Nightshade Review

By Rob Fahey Published 19 March, 2004

Rob thought he'd seen off Shinobi, but apparently Sega's back for another round...

Version tested: PlayStation 2

Let's not beat about the bush here. We didn't like last year's Shinobi remake. Not one bit. While there are certainly a small minority of people who enjoyed the mechanics of the game, we found the gameplay to be repetitive and hackneyed, the presentation to be poor and ultimately, the whole experience was tedious, frustrating and unrewarding - not exactly a compelling package in a videogame.

However, we have a certain level of faith in Sega - and we love ninjas - so somewhere, somehow, we still believed that Sega would make a good ninja game again. When we first heard about Nightshade, with its shuriken-chucking heroine in her skin-tight ninja gear, it sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered. The only question was, would Sega pick up the pace from the hugely disappointing Shinobi, or was this to be more of the same but with added mammaries?

Real Ultimate Power

'Nightshade' Screenshot 1

First impressions certainly suggested that Nightshade had more on offer than its predecessor, with the opening level of the game being set on the back of a stealth bomber as it swoops through the skyscraper lined streets of a city - a far cry from the "identikit boxes connected by identikit corridors" layouts preferred by Shinobi. There are also a number of new moves in the arsenal available to your character, which immediately makes the game more interesting than Shinobi was. While the basic gameplay remains the same, the new types of kick and short-sword based attacks lend sorely needed variety to the combat.

Unfortunately, after the promising first level (which is admittedly marred by some poorly timed enemy spawns that can leave you wandering around aimlessly on top of a speeding jet - not something you expect from a polished game), it's straight back into the Shinobi formula of entering a box, clearing out the enemies, and moving to the next box. Sometimes this happens in indoor levels, with variety added by levels on the rooftops of the city or elsewhere, but with the exception of a few more "set piece" levels like the stealth bomber one, this is all familiar and laboriously repetitive ground.

Reach out and Kill someone

'Nightshade' Screenshot 2

The repetition might be more forgivable if the game consistently overwhelmed you with eye candy - indeed, a recent and similarly repetitive game, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, managed to wallpaper over its shortcomings in terms of variety extremely well by offering up a cornucopia of graphical and audio delights. Sadly, to describe Nightshade's graphics as underwhelming would be like describing the Atlantic as a bit wet; there has been absolutely no evolution here since the atrocious looking Shinobi, and the outdoor sections only serve to exacerbate the problem, with enemies popping into view en masse only a few feet away from you. It's not that the game is throwing around so many enemies that it can't draw them at once, or that the enemies or scenery is hugely detailed (in fact they're low polygon, badly textured and downright ugly); it's just that the game is appallingly badly written and is an example of the sort of sloppy development work which we really shouldn't be seeing this late in the lifespan of the PS2.

Defenders of the game - and as with Shinobi, we're certain that there are at least a few ardent apologists out there - will probably point to the fact that much of the gameplay is focused not on moving from zone to zone, but on doing so in style. That's a fair comment to some degree, and despatching your enemies rapidly and efficiently will reward you with a "tate" sequence where your character strikes a pose and the bodies around you slide apart simultaneously - exactly as in the first game, but with a few more poses. However, after a few times, this simply grows old and merely serves to interrupt the gameplay, and the sequences themselves aren't very impressive and actually show up the poorly designed, low quality enemy models very badly.

Hrm... Ninjas

'Nightshade' Screenshot 3

Herein lies the rub. The fact of the matter is that while many games commit the sin of being repetitive and having badly flawed gameplay, those which manage to be great despite this do so by constantly presenting the player with rewards for persevering. Nightshade is an extremely difficult game on the higher difficulty settings, but rather than being a challenge it feels like a chore, and often you find yourself battling against non-intuitive controls and instant death drops off the edge of ledges (wonderful piece of game design there, Sega!) rather than the swarm of badly animated enemies meandering across the screen at you. It's just not fun to play, and there's practically zero reward for continuing, as the gameplay fails to evolve significantly and the plotline and characterisation is so thin and clichéd as to be completely irrelevant.

Certainly, the game improves on Shinobi in a couple of key respects, mostly notably in terms of the variety of combat options open to you and the variety of locations in the game, but it's a minor improvement only - and frankly, Nightshade needed to do a lot better, arriving as it does only a short while before Tecmo's magnificent Ninja Gaiden backflips its way across the pond to land silently as a cat on an Xbox near you. In the face of such opposition, Nightshade, a pretty damn poor game when stacked against PS2 contemporaries like Devil May Cry or Castlevania, simply doesn't have a candle to hold.

4 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of Rob.

About Rob Fahey

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (16) Latest comment 8 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • renzo #1 8 years ago

    Ouch. Still, better than Shinobi then.

    Not that that means much nowadays.

  • Nemesis #2 8 years ago

    After playing through some of this (and wondering why I was bothering) this is one to leave alone. Nasty controls you fight every step of the way. Fun and intuitive this is not.

  • elevenses #3 8 years ago

    Did'nt mind the demo but then again I only played it for 10 mins a week ago and have'nt gone back to it...says a lot I suppose.

    Enjoyed the demo of Shinobi lots - was it really that bad?

  • #4 8 years ago

    shinobi was quite good

  • Mirkan #5 8 years ago

    When reviewers so obviously overlook the entire point and focus of a game, it's really not that strange that it scores this low. Seriously, this is up there with not getting that you're supposed to get the ball INTO those NET thingies in a footie game.

  • sickpuppysoftware #6 8 years ago

    I was bored by the end of the demo. Didn't bode well for the full game to me.

  • Shinji #7 8 years ago

    Why don't you explain the point and focus to us then, Mirkan? Because as far as I could gather the point and focus was the incredibly tedious and repetitive combat, hence the game being rubbish. Please, share your wisdom!

  • Mirkan #8 8 years ago

    No need for the sarcastic tone. It's just that it's fairly evident when you compare it to games like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, which aren't really centered around one game mechanic, but rather offer a varied action experience with different cool looking special moves and whatnot. I don't know what the fans you've spoken to mean when they insist that it's about "style", because it's hard to be stylish, per se, in a game that offers so few options. But if it's in the sense that it's not about blatantly hitting everything that moves in the head, they're quite right though.

    Nightshade, like Shinobi, has more in common with a game like Crazy Taxi or Nights than Devil May Cry. It's arcadey, really fast and tight, and essentially comes down to being about besting your results. In a flipper game you don't care about the ball doing tricks or.. changing colour, because it's about not letting it fall past the flippers, and racking up scores. The Tate isn't just for looks, it's the main game mechanic in this game, and the enjoyment comes from landing the big tates in order to get the biggest scores and getting to the boss in the shortest time possible with the biggest kill rate. The tate makes each subsequent attack stronger, hence allowing you to dispatch enemies faster. The locations are basic for you to be able to memorize them and move around really fast, not to offer objects and structures to get stuck behind or get lost in. I'm all for that the game should look better, it does come across as an updated PSX title, but still.

    I obviously can't say that you should LIKE it, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but this doesn't try to be the game you want it to be.

    Recapping, I'm not miffed about the score, I mean, sure, I'd give it a 6 or 7 myself, but that's not the point. I'm just saying, find out what the game tries to do before you write it off as bad.

    If I offend you in any way by stating my opinion, I'm terribly sorry, I'm a huge fan of Eurogamer and its staff, and I'd hate to upset you or any of the other peeps.

  • bungalooBunny #9 8 years ago

    He didn't like the game for its mechanics, finding Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden more entertaining. I don't think he missed the 'point' of the game at all, he just didn't like it.

    If I made a game where all you do is help grannies cross the street, and then it gets 2/10 review score, does that mean they missed the point or they just think the whole purpose of the game is shite?

  • Shinji #10 8 years ago

    I'm not upset - it'd be a bit much for someone who criticises other people's work for a living to get miffed when someone then criticises their work in turn! :)

    I understand your point about the tate system, but I still don't really agree with you. While you could certainly go through the game trying to rack up high scores and low completion times using this system, I'm still not convinced that it would be fun; the game just doesn't throw up enough different challenges or genuine rewards for your progress, and running through identikit rooms trying to despatch identikit enemies as quickly as possible isn't the kind of gameplay we should be seeing at this stage in the evolution of the medium.

    All IMO, of course. A review is just one person's opinion, and all that :)

  • Mirkan #11 8 years ago

    bungalooBunny: I didn't complain about the score, just the fact that it wasn't really aknowledged that it was, erhm, a game where you help grannies over the street. My point being that you can't really point out the lack of missiles and fighting cocks as a flaw in the game that tries to be about grannies and the taking thereof. Over streets. Yeah.

    So, um, yes. I can totally see how this may not appeal to everyone. I mean, it does to me, alot, and there are videos of japanese players that are completely crazy, but still I see how this kind of game fails in the floating of the proverbial boat to some. Opinions are just that; opinions. I wouldn't dream of criticising a review based on the score or opinion expressed alone, even though I might not agree.

    My gripe is that both this and the Shinobi review left me with a feeling that the one reviewing didn't fully understand what you're meant to do in those games, and that a reader trying to understand what the game is about, if he or she might like it, dispite that 4/10, subsequently has no chance of knowing what the game is about either. If you judge a pear by the merits of a banana, even if you don't like pears/if it's a pear you don't like.. I mean, even I'm confused by my analogies sometimes, but I think you get what I mean. People who may like pears and don't care much for bananas go "banana?" and run off.

    This is not me trying to drag this out, by the way, just explaining my initial point. Your latest post (Shinji) basically gave me what I thought was lacking from the review.

    Whether evolution in gaming should prevent simple ideas and gameplay like Shinobi's/Nightshade's, that's an interesting discussion, and one it'd be cool to have one day.

  • killerbob #12 8 years ago

    This discussion is clearly about perception, and the way your mind colours your experience.
    An apple is yeah, just an apple, but not the same apple to two different sets of eyes.
    A bad game can therefore be enjoyable, but technically it's still a bad game.


    So, Shinji and Mirkan both of you are right.

  • 3william56 #13 8 years ago

    This is what you get when you use all the processor power and polys for boob bouncing...

  • mal #14 8 years ago

    Sega WOW - remind me who they are again?

  • Kami #15 8 years ago

    My dreams have been crushed!

    ...

    *cries because he so wanted Nightshade to be a very good game*

  • Kami #16 8 years ago

    Do tell, Skinnypuppy. Do tell... we could do with a good laugh in a review of a crap game :D

  • v!ncent #17 8 years ago

    i would like to know wot this game is about. it looks very interesting. is it like Final Fantasty or better than that.