Techtite's Playstation-2 Reviews!

"Any number of changes in such an unforgiving game design, could've allowed me to tolerate the obnoxiously frequent instant deaths in this game. Once I had to replay the exact same level, for the 50th time, after falling down that chasm near the end of the level, my tolerance for this game's design flaws wore very thin."

---from the review

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 Nightshade: The Official Strategy Guide

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Nightshade

Click picture to order this game (Playstation-2)

A Techtite Review

Nightshade is another fine example of why Sega will always be remembered as a major staple of arcades, yet not home video games. It's a sublime, classic-arcade-style game, with excellent animation, music, and both in-game and CGI cutscenes to keep the story rolling. Then again: it has every "instant death" trick in the book to have kept the kiddies shoveling out quarters, but for us home video gamers is just annoying. This is a shame, because had Nightshade not reached the (no joke) 100th "instant death" mark on my count, maybe it would've been a thumbs up. Sadly, it did...so it isn't. It's as simple as that.

On its surface, Nightshade is a very polished ninja game. The maneuvers your ninja heroine can perform are fluid and superbly animated. Clicking on one button causes you to perform a sort of "ghost" tactic, moving so fast as to have enemies think you haven't moved, even if you have. The ghost image you leave behind, and the image of you zooming in for the kill, make all fights very impressive. Even more fun are the mid-air fights, allowed by your character's ability to scale any wall (don't ask me how she can stick to a wall; it's only a game!), and often to walk across them vertically (an important trait in later levels, which are almost entirely above deadly chasms). Perform a quick multi-kill of all enemies in a region, and see a quick cinematic, complete with a macho blurb from our heroine. This much of the game is, indeed, pretty darn cool.

Then comes the instant deaths. For some odd reason, this poor woman seems to always be fighting the bad guys above a precipice of some kind; fall, and it's an immediate "restart level" for you! I can understand  why a fight atop skyscrapers would mean instant death if you fall off the sides. However, every level afterward is ludicrous. Reach the city streets, and you'll come across various street-wide potholes of the "Are you kidding me?!?" variety; fall into them, and it's bye-bye to your heroine. Enter the Nakatomi building soon after, and you must go down to the basement of the building, reached only by thin ramps with no rails (?!?), with any fall off of said catwalks leading to --you guessed it-- instantaneous death. Oh; there's also the "palace entranceway," which consists of a bunch of pieces of wall you can cling to, and some you cannot, over a bottomless chasm whose very presence makes no sense. Why would the entranceway to a palace be above a pit of instant death? This is just plain silly.

It's a shame too, because had this instant death cut the gamer some slack, maybe it wouldn't be a worry. In any classic arcade game of this type, you'd have multiple lives, before asked to "continue" or not. These "continues" would begin a new game wherever you were in that level, not at the beginning of the level! No such forgiveness in Nightshade, where even the most accidental of instant deaths means you start a whole level at the very beginning...no matter how long ago that was. Any number of changes in such an unforgiving game design, could've allowed me to tolerate the obnoxiously frequent instant deaths in this game. Once I had to replay the exact same level, for the 50th time, after falling down that chasm near the end of the level, my tolerance for this game's design flaws wore very thin.

How thin...? Let's put it this way: there are too many good games out there, for me to not drag this game's rating down just on principle. It's got pretty graphics, yes, but how often do you hear from a game retailer, "Oh, it's an annoyingly frustrating game, and you'll be pulling your hair out by the root, but...it's pretty!" Games can be as pretty as a princess and still not be fun to play. After instant death #101, this wasn't fun at all.

The element that makes my tolerance for this game even thinner is how lackluster the ending of this "story" is. What are your rewards for instantaneous deaths seen over 100 times? Not much, friend. Of course, what do you expect from a "story" without any obvious beginning, middle, and end? It's as if the level editors waited until they had enough game levels, tacked on their "final boss" level, and went home. These are not levels within a story; they are levels that were seemingly made to look like a "story," at the eleventh hour. That's not good game design.

None of this dragged the game down to a bottom-of-the-barrel "burnout" rating, however, until the third-last level. This "entranceway to the palace" is almost entirely fought in mid-air, above --you guessed it-- a chasm of instant death. The only reprieve from battle are a few thin pieces of wall that you can cling to. These pieces of wall are surrounded both by pieces of wall that lead to you falling to instant death if you so much as touch them, but they also include waterfalls and other slippery devices that will lead to your falling to your death even faster; fun, huh? Oh, one more thing: while your shurikens unfairly bounce off most enemies like harmless rubber balls, these same enemies can shoot you, making you lose your footing, and fall off the wall to instant death. This level is not only frustrating; it's a total waste of time. There's simply no reason to spend time with "entertainment" that is as unfairly aggravating as this.

Yes, there's no denying the game is pretty. It's got pretty graphics. It's got pretty music. It's got pretty voice acting. It's even got pretty animation. However, as a game, it's pretty awful.

---Techtite