Consolation Prize

Since the “Summer of Arcade” extravaganza came to a close I’ve not really been paying that much attention to the latest Xbox Live Arcade releases. But it’s about time that changed, so I downloaded both Shadow Assault Tenchu and War World yesterday in the hope of finding a lost gem. Did I find a diamond in the rough? Or were they both just plain old lumps of coal? Well today I present my impressions of Shadow Assault Tenchu, to be followed shortly by War World.

Shadow Assault Tenchu is a puzzle action hybrid viewed from a top down perspective. Upon selecting a character - of which only the one: Rikimaru, is available in the trial game - the player is tasked with negotiating a series of levels and completing a simple objective per level such as “defeat all enemies” or “kill the Samurai general”.

However, instead of having equipped weapons at the ready with which to deal out death and destruction you are required to pick up “one shot items” that lie dotted around the map, laying them as traps in strategic positions to eliminate the opposition. Luckily choosing the best place for a trap is a fairly simple affair as the enemy path finding is purposefully rudimentary and it shouldn’t take too long before a set pattern can be identified. To make it even easier to sneak up on your foes the enemy line-of-sight is heavily restricted and is actually shown as a number of surrounding yellow squares giving you a clear indication of how close you can get without detection.

Each Enemy has a number of hit points shown above their head and although some traps will easily take out the lesser minions, the harder foes will require a bit more cunning to dispatch. Usually this means chaining together trap combos and hurling them across multiple pits of bamboo spikes which will all deal far more damage.

The single player game in itself is entertaining enough, it’s well presented, and although it’s not visually stunning it won’t offend either. Once you get the hang of the deliberate slower pace and its emphasis on purposefully situating traps in the right position to deal maximum damage then it becomes quite an easy puzzle game to pick up and play.

Shadow Assault Tenchu is available for 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.30 / USD 10.00) and is 94 MB to download.

I did not even realize this was a puzzle game. I’ll have to check it out.