For those of us who think ninjas are fantastic in every way, Tenchu Z should hold a great deal of promise. I mean, it's got ninjas in it and, more importantly, you are a ninja. Where could you go wrong? Sadly, Tenchu Z manages to go wrong in a number of ways.

The storyline to Tenchu Z is pretty basic at best; consisting of fifty pretty samey missions, it essentially revolves around a drug trafficker who wants to take over your town. The story is told via cut scenes and since you don't have to play all the missions to complete the game, it can become quite disjointed in places. The missions themselves include a variety of tasks, such as assassinating someone, finding items or even just getting across the map. Unfortunately, the difference is only really in the objectives and the missions generally play out the same regardless of what you have to do, lacking any real depth to them. There is the option to play co-operatively via system link or on Xbox Live, which is a thoughtful addition that's most appreciated, but how popular online support will get remains to be seen.

The gameplay itself, which mostly consists of sneaking around and killing guards on the sly with various ninja weaponry, isn't actually that bad, although it has some quite serious flaws to it. For a start, this is supposed to be a stealth game - right? Well it is, but it's almost too easy to be stealthy. You can, should you so desire, simply get yourself up onto a roof, scamper across the entire level to the small building sticking out at the side of the compound (after one missions it becomes fairly obvious to guess where your target is going to be pacing around, grumbling to himself), kill the one or two guards that are close enough to be a nuisance and butcher whoever has wronged your town in some way. While the freedom and ease with which you can bypass most of the guards is realistic and open-ended, it does make the game seem almost pointless at times. To make the gameplay even easier, you don't actually have to get out of the area once you have accomplished your mission; the game simply pauses as your character performs their victory pose and then the mission ends. This happens regardless of whether you're on your own or surrounded by guards. It could be an oversight or (more likely) the developers thought better of making you do the exact same thing you did to get to the target all over again, given the chore that it often is.

Given that you so much freedom, if you're finding it dull to slink across the rooftops like a yellow-suited ninja, play like you earned that black suit and, for a while at least, this is pretty satisfying. The stealth kills that you can perform are great, with some pretty acrobatic executions complete with spraying a lot of blood all over the place. I did wonder as to why a black liquid comes out with the red blood, but I just assume this is to show that you are killing evil people with blackness in their souls. Obviously. Unfortunately, the fun factor of the game doesn't last long because, as with everything else, it gets very repetitive very quickly. Although you can do things such as slamming your enemy into a wall prior to gutting him and stabbing around corners or through shoji doors, it loses its appeal pretty quickly because there's no challenge to it. There are onscreen and rumble prompts to aid you and they don't require any skill, aside from pushing the correct button.

The guards don't provide much of a challenge; even if they do spot/hear/smell you, they simply return back to their post after a short while, as if nothing happened and their friend isn't now a corpse in a pool of blood. While this issue certainly isn't unique to Tenchu Z, it would be nice if all that Xbox 360 computational power could be put into making the guards a bit warier. The other problem with being stealthy is that with dark and shadowy corners being a good friend of the ninja, you spend a fair while in them. The camera doesn't like this and is quite unwieldy in these tight-spaced situations, along with any one-on-one combat you find yourself in; the camera can't seem to stick with a position for you to view the action. This becomes quite annoying as, being a ninja, you're using your agility quite a lot in fighting and a simple sidestep can have the camera veer to completely the wrong angle, which results in you getting stabbed because you can't see your enemy any more.

Speaking of the one-on-one combat, this part of the game (with the exception of scripted fights) is pretty much entirely avoidable, with the guards losing interest in you after a short period of time has passed. Should you engage a hapless guard in combat, you'll that it's nowhere near as fluid as the stealth kills and your enemies can take a ridiculous amount of damage. This is more of an annoyance purely because it just adds time until you inevitably kill them, since they only very occasionally actually manage to swing their weapons, let alone hit you. There are a few extra moves you can purchase, but you really won't need anything but the standard combos and block to defeat anyone. At the end of the day, it's probably quicker and less frustrating to just run away and come back when they've given up trying to find you, then perform a stealth kill.

Graphically, Tenchu Z looks nice enough at a glance. It certainly doesn't feel next-gen though. The characters and the buildings for example all look reasonable, but then you realise that there is very little variety in both the characters and the buildings. Your character is open to some very rough customisation with different hairstyles and clothes that you can purchase from the shop in your 'home'. It's certainly not a patch on the character customisation in say, Oblivion though, and your home, although looking nice enough, is pretty pointless, featuring only the shop and the place to accept missions. Nothing in the sound really stood out for me. The Japanese is all very well and good, but with the guards always mumbling about something it's pretty easy to figure out exactly where they are, even when you can't see them. This said, the sound of the sword cutting into someone and the blood spraying out of them afterwards is, for a while, rewarding. In general, however, the sound does nothing to help the experience either.

Tenchu Z certainly had the potential to be, at the very least, a good game, but just ends up being a lacklustre experience due to its various flaws, the lack of challenge and its very repetitive nature. Whilst I normally enjoy choosing between a stealthy or combat-based approach like in the Hitman games, the idea of being able to very easily kill everyone in the level or just avoid anything entirely still seems odd to me.

Reviewed by Tom Selwyn for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).