Tenchu Is Back! Wait... Where Did Everyone Go? Anyone Care?

Tenchu Z, the next title in the Japanese-developed stealth-action franchise is soon to be released. Published by Microsoft Game Studios and developed by From Software, this could be another attempt by Microsoft to try to get the Eastern market interested in the Xbox 360. However, save for a few Xbox-exclusive hits with Japanese flavor (The cult-classic Phantom Dust on the original Xbox, for example), Microsoft’s attempts to get the Japanese market to plunk down the cash for their systems have failed.

It’s not to see why, either. Although some of the Japanese games published by them were decent, titles like Blinx: The Time Sweeper aren’t exactly what most would consider system sellers (let’s also forget about half-baked released like Whacked! and the ill-fated Kakuto Chojin, shall we?). Titles like Blue Dragon, which recently helped move some 360’s from Japanese shelves are a step in the right direction, but are people really excited about a new Tenchu?

While I’m actually moderately eager to play it (I have fond memories of the original game back on the Playstation), the Tenchu games haven’t exactly made great strides to modernize themselves. Although this may have been acceptable for the last two generations, now that we’re in the next-gen people aren’t going to overlook many of the problems the series has had in the past, such as the dim-witted A.I. and clunky controls. Sadly, it seems as if the developers have not bothered fixing these problems, because a Japanese demo was recently found on Xbox Live Marketplace and it has been garnering much criticism for problems that the series should have fixed long ago.

To add injury to insult, the Tenchu series has been receiving worse and worse reviews every title, with last year’s DS-exclusive title Tenchu: Dark Secret earning an abominable 39.2% average from GameRankings. Well, Tenchu Z will be hitting U.S. shores shortly (June 12^th, to be exact), and while I hope it turns out decent I have my doubts. In the meantime, here’s a breakdown of how the Tenchu games have been rated through the years (look at how the ratings have progressively slid downhill)

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins - 83%

Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins - 79%

Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven - 79%

Tenchu: Return From Darkness - 70%

Tenchu: Fatal Shadows - 60%

Tenchu: Dark Secret - 39%

Ratings are based off of GameRankings. The source for the Tenchu ratings can be found here