Game  Platform  Rating Tenchu Playstation 7.5/10

    Tenchu, from Sony Entertainment, would best be described as a Ninja simulator, being somewhere inbetween Metal Gear Solid and Virtua Fighter. In the story, you are a Ninja in the service to a good lord who is fighting to remove corruption and evil from the lands; which you do by going around and killing evil merchants, destroying crazy religious cults, and picking up a flower from high in the mountains.
    I really wasn't expecting much from this game, especially after playing the very disappointing 'Ninja' from the Tomb Raider guys, I was thinking, "Yeah, Ninja's are cool, but are they going to be able to pull this off?"... And did they? I would say yes! This game is very similar in feel to Metal Gear Solid, with a couple of improvements, and a couple of problems. First off, the enemies don't regenerate, like they do in MGS, which is GREAT! Nothing destroys the sense of accomplishment better than knowing that as soon as you leave a room that had a particularly difficult enemy to defeat, that he's going to magically revive and be as good as new. Gameplay-wise it's very solid as well... Good balance between stealth and combat; nothing beats the feeling of successfully sneaking up on a couple of particularly hard guards and taking them out without raising alarms, while it's equally cool to fight when you have to. On the downside, the whole save scheme on this game is REALLY lame; you save by quitting after completing a level - VERY counter-intuitive, and not really documented in the instructions at all. Also, movement when crouching can be a little cumbersome, especially since you can't rotate without standing up, but apart from that character control is pretty intuitive. While the overall story of the game didn't hook me, the overall variety of the levels was enough to keep me playing, which is fine. Once you figure out how to save, and what it takes to perform stealth kills consistently, you can complete this game in less than a week, so it's definitely a renter (although it may take you two rentals). I don't know if the game differs for the female Ninja; although I get the feeling it does since here is a different end to the training, I certainly didn't feel compelled enough by the story to want to play the whole thing again. Overall, it's a solid game, and definitely one worth your time to play; good graphics, good gameplay, and a cool concept make for an engaging experience.