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RED NINJA: END OF HONOUR (PS2)
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Publisher: Vivendi.
Developer: Tranji Studios. Released: April 2005. Genre: Stealth Adventure. Other versions: XBOX. Posted 25th May 2021. By Shane Battams © 2021 |
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Red Ninja: End of Honour is one of the most infuriating games to emerge from the twilight years of the PlayStation 2. Failing miserably to make good on the ninja stealth craze kick-started by Tenchu, this woeful tale of revenge is fraught with mechanical missteps, frustrating foibles and squandered potential. Whether it’s the pitiful stealth, broken platforming or tedious combat, Red Ninja ends up botching almost all of its gameplay elements. Even if you count yourself an aficionado of the stealth genre, Tranji Studios’ sole game (something that’s unsurprising once you boot this one up) is to be avoided like a blade to the throat.
Kurenai is a young lady with the misfortune of witnessing her father’s murder, before being left for dead, hanged until a timely rescue by a ninja clansman. Trained with the same wire which nearly snuffed her out, she pledges her service to the clan while pining for revenge upon those who murdered her father. The story is inoffensive, with basic writing getting the job done and serviceable voice acting that’s lightyears ahead of Tenchu. It just doesn’t prove particularly interesting, with Kurenai a mostly detached character who you feel little connection to. There’s the naturally sympathetic cause of avenging a lost loved one, but that’s about it. By comparison, however, it’s miles ahead of the rest of the game. A damning indictment, once you delve deeper.
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Whether it's stealth, combat or platforming, Red Ninja gets it horribly wrong
Red Ninja is one of those games that you can sense something is wrong with from the beginning. The controls feel twitchy and Kurenai feels difficult to manoeuvre. The controls generally lack responsiveness, sometimes neglecting to register inputs. But the camera is somehow even worse. Zoomed far too close to give a good field of vision, and perhaps too focused on showcasing Kurenai’s underwear, it proves useless for lining up jumps and seeing guard positioning during stealth. The tutorial handily showcases these issues, as certain sections forcing platforming prove difficult to pass. Yet you soon realise, things build to an even greater nadir once the mechanics are under strain. The only upside is Kurenai’s weapon is pretty neat, allowing you to not only slice enemies but also hang them, swing across gaps and pull-down objects, proving flexible and fun to use, and you can also find a plethora of extra items including throwing knives.
The problem is, Red Ninja tries to juggle three distinct gameplay styles but fails completely. Stealth suffers from awkward A.I. patterns and a lack of clear lines of sight, making detection inevitable. Kurenai can use her charms to seduce guards, but this seems rarely to work. While you can pull off some satisfying kills, it proves a pale imitation of the genre’s best. Combat fares even worse. The targeting has tremendous trouble keeping up with the action, swaying between multiple foes like a drunk bee. Cheap A.I. will repeatedly knock you down with little rebuttal, and strikes, for the most part, lack impact. Platforming is easily the most hair-pulling part of the game. With instant death hazards that would make Lara Croft green with envy, unresponsive mechanics such as wall running and the aforementioned issues with controls and the camera, players should be prepared to succumb to a lot of deaths. The worst of these is around the mid-point of mission three, with a gauntlet of a platforming segment that borders on insanity. These mechanics all turn Red Ninja into an infuriating, cheaply-designed mess.
The problem is, Red Ninja tries to juggle three distinct gameplay styles but fails completely. Stealth suffers from awkward A.I. patterns and a lack of clear lines of sight, making detection inevitable. Kurenai can use her charms to seduce guards, but this seems rarely to work. While you can pull off some satisfying kills, it proves a pale imitation of the genre’s best. Combat fares even worse. The targeting has tremendous trouble keeping up with the action, swaying between multiple foes like a drunk bee. Cheap A.I. will repeatedly knock you down with little rebuttal, and strikes, for the most part, lack impact. Platforming is easily the most hair-pulling part of the game. With instant death hazards that would make Lara Croft green with envy, unresponsive mechanics such as wall running and the aforementioned issues with controls and the camera, players should be prepared to succumb to a lot of deaths. The worst of these is around the mid-point of mission three, with a gauntlet of a platforming segment that borders on insanity. These mechanics all turn Red Ninja into an infuriating, cheaply-designed mess.
FOCAL POINT: HORRIBLE BOSSES
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By far the worst designed sections Red Ninja has to offer are its bosses, taking the worst pages out of Tenchu’s book. Closing each chapter, these require figuring out weak points, utilising gear you earn and, a lot of the time, sheer luck. As nimble as Kurenai is, she’ll take plenty of hits as bosses spam you with attacks. The worst of these is the Snake Charmer, which forces you not only to target each part of her body with precision timing and then fight her in a second phase, but also do it against a timer, with one of Kurenai’s companions poisoned and her death resulting in an instant game over. While other bosses don’t reach this level of frustration, they’re still monumental pains to beat, with trial-and-error grinding you into the dust. Most sane players will likely break at one of these and those who persevere will find it more exhausting than rewarding.
Despite its 2005 release, Red Ninja looks pretty dated. Everything has a blurry, unflattering look to it, from the rough-around-the-edges character models to the bland and lifeless environments. The performance is middling, loading times are quite long and animations are lacking. The only bright spot is the fountains of blood that spray gruesomely from your victims. The sound is uninteresting, with acceptable yet unremarkable voice acting, completely forgettable music and rote sound effects, which feel like they were taken from a game from a generation before. Compared to competing games like God of War and Devil May Cry 3, Red Ninja pales from a technical standpoint.
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Red Ninja: End of Honour is a calamitous mix of poor design, dated mechanics and torturous difficulty balancing, making for one of the PS2’s most unsatisfying games. Its stealth is years behind the curve, the combat is a mess and the platforming is some of the worst the console would play host to. Throw in heinously cheap bosses, a forgettable story and no reasons to return, and it feels like a puzzle missing half its pieces. For anyone who wants their dedication rewarded with good gameplay, you’ll need to find your fix elsewhere.
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VERDICT
"Red Ninja: End of Honour is a calamitous mix of poor design, dated mechanics and torturous difficulty balancing, making for one of the PS2’s most unsatisfying games." OVERALL: 3/10 |