Shinobi (2011)

Excellent side scrolling Ninja platformer thats hard as nails and true to the original Shinobi games with stylised graphics...very enjoyable game with lots of awards and unlockables

Probably my favorite game on the 3ds so far, not counting ports (counting ports the award goes to Star Fox). It seems to do everything right, and it actually may be my favorite in the series too. It's just the right amount of difficulty; it's got a great game length with tons of unlockable missions; it offers an amazingly deep combat system for a 2d sidescroller, with a point multiplier system that gives the player incentive to take advantage of the combat system; the levels are nice and long and usually provide some kind of on-rail segment that adds a lot of variety, something previous installments did but not in the quantities this game provides. There's also a lot more emphasis on platforming then in previous installments and it's done very well making it a bit less tedious then previous games. And, actually, one of the features: the new and improved parry system. Now this seems to be the biggest complaint about the game, people are upset that they can't hold in the block like in some of the previous games, instead you have to time your blocks; but I like this better, it presents more of a challenge and is, thus, more rewarding when you do it right; of course this means you do have to memorize enemy patterns, but, you're probably going to have to do that anyway to effectively beat this game. And speaking of memorizing enemy patterns, my second favorite feature: all of the bosses present a window to do some kind of special grab attack; you can beat the bosses without doing this, but it's a cool feature to provide, and its a lot of fun to figure how you can pull off the grab attack for each different boss. Now this game doesn't get a ten for a couple of reasons, just a few small complaints. Firstly, this game would have been greatly improved with some kind of dash or fast run option; most of the time you'll be fighting and jumping, so it's not too noticeable, but the times when you're just going from point a to point b, it's really jarring how slow Musashi moves; like, your attacks and jumps are so fast, but then you walk slower then Mario in quick sand, it just seems weird; you would think that given the emphasis on speed presented in the two PS2 Shinobi games that this game would embrace that a bit more, but this seems like a bit of a step back from those, as far as that aspect is concerned. Secondly, though the bosses are great, and a lot of fun to fight, they lack the ridiculousness of former games in the series. I mean, one or two are pretty over the top, like a giant mutant shark, but for the most part the bosses are pretty standard ninja action game bosses. And, lastly, this game isn't very impressive graphically; I mean, the 3d works fine, but the sprites and backgrounds just aren't very developed; like, this could have been released on the DS1, easily. I get that they were probably going for a bit more of a stylized, slightly cartoonish, look, (at parts it actually kind of reminds me of Bruce Timm cartoons, especially Batman Beyond), but the end result is that everything looks kind of blocky and poorly defined, and given how amazing a lot of the games coming out on the 3ds look, this is kind of inexcusable; like, it looks like this was an eShop game rather then a catridge/store release. My last complaint, the **** ing maze level! They brought it back! And it's just as long, (if not longer), just as tedious and it's just not fun, at all. If it just weren't for those couple of minor things this game would be perfect. I highly recommend it. It's too bad it flew so low under most peoples radar, I was hoping it would garner some attention for this series again because I'd love to see another major console released 3d Shinobi game.