Dom Robinson reviews

Distributed by
Sony

Price: £34.99 Players: 1 Widescreen: Yes Shinobido: Tales of the Ninja follows on from last year's PS2 release, Shinobido: Way of the Ninja, and is equally addictive, but be careful when you miss a step and fall from a high platform and into the deep abyss as you're likely to scream out in denial, thus waking everyone else up on the bus to work. In this handheld continuation, Ichijo is still itchy and still the leader of Utakata. It's still the late 16th century and the back story tells us that at the end of the Muromachi Period there's a civil war about to break out, including the Utakata, long peacefully ruled by the House of Icihjo. Yes, you get the impression that the storyline does tend to be the kind of thing that'll be instantly forgettable so I'll be brief. The fact is that your House used to be in alliance with the Asuka Ninja Clan, but now they're all dead so, as you might expect, it seems to fall to you alone to get done everything of which you're asked. Yes, it's still one man against the world, heading off to kick ninja butt, but bear in mind that while you're meant to behave in a stealth-like fashion, if you do get some people's backs up and they call for back-up (ooh, that sort-of rhymed), then you'll be swamped and the Help FAQ tells you to run away from heavy fights that you can't win. You're there to accept missions and get rewarded in cash which you can use to purchase additional health packs and items to attack such as shuriken. Oh, and the 'How to' helpfile, in the form of advice scrolls, makes all forms of combat look easy, but certainly not in a fast battle.

As to how this release plays, well you still have same dexterity of the PS2 version and, here, you need to use the directional buttons to access the four items of your inventory. In fact, it's not too bad that you don’t have a second joystick to look round with as it’s quite effective to hold the right shoulder button and ‘O’, then look around with the D-pad (it’s not as confusing as it sounds, even when holding the left shoulder button down also to lock on to a target. This time round you can also redo missions, whereas with the PS2 version you had to move on to another one. The missions are selected not from a list, but from a 2D map that you move around on and occasionally you'll be able to skip one in order to get ahead but not always, so don't bank on the fact that a difficult level can easily be bypassed.

Another difference, is that whereas the PS2 version allowed you to drag away and hide the corpses of people you'd murdered, this wasn't possible in the PSP edition. Presumably due to memory limitations and in order to keep everything moving on a small screen, like a game of Grand Theft Auto, the baddies simply disappear before long and whereas a dead body would've caused suspicion from nearby enemies, here they'll have heard your footsteps as you run about anyway, so they're on your tail before too long anyway. Shinobido: Tales of the Ninja contains almost 100 missions as each one completed brings you up the completion rate by 1% or 2%. Level 3's Thievery mission, I found, has one easy element as you can jump up on a fence and the enemies go round the other side and fall down into oblivion, but it’s not easy in other respect since you can also fall down there and there’s lots of such places, don't look before you leap!

Another tip, in general use, is to hide in bushes to stop baddies finding you. And while there's some clever ninjas in this game, a lot of them are still a bit thick and if you duck out of the way quickly they’ll soon forget all about you, despite the fact you’ve just hacked and slashed them a few times so they’ll be bleeding profusely were this the real world... As you progress, you can unlock new characters and moves, although like most games with fighting in them, you’ll find the moves that suit you best and stick to those, similar to the PS2 release when the sword became the most effective tool. That said, it's fun to play around with the grapple hook, after locking on to an enemy, to grab them and yank them around! You'll be able to play as other characters such as Goh (the main one) and Kinu, and you don’t always have to go back to the start of a level just to finish it, like the ones where you collect a load of mushrooms in some missions, so things can get confusing as to when the mission actually ends. Overall, this is a fantastic little fun outing on the PSP and whereas the graphics were rather long in the tooth for the PS2, here they're just right for the smaller screen when it comes to how well they move around. It also makes things more fun as you don't always expect as much from a handheld so it delivers in spades with great ease. Very recommended!

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.