Guilty Pleasures: Shinobi for the PS2

24Jan/100

Guilty Pleasures: Shinobi for the PS2

With all the God of Wars and Devil May Crys and Ninja Gaidens out there, it's hard to recommend Sega's Shinobi for the PS2 to action game aficionados. This is a game with simple graphics and repetitive combat that is very difficult and oftentimes cheap. It's a game with a score of 71 one at Metacritic for "mixed or average reviews." It's a game that is mostly forgotten.

Still, there is one gameplay mechanic, or a combination of mechanics rather, that makes Shinobi stand out from the crowd. It's something that I've mumbled to myself extensively but something that I never bothered to expand upon when asked because I just didn't feel like getting into a lecture. I've mostly kept it to myself all these years but now I have a vehicle to get my thoughts together and throw this information out there for those three Shinobi fans in the world to read (the vehicle is this website, by the way).

Find out why Shinobi is the greatest action game that never was after the break.

In Shinobi, you control a ninja named Hotsuma, run through long corridors and dispatch enemies via (double) jumping, slashing and dashing (more on dashing later). There are no puzzles to solve, you have only one weapon, one slash combo (with a couple of variations), a kick that breaks enemies' guard, you can't launch enemies into the air and you can't juggle them either. You have a limited supply of shurikens and ninja magic but their use is mostly situational. If you jump towards a wall, you can stick to it and run alongside it parallel to the ground indefinitely. You also have a charge attack that I never found very useful. In other words, this isn't a game that is going to wow you with its array of features.

Now, before I get into why this game is awesome I have to explain how dashing works. When you press the dash button you instantly travel a few meters in the direction you're pushing the analog stick. There is virtually zero recovery time in this dash so you can attack almost immediately after it ends. You can air dash only once but if you manage to hit an enemy in the air you can air dash again which means that you can stay in the air indefinitely as long as you have enough enemies to attack. The best thing about dashing though is the shadow image you leave at the beginning of each dash. It stays up for a few seconds and all enemies (and their projectiles) will lock onto and attack that image instead of you. Basically, dashing is what you'll be doing most in this game.

With all that preamble out of the way, let me get into why Shinobi is such a fantastic action game: it encourages ultra fast ninja gameplay. I've mentioned how dashing is pivotal in this game but there are a couple of elements that add to this sense of speed as well. You have two energy bars in the game: Yang, your regular health, and Yin. After you complete the first two levels, your sword, Akujiki, starts to drain energy from your Yin bar and once that is depleted it goes on to deplete your Yang, i.e. your health. The only way to refill Yin is by killing enemies so there's this constant sense of tension and urgency throughout the game that pushes you to always move and kill faster. As I said, there is no puzzle solving whatsoever in Shinobi so it's always just move and kill, move and kill, move and kill which is, you know, how I think a fictional ninja should behave.

The second way in which Akujiki adds to this sense of speed is that with each successive kill your sword gets stronger. Enemies will usually come in sets of 3 or more and after you down the third or fourth enemy, you'll be able to cut down all but the largest baddies in one strike. Kill 8 enemies in a row and you can kill even boss characters in a single strike. The caveat is that you have only a few seconds in-between kills before your sword powers back down to regular levels and that your sword always returns to normal after you dispatch a set of enemies. Also, after you kill 4 enemies in succession you get a quick cutscene of your enemies falling in pieces which serves as a natural break to all the frenzied action in the game.

All these elements come together seamlessly to create the fastest action game I've ever played. Shinobi rewards you for being lightning quick in killing your enemies and punishes you for doing petty things like looking around and trying to find items. It's a game that is visceral and a pure adrenaline rush unlike any other. There are certain nuances to the game (attacking from behind does double damage, time your slashes right and they come out faster, etc) but, as I said earlier, I wouldn't recommend Shinobi to action fans (the terrible sequel, Kunoichi, even less so because it removes the soul-draining sword which is clearly one of my favorite things about Shinobi) because there are simply much better action games out there. Nonetheless, for being the only game that demands and rewards real fast play, I'll always have a soft spot for it. People say this game is hard and, having beaten it on Super, I'd say that's a fair statement. Still, despite memories of wanting to throw my controller at the TV in frustration a zillion times, I always wanted another round out of this game. There's a gem hidden inside this awful, repetitive game and it's a beautiful one.

To better illustrate my point, here's a video of some guy doing a speed run of the last stage in the game: