Tenchu Z Demo Impressions

The "Tenchu Z" demo was made available last Thursday on Xbox Live Marketplace as a 642MB download but I've only just got around to trying it out.

Tenchu has been around for a fairly long time now and this demo gives you the opportunity to play a "Harbour Town" level from the latest instalment in the series. Your mission is to find out what goods a trader is importing but before you can start you have to choose your characters gender, face and costume from a number of different options. I have to admit that I found a few of the face types to be quite hideous, especially some of the female ones which didn't look right to me. Once you've decided upon the look of your character you can distribute various ability points between "Vitality", "Strength", and "Agility".

It's up-to you how you get to the ship where the trader is located, and there's plenty of rooftops to clamber onto so you can avoid the numerous guards that roam the streets if you don't fancy a direct confrontation. Your character is armed with a sword but your most efficient means of dispatching enemies is from behind while they are unawares. This allows you to take them out in one hit rather than a prolonged sword fight, but you could knock them unconscious if you prefer. To help you in your mission you have a number of items, such as shuriken, which are accessed via the d-pad. The demo really doesn't give you any information about them so your only means of determining what they are is by using them.

The enemy AI isn't the best in the world as each guard has a predetermined patrol route which won't change unless your detected. I also found that guards seem to have a limited range of vision and although you may be directly in front of a guard and in plain site you won't be detected unless you get too close.

I found the controls fairly frustrating, causing me to drop off a rooftop or miss-time a jump at the most inconvenient of times and they felt like they were lifted from one of the games predecessors. The graphics are not great with character models lacking detail and the town lacking atmosphere, for a harbour town there was a distinct lack of civilians. The in-game graphics engine is also used in cut scenes which is not unusual these days, but the facial models do not animate along with dialog. This was forgivable for PlayStation (one) title but not something I'd expect to see in an Xbox 360 game.

Despite all these flaws I quite enjoyed the demo but in its present state it's not something I'd think about buying. The game does not look like it's going to push any boundaries but I'm sure it will have its own set of fans.