Like a great many modern videogames, particularly on the PlayStation 2, Shinobido: Way of the Ninja opens with an action-packed and enthralling rendered montage and introductory narrative sequence that showcase fabulously realistic characters, stunning environments, and wonderfully believable animation. However, once that rendered chest beating is complete, the game proper abruptly falls flat on its opening promises and leaves a gaping hole in the player’s expectations. Furthermore, when a current-generation PlayStation 2 videogame looks and feels like an original PlayStation release—and an extremely old one at that—it’s even more of a crushing disappointment, especially when the ‘classic’ template used for ‘inspiration’ isn’t even matched in terms of quality.

Before moving on, it should be pointed out that the developer of Shinobido, Acquire Corporation, has also produced an edition of the long-running Tenchu series (Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins), and that the studio’s experience has thusly been brought to bear on Shinobido. However, the end result in this case is that experience does not stretch very far when not tempered with originality and innovation. Because, for all intents and purposes, Shinobido is merely another chapter of Tenchu but without any aesthetic finesse or polish, and certainly no notable step up from the PlayStation’s benchmark ninja-assassin title.

Shinobido opens with the game’s central ninja character, Crow, waking face down on a riverbank with absolutely no memory of how he got there or, indeed, who he is (at this point he doesn’t even know his name). Crow then discovers a glowing purple shard of some kind within a nearby decrepit hut and, upon touching the mysterious object, he is assaulted with confusing flashbacks. Then, with his head swimming, an arrow with an attached message thuds into the wooden wall close to Crow’s head. The anonymous note describes that the purple shard is a fragment of Crow’s lost soul (yawn!) and that he must venture out and seek the remaining pieces if he wishes to know who he truly is. The game then abruptly establishes itself via exasperating mission/job requests that arrive out of thin air at Crow’s ramshackle base of operations—which suddenly sports an accompanying assault course training area known as ‘The Garden’. Further to that, resulting mission wages can be used to ‘purchase’ equipment, weaponry, healing potions, and other helpful items from, well, absolutely no one, as Crow is in his hut at the time of accessing this invisible store of goods. What on Earth is going on?

Plainly it’s not worth trying to fathom the innermost complexities of this ancient oriental land, so, after swallowing the sense of disbelief crawling up the throat, it’s best just to accept a mission, hope it leads to a shard of soul, and let the core mechanic of Shinobido dispel any gathering mists of doom. Only that’s not going to happen, especially as the central gameplay is as disappointing as the hut hub is mystifying.

A variety of context-based bloody stealth kills can be instigated when (and if) Crow is able to move close enough to an unsuspecting foe, and these gruesome moments do provoke some semblance of persistence in the player. Yet they’re not sufficient to prolong interest, and certainly not the required remedy for the fractured camera and clunky character movement—not to mention the overly aggressive A.I. and its single-minded seek and destroy mentality. Emulating the way of an effective ninja is surely reliant on ceaselessly smooth and silent progress, but the shoddy integration of character-to-environment leaves Crow more closely resembling a sugar-buzzed elephant letting off firecrackers every second stomp! It’s shamefully shallow stuff and quickly grates.

Visually, Shinobido: Way of the Ninja barely transcends the graphical quality realised during the pinnacle of the PlayStation’s lifespan, and any and all available power contained within the PlayStation 2 has been freely ignored in favour of a passable paint-by-numbers approach. Frankly, the lack of aesthetic effort across the board in Shinobido is unforgivable—and this too is accented by the likes of Black, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Okami, all of which have shown that the PlayStation 2 is still capable of producing beautiful, even stunning visuals.

Sadly, the game world’s continued need for an improvement on Tenchu remains unfulfilled, and Shinobido’s attempts to reinvent that which has gone before rather than strive to create something more progressive only highlights the fact. As a freestanding game, Shinobido: Way of the Ninja should have, at the very least, successfully honoured its source material by perfecting the basics while surrounding the narrative with the ample power and performance provided by the PlayStation 2. It fails to do even that, and anything beyond simply doesn’t exist to help carve the game a deserved niche of its own.