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Tenchu: Return from Darkness is a port of the year old Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven for PS2. The Xbox version features a few improvements over it’s PS2 counterpart, plus some new gameplay modes. The real question is: are these improvements enough to make Return from Darkness a worthy purchase? Good question.

Tenchu is a unique ninja experience from the other games flooding the market these days, in that Tenchu takes a kind of Metal Gear Solid type direction with the ninja action, instead of having you fight head on with hordes of enemies. In Tenchu, players are encouraged to stay hidden from sight, and attack when the enemy least expects it. I say encouraged because the stealth elements in the game are by no means a necessity. Stealth in Tenchu consists largely of staying out of an enemy’s direct line of sight. Enemies in Tenchu are pretty dense, stupid if you will. They cannot hear you coming, so there’s no need to be quiet when sneaking up on an enemy, you can run clear across a room and attack a guard from behind and he will not have heard your footsteps. As far as staying out of sight goes, hah! Staying out of sight in Tenchu consists of standing around a corner, hanging off a ledge, behind a box, or likewise large object until the guard you’re hiding from turns around, walks away, or whatever you may be waiting for. This is extremely easy, since most of the levels have plenty to hide behind. If by some chance you fail the task, and a guard sees you, it’s as simple as running around a corner or into another room for the guard to lose sight of you. Sound too easy? It is.

In Tenchu, ninjas apparently have a ‘sixth sense’ that allows them to tell what people around them are feeling emotionally. This is a lame excuse that the developers have made up to explain the semi-radar type system the game features. In the bottom left-hand corner is your ‘ninja sense’. When an enemy is near, there will be a small question mark and a number that lets you know approximately how close they are. If a guard thinks he sees something, the radar will turn into a large question mark, and the guard will head over to investigate. If the guard right out sees you, the radar turns into a flaming exclamation point (!). Once you run around your corner, or however you lose the guard, the radar changes to a (?!) setting, which means that the guard is still aware of your presence, but cannot find you. The guard will then slowly go back to a small question mark and return to his path. When a guard sees you, he will now blow a whistle to alert the other guards in the area, flocking them all to him. This makes for some annoying instances once you try to get away, since you could turn a corner and get sliced by an unseen guard coming to aid his buddy. This is especially so due to the games rather unco-operative camera. In theory though, the whole whistle idea was pretty cool, since you’ll want to stay unseen to avoid those annoying traps. A guard will also now enter (?!) mode when he finds a dead body laying around, something that was missing from the PS2 version. So now you have the ability to drag dead bodies away. While this is a nice addition, it is by no means a requirement, since alerted guards will go back to their business after they can’t find you anyway.

Since the stealth in the game is pretty poorly implemented, there must be at least one saving grace to make it worth your time to play sneaky, sneaky, right? Well, there is: Stealth kills. In Tenchu, when you run up behind an enemy unseen or jump from a ledge/roof on top an enemy and hit the attack button (X by default) your character will perform a stealth kill: a stylized (and sometimes lengthy) ninja attack. Most of these kills are pretty cool looking, and are actually worth taking the time to sneak around.

If you can’t seem to get the hang of sneaking around and performing stealth kills, don’t worry, this is no Splinter Cell, head-to-head combat is just as much in the question as stealth, though just as poorly implemented. If you choose to go head-to-head and attack a guard, be sure that you know that you only have one combo at your disposal. Combat is just as bad as the stealth in Tenchu. When you’re fighting, it’s simply a matter of attacking, blocking, attacking again. If you forget to block an enemy attack, or just don’t block on time, you become open to that enemy’s entire combo, and end up getting hit 2 or 3 more times before you fall over. This is also true for the enemies though, so it’s kind of crap for both sides. Boss fights, as you can imagine, is pretty much the same thing as fighting a normal guard, only it takes longer and they have a couple different attacks. Boss fights are generally easy, even if they are a bit lengthy.

The biggest addition (can’t really say improvement) is the multiplayer modes over Xbox Live. Now you can play co-op modes and versus modes with a friend over Live. Co-op is simply the single player mode with 2 people, while versus mode is a sort of deathmatch. The versus mode is atrocious, since the games combat system is so bland and shallow, it’s simply run, attack, run away, attack again until someone is dead. All in all, the multiplayer isn’t much fun at all.

Visually, Tenchu looks like a year old port of a PS2 game. The development team tried to clean up the graphics, and all in all, the lighting does seem a bit more dynamic, but the game still looks like an old PS2 game, regardless of the improvements. The areas in the game are sparsely detailed, and for the most part nothing to gawk at. The animation is smooth for the most part, while certain animations like the transition to having your back against the wall are jerky and look unfinished. Sadly, the game doesn’t sound much better.

The audio in Tenchu is by no means impressive. There aren’t very many tracks in the soundtrack, though what’s there is pretty catchy and sounds good. The sound effects on the other hand, are bland and boring. From the swipe of the sword to the voice acting, nothing is very good sounding. The voice acting is sad, and sounds really forced, and the sound effects seem like an after thought, since none of them sound even remotely realistic.

So, when it’s all said and done, Tenchu is a better idea than it is a game. Neither the stealth nor the combat are well enough implemented on their own to make a solid game, but the combination of the two make for a decent experience. Tenchu isn’t really worth your money as a purchase, but if you’re really itching for some stealth ninja action, then maybe you should look into a weekend rental.