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just a Mom who loves to Shop :)

check out my games list for all the goods...
https://www.backloggd.com/u/gruel/list/the-ultimate-gruel-games-list/
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Favorite Games

Thief: The Dark Project
Thief: The Dark Project
Half-Life
Half-Life
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII
Nightshade
Nightshade
Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft
Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft

265

Total Games Played

001

Played in 2024

000

Games Backloggd


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Darksiders III
Darksiders III

Jan 18

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Shinobi is a very conflicting game for me. As I said in my Nightshade review, I find it far too hostile and unwelcoming for me to truly love it, and at some points I really hate playing it. But sometimes it all clicks and the concept on hand shines through.

It never manages to with the aerial combat though, which despite hours testing it out and figuring out how Hotsuma can reset jumps, nothing ever felt consistent or good to do. While Nightshade had very clear rules on how Hibana could deal with enemies in air, Hotsuma feels more rigid and inflexible in this regard, making stages like 6-A absolute nightmares whereas in Nightshade they would have been highlights. Having the kick be a directional move also is a massive pain-in-the-ass as the camera can often make inputs like that difficult to pull-off in the moment. While I think Shinobi tests the player on different skill-sets than Nightshade does, i felt like Nightshade better gave me the means to pass the test.

The level design in general is nothing special, the bosses are middling and the controls feel really stiff, with a lock-on that is just never on the same page as you. What is there to like about this game?

Style, really. The TATE sequences, Hotsuma's incredibly long scarf, the brooding and dramatic narrative, and the brilliant music are what kept me motivated to play this to the end. The design of Hotsuma is fantastic, and maneuvering through dudes to drum'n'bass is always a hook I'll fall right into. Hotsuma looks impossibley cool all of the time and animates stunningly, as I could watch him just stand there with his arms folded for hours.

While Nightshade is a game I adore and love, Shinobi is only a game I can like strongly. It's worth playing on an emulator with save states; I could not in a million years recommend you try something this punitive with its checkpoints on original hardware. Also note the American release excises Easy mode entirely, which is very odd as I think this game needs a mode just for on-boarding as the actual game is not interested in teaching you shit like that. The downside of THAT though is that the whole appeal of Shinobi is the difficulty, so stripping that from it renders the game rather non-descript. So, what the fuck.

I will warn you though, that if you aren't very fond of dogs, the dog enemies in chapter 3 that can block your attacks might make you apply at your local kill shelter. They are some of the most annoying fucking enemies in a game, ever. Miyazaki only wishes his games could have dog enemies this irritating.

That's all I 've got. it's a very simple game, and I love it for that! No extraneous bells and whilstles, just Shinobi brilliance.

Massively underrated or just Made For Me to a degree no other game has ever been? A little bit of both. Either way, this is going in my 5-star Favorite Games Of All Time Superstar Club.

A much superior game to Shinobi 2002, and also maybe the best action game I've played since Ninja Gaiden, Nightshade is exactly what I like in my action games to a degree that I wonder if I actually designed this game through some rift in time. We need to start considering games like this and Ninja Gaiden Black as art games. I think incredibly stylish and well-choreographed action are as artistically unique uses of the medium as boring-as-fuck shit I'll never in a million years finish like Kentucky Route Zero.

One of the absolute best designed ninja suits ever, worn by a badass woman, incredibly fast and skillful gameplay, style and substance, with an incredible drum'n'bass soundtrack to boot. The game would have to periodically cut to episodes of Columbo if I were to rate it any higher.

This is a 5-star based on vibes alone, as I really don't think this one is for everyone. It's incredibly difficult, requires precision and mastery on a level that most will find frustrating, and the camera, while a massive improvement on Shinobi's, is still not ideal for the later level's bottomless pits. From my personal standpoint, you absolutely should play this with save states, as the general checkpoint system is far too punitive for the kind of accuracy it demands from you. It's VERY old-school in that sensibility.

It also has many difficulty options, including a beginner mode which I found very welcoming of the game after the US release of Shinobi cut the easy mode for god-knows-why. Shinobi is a game I really like, but find WAY too unwelcoming and prickly to truly love. It's like a friend's really ill-behaved cat, where you know that little piece of shit is going to scratch or hiss at you just for daring to exist near it. Impossible to love but too endearing to hate.

A lot of this comes to Hibana feeling better to control than Hotsuma, especially in-air. Shinobi would demand a lot of perfect air-combos, but Hotsuma didn't feel quite as maneuverable and lacked a dedicated kick button, meaning enemies who could block you were a massive pain in the ass. The most immediate improvement Nightshade adds is that Hibana can kick from the air, giving you better gap-closing opportunities, better combo extension, and allows for you to deftly navigate the game's bottomless pits through knowing how to RESET those in-air combos. It feels much more stylish and skillful than Shinobi, while giving it the necessary bit of streamlining to feel more approachable.

I also played the undub of this game, as one of the biggest "What the fuck" changes is removing the Japanese dub entirely. Shinobi was pretty unique in letting you listen to the Japanese voice track instead of the English dub. This isn't a huge problem as for the era, these dubs aren't actually that bad. I like Hibana's voice in the English dub, and my research indicates that her voice actress also was interviewed in documentaries about Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo, which is curious. More curious is Hisui, who is voiced by "E. Cahill", which, and I'm not sure, might be Erin Cahill, better known as Jen Scotts from Power Rangers: Time Force. I have watched many hours of Power Rangers throughout my adult life, and a lot of them was on Time Force, and I REALLY don't know if they are the same. Who is the same though is Hibana's japanese voice actress, Atsuko Tanaka, who has been in EVERYTHING EVER. You might know her best as Motoko Kusanagi in Stand Alone Complex and the dub voice for Lisa in Night Trap. Her voice for Hibana is sooooo good, applying a very deep and professional tone with this cool-guy edge you rarely get to see a female character have. She manages to be a consummate professional like Hotsuma while being incredibly distinct from him in her devil may care attitude in contrast to Hotsuma's grave seriousness.

One of the most striking things about Hibana is her flare for style. Hotsuma's TATE poses were classic ninja-movie stuff: dude puts his sword away calmly while his enemies collapse to pieces. Hibana is more willing to strike a pose: spinning her knives, holding her sword in the air, and the more TATEs you build up the more dramatic. Pulling off the 30 TATE might be when I decided this was a 5-star game, it was so enormously difficult, as Nightshade punishes you HARD for input spamming, forcing you to get a rhythm down to approaching TATEs. It was then I realized that Nightshade was cooking in a way no one really appreciated, in the similar way Sekiro feels rhythmic in its combat encounters, building long-stretches of TATEs in Nightshade is the same way!

The rhythm of this is enhanced by the BEAUTIFUL MATSERPIECE M'WAH PERFECTO soundtrack consisting of the best drum'n'bass ever fucking PRODUCED. Composed by a ton of Sega pros, one of the most notable names on here is Fumie Kumatani: the composer for all the BEST TRACKS in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. She was also responsible for the best tracks in Shinobi!! She can do no wrong!

Here are some of my favorite tunes, including the composer name as sourced from VGMDB.

Shinobi Tate by Fumie Kumatani
https://youtu.be/Nl930cF0tVU?si=EwDidZuTuXPeROaJ
Overcome Speed by Keiichi Sugiyama
https://youtu.be/MjCJuppjOG8?si=iyzeCCjOLmNjRb5p
Dark Kingdom by Tomonori Sawada
https://youtu.be/8ZN8vzehu4c?si=bLXEisdEXEYjQmQN
Jade Water by Fumie Kumatani
https://youtu.be/hZT1ZB-VQBc?si=eqM6PIEcUsxpAklq

As with Shinobi, this OST is a must-listen if you like D'n'B, as they assembled the fucking Avengers of the Amen Break on this one.

I have written more words about Nightshade than have been written in 20 years, so I'll try and wrap it up. I find this an immensely stylish and rewarding game with a surprisingly dramatic and well-directed storyline, with gameplay improving on everything Shinobi did while adding in more. Bosses are more mechanically interesting, levels feel more considered, and movement feels fantastic once you get its intricacies down. It's not gonna be for everyone, but it was for me more than any game really could hope to be.

I was playing Trepang2 when THIS was just sitting there? Shame on me for this one.

Incredibly fast-paced slow-mo gunfights with a cool girl protagonist with drum'n'bass music. Frankly, I have no one to blame but myself for not seeing the signs that I'd like this. Cooking much more than Trepang2 in terms of FEAR-style action, with much better arena design, weapons, movement, basically everything except framing. Severed Steel has a pretty superfluous excuse of a plot, whereas Trepang2 at least gave you SOMETHING to work with.

Actually, what is with indie games and being incapable of any sincerity beyond "metaphor for mental illness"? It feels like shit like this, Ultrakill and My Friend Pedro are more interested in being coolly detached to form an emotional core around literally anything. The reason FEAR is so cool isn't just because it has incredible action: it is grounded in its own tangible reality. the Point Man doing amazing, superhuman shit is given more gravity because we have a frame of reference for what normal is, we hear reactions from people about how unstoppable you are, and there is a PLOT with CHARACTERS that every gunfight serves to further. FEAR takes its psychic supersoldier plot deadly serious and it makes every incredible gunfight feel more real in that world. Artifice is important and I'm sick of these games deciding that they are too cool for it.

Comparing this to FEAR on more fundamental levels will also be very bad for it: arena design is way too loud and busy, meaning enemies have to be highlighted to make them visible amongst the backdrop. Whereas Replica soldiers stand out so dramatically in the office complexes of FEAR that no such bells and whistles are necessary.

One thing it NAILS is the destruction of the arenas, though. You can fuck these levels up, and if you are making a slow-mo action shooter, you better be looking at FEAR or Max Payne 3 to see how much a room can be blown apart by a hail of bullets.

I really like what is cooking here. I think this team is significantly more skilled than their contemporaries at action shooters, and the one-arm no reload design is brilliant in how it makes you never worry about anything but the shooting, so the pace is slick as hell. I would love these devs to take another critical look at FEAR and realize its color pallet is not a flaw, but a deliberate design choice. I want to see it expanded into something more substantial, as there is something good here even though I can only call it a dry run at this point.