It's another installment of Tenchu Z, a game that dates back all the way to the Playstation One. Your job is to assasinate people. A whole lot of people in fifty missions. All the while, there's a bigger story involving a drug dealer. Because apparently, drugs were a big problem during feudal Japan. Probably right next to car theft and cybercrime.

As a ninja, your most effective weapon is stealth. So be prepared for long waits. We prefer the more direct blow the doors open and shoot everything in sight approach, but this is a ninja game. So you have to sneak around alot and wait for the right moment. There's not much more to this game than stealth killing. Luckily, they give you alot of weapons to use from darts to ninja stars to gas bombs. But your best bet is just to sneak behind the person while their back is turned and kill them quickly.

The AI is weak. There's no sense of hunt and chase and if they see you, you can run off and hide again. The fights aren't that great either. Not Ninja Gaiden quality, but we hear ninjas usually avoid direct conflict, which is what you get here. If you're one of those people who enjoy a nice stealth kill like one of our reviewers, this game is for you. Unlike other Ninja games, Tenchu remains true to the art of ninjitsu.

The missions aren't that different eventhough there's plenty of them. Almost all of them involve stealth killing a whole lot of people. There's a few guard this person levels and some sneak around levels. And a whole lot of the game takes place at night, so prepare your eyes for ugly dark colors with occasional spurts of red blood as you kill your next victim. If you think this gets a little monotonous, you're right.

Like we said, graphics are dark and there's a definite lack of quality textures. It's almost a PS2 game. Don't let the village and towns fool you into thinking this is a beautiful game. There's almost a plastic look to the characters that's not very next-gen looking. There's no music, but not that you really need it in a stealth game. The menus are pure PS2 character style screens.

There's no multiplayer and the unlockables are clothes. We cannot fault Tenchu on the basic gameplay, because unlike other ninja games, this one stays true to the profession instead of having fight demons, robots, or ghosts. But we will fault Tenchu for the very low production values and lack of extras. It's a real disappointment best left to hardcore stealth killing fans. And we mean real hardcore because the AI sucks.