning that Tenchu 3 should be bought just to see the incredible intro, which effectively captures the dramatic feel of a 60s samurai flick such as the prolific and now incredibly rare "Lone Wolf with Cub" series as well as the non-stop action and grace of Rurouni Kenshin and its OAV brother Samurai X.

Cinematic niceties aside, you quickly get down to business, choosing your ninja and heading off into the night. It's interesting to see that the 2 samurai not only require different styles of play to use effectively, but have different plot arcs as well.

For instance, the first mission of Rikkimaru's story involves the assassination of a dirty businessman (strangely enough, this was the basic idea of the first mission of the original Tenchu), whilst his counterpart Ayame must head off into a convoluted and not a little confusing bamboo forest to deal with a lost temple supposed to have the women of the nearest village under their control.

However, like the soon-to-be-released Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, the plot arcs may be different, but the outcome is still the same, with Ayame catching up with the crooked businessman in mission 2 instead of mission 1, and Rikkimaru totally ignoring the whole temple side story.

However, these trivial missions quickly come to a close, and you then start to understand the whole underlying backstory that ties these various beginning missions together, a backstory which rapidly becomes THE story within the space of a couple of hours, following an attempt on Lord Gohda's life and the revelation that someone with a whole lot of power is making a play for grand divinity using a selection of unexplainably powerful magic stones.

Sure, this may not be the most original of storylines, but the overall game design more than makes up for this lack of originality, combining a Tomb Raider-style camera setup with the fast paced button mashing combo attitude of Dead or Alive and the stylish fatalities of Mortal Kombat in a juicy Dead to Rights dramatising-angle sauce.

A mishmash of ideas and styles, one would think that it would be impossible for it all to work as a cohesive unit, but it does, and surprisingly well at that.

While the controls take a bit of getting used to, in practically no time at all you'll be swinging from rooftops with infinite ease and slaying useless guards left and right.

My personal gripe with Tenchu 3 has to be that it sometimes is very vague about where it is you have to go and doesn't give any hints on how the hell it is you actually read the map.

This would have been extremely helpful in the early stages, where a lack of clarity is notably present, more so in Rikkimaru's missions than in Ayame's, but it's still there.

Thankfully, after much frustration, you will hopefully gain insight into how the map works, and things should become wonderfully clear beyond that point.

As far as visuals go, Tenchu is a mixed bag, with excellent motion capture, average lip-synch, texturing which ranges from bland to downright creepy and enemy designs that run up and down that same gradient.

The aforementioned guards and samurai make up a major portion of the opening 3 or 4 mission's opponents, after which everything gets rather Resident Evil-ish, with terrifying zombies, pools (literally, like as in swimming pools) of blood and undying spirits out in force, with your average, everyday Joe Monster rearing his ugly head from time to time.

The computer AI is really quite inefficient or, as my friend [gF]Draxlord rather aptly described them, "They're a bunch of bricks." I've never seen so many people hit their own colleagues over the head with a sword before.

Brick-like or not, however, there sure are a lot of these morons, and boy do they like to swarm you. It's like the fleshy equivalent of a tank rush, with the exception that I wouldn't trust these fools with a go-kart, let alone a tank.

However, while it may be the ultimate challenge to attempt a completely silent mission with not one alarm being set off, the real challenge is resisting the temptation to beat every single one of the guards to death with a dead cod.

Moving on, special mention must go to the inventive and innumerable ways to go about killing people, and the pure quality of the death animations, some of which are so utterly destructive on the human body it would make Leatherface stand back and take notice.

From the kung-fu bone breaker Ayame specials, to Rikkimaru's silent but deadly one-slash-kill Batousai-style attacks, you really have to watch these things 3 or 4 times to understand the whole attack -- and believe me, you'll go "OUCH!" once you do.

Personal favourites include the two-legged neck snap, spinning decapitation and lateral skull incision (read: chop the top of someone's head off).

Mortal Kombat would be proud.

Also, the inventory contains some rather cool stock, although the throwing knives are complete duds.

Poisoned rice, various potions and more explosives than you can shake a demolitionist at, along with one or two novelty items that really don't help in the long run and are best left alone.

In retrospect, this is probably the finest of the Tenchu series, with a nice emphasis on action and some stealthiness thrown in for good measure.

Plus it's got ninjas and a really, really funny card game gag. While it is not the next resurrection of Jubei Kepagami and Co, it is a solidly enjoyable 3rd person slasher with much going for it and just a couple of little faults that keep it from rising to the heights of perfection.

ORIGINALITY 70%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 85%
PLAYABILITY 80%
ENJOYMENT 80%
OVERALL 80%