Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen (PS Vita)

 I actually wasn't going to review this, as I didn't think it was really obscure enough, so it's been mentioned in the monthly Patreon posts where I talk about other games I've been playing that I didn't review. But then I realised that despite its big budget look and feel, it's the sequel to a late-era PS2 game that wasn't massively popular, plus it's a game I've never seen anyone talk about, and finally, fourteen years after its release, it's still an exclusive to PS Vita, a console that never got the attention it deserved from most people.

 

It's a ninja-themed stealth game, and it's by Acquire, so the obvious comparison to make is to the timeless classic Tenchu Stealth Assassins on Playstation. It does feel quite a lot like that game, and you do do a lot of running along rooftops, then jumping down to silently kill some hapless guard who never even knew you existed. The big way in which it feels different, however, is that it feels a lot more like it's designed around speed. You have a run button, you can perform stealth kills while in midair, and the way you use special items and your grappling hook is different.

 

In Tenchu, all of your items were displayed on a bar at the bottom. You switched between them with the shoulder buttons, and you pressed triangle to use them. For items that needed to be aimed, like the grappling hook, you held triangle, aimed with the d-pad, and released triangle to use. In Shinobido 2, You only have four items equipped at a time (though you can swap three of them out at any time). They're each assigned to a direction on the d-pad, with the grappling hook always assigned to down. To use the grappling hook, you just tap down on the d-pad, and you'll throw it at the nearest appropriate surface in the direction you're facing. Again, you can even do this in midair! For thrown weapons, you can lock on to an enemy that's in your field of vision and throw directly at them. 

 

It all adds up to a game in which you're speeding around, killing your enmeies and it all feels so good and satisfying. The only real downside is that there's very few different stages to play in, and they're reused for different missions, with different enemy layouts and different objectives for you to complete. Outside the stages, there's a few things to get your attention too. There are three factions vying for power in the region where the game's set, and you can pick missions to complete for any of them. If you stick with one faction, they'll gradually grow more and more of an appreciation for you, resulting in higher payouts and other benefits. Similarly, if you've got it in for a certain faction for some reason, you can keep accepting missions where they're the target, and if you eventually dwindle their resources down, you'll be hired to assassinate their leader, after which that faction will just no longer be a part of the game!

 

I'm sure there are other ways to get endings (Acquire are also the developers of the Way of the Samurai series, after all), but once there's only one faction left, you'll get the ending that shows them taking power in the region, and also expressing their thanks for your help. The other big extra-curricular activity in which you can engage is alchemy! You don't often find ready-made items in the field, but instead there are lots of weeds and mushrooms with various effects lying around. You can put a bunch of these into a jar (generally they all have to have the same effect, which is enhanced by putting more and more in the jar at once), and then you can extract the ingredients as either elixir (which you drink to gain the effects), sushi (which you leave around for enemies to eat and gain the effects), and bombs (which you throw to cause the effect). The effects are stuff like HP recovery, speed increase, confusion, fainting, explosion, and so on. All the effects can be put into any of the three forms, so you can make a healing grenade or a potion of makes you explode. There's also mechanical dolls for distracting enemies, but I think that these are mostly found, bought, or received as gifts.

 

I've played through this game once, and though I've deleted it now (I'm too lazy to get an SD2VITA card so I'm stuck with a mere 16GB on there), I'm sure I'll go back to it in the future to seek out other paths and endings. It's an excellent game, and even though it's fourteen years old, and I've owned a Vita myself for almost a decade now, it's still amazing to me that a handheld game can look so good! I highly recommend giving Shinobido 2 a try, should you have access to a PS Vita, especially since it's one of the system's few exclusives.

GHost94 (PC)

I have to start this review with an admission: I have no idea what the goal of this game is, plus I'm really bad at it, so I didn't get very far in the few hours of it that I played. However, I think it's an interesting enough game to write about and at least tell you what I figured out about it. It's part of a long-running series o;f Japanese indie PC games, that you've probably seen a few of if you pay attention to the trailer compilations that come out before each Comiket.

It's a 3D stealth game that takes place in a massive (well, it feels massive, anyway) post-apocalyptic/dystopian Japanese city, patrolled by ninja-like soldiers and heavily-armed robots. Being stealthy is incredibly important, as if you're spotted, all the enemies in the area will chase you around trying to kill you and you're far from durable. You can find somewhere to hide until the heat dies down, but the best thing to do is to find an exit and leae the area as fast as possible. I can't tell you about any of the plot or anything, so I basically just went exploring as best I could. Occasionally I'd trigger a story event, and one time I found a save/healing room (which was very important, as if you haven't saved and you die, you have to start the game again, with a very long unskippable cutscene you have to sit through every time). There's areas that I think are radioactive, where a geiger counter-esque clicking sound starts, and an increasing counter appears above your head. Different areas have the counter going up at different speeds, and if it reaches 999, you die instantly. Seems like videogame radioactivity to me!

There's a lot that's failry unique about the game, with the most obvious being its look. It looks incredible, with a late-90s inspired combination of 2d sprites walking around low-poly 3D worlds with low resolution pixel art textures. But it's used in a way that wouldn't have been possible on the Playstation or Saturn, creating some gigantic areas, and creating a real sense of scale, as rotting skyscrapers tower above your tiny SD sprite in the outdoors areas, while the indoor areas range from labyrinhtine mazes of corridors and small rooms to huge high-ceilinged hallways and swimming pools. The other big idiosyncracy is the controls: rather than going with the now-standard twin stick controls for 3d action games, GHost94 has its own controls that take a little bit of getting used to. Essentially, your actual movement is restriced to moving left and right on a 2D plane, and jumping. You can still move all over the place though, as you use the shoulder buttons (assumeing you've set up your controls in the layout recommended by the config screen's diagram) to move the camera, and with it the plane on which you move, by ninety degrees. Like I said, it does take some gettig used to, and you are in danger of fumbling under pressure when you've been spotted, but on the other hand, it is nice to play a modern 3D action game that doesn't just use the exact same control scheme as every other game. Plus, there's a first-person view button that's useful not just for spotting eemies you might not have otherwise, but also for just taking in the spectacle of your surroundings.

Now, as I mentioned, I haven't managed to get very far in this game yet, so there's some things I can only half-understand. You can pick up various small objects from the ground, but most of them seem to be useless bits of garbage. There's also money, dropped by enemies, should you be brave enough to try and fight them, and lucky/skilled enough to kill one. I never found a use for the garbage items (that do literally just seem to be bits of litter), nor did I ever reach a shop where money could be spent. Though I assume that weapons are sold there, as you start with a weak knife that can be equipped and unequipped.

I think that's all I can really say about GHost94, to be honest. I find it fascinating and aesthetically beautiful enough to try and stumble my way through. If you've got the patience (or the Japanese literacy) for it, you should give it a try, too. If you do, I'd be glad to hear your findings!