Nightshade

I think it's fair to say that everyone was a bit surprised by Sega's PS2 version of Shinobi. Series veterans were taken aback by the radically different gameplay style; while the series' transition to 3D made change inevitable, it really played nothing like past Shinobi games. Reviewers and various other professional wusses were surprised by just how hard it was. Hardcore players and masochists were surprised by how much they liked it. And me? I was just shocked at how well it sold despite everything mentioned above -- Shinobi was one of Sega's biggest hits in 2002. Is there still a market for hardcore action games after all, or was this just a fluke?

We may find out come February when Sega releases Nightshade, the first official follow-up to Shinobi. The game's known as Kunoichi in Japan, which basically means "female ninja." That's appropriate, since Shinobi hero Hotsuma is gone and you now get to control Hibani, a female ninja whose sharp shuriken are nicely contrasted by her ample curves. Hibani's in the employ of the army, and her mission is to track down the shattered pieces of the soul-eating sword Akujiki, which was destroyed by Hotsuma in the previous game. Upshot? The damn thing's not going to be sucking your life the entire game, ala Shinobi. That's good, and far from the only change to the gameplay this time out.

She's Got the Moves

Most 3D action games focus on what's essentially one on one combat with enemies, but not Nightshade. Instead, the overriding goal of the game is to create little strings of enemy kills; if the interval between slain enemies is short enough, the kills will chain together. Slash the last enemy to complete the chain, and all will explode simultaneously in spectacular fashion. This is called a "tate" kill (pronounced taa-tay), and is the key to success in Nightshade. With every link of the kill chain your sword attack becomes stronger; once you've got 7 or 8 enemies linked, the next slash could kill a boss, for example, in a single hit. Of course, it's anything but trivial to set up these timing-critical sequences of kills.

The game does some of the work for you by auto-targeting the next enemy in the chain. One of the things that annoyed me to no end about that game was that it would often target the wrong enemy in the heat of battle, messing up my tates. Maybe it's just me, but Nightshade seems to do a better job at this -- more often than not the targeting jumps right to the enemy I want it to.

Luckily for us wusses, pulling off good tates isn't quite as tricky as in Shinobi, and a lot of this is due to a slick new jump kick move. In Shinobi, you could air-dash once and double-jump once after each hit of a midair tate; now, you can also throw a single homing jumpkick in there (essentially another air dash), so it's much easier to stay in the air as you travel from enemy to enemy. Pull this sequence of moves off correctly will require nice timing on the buttons, and feels great once you string together an impressive tate.