The ultimate goal is to recover soul pieces - something the warlords will separately help you with - so that you can regain your memory. Stuck in the middle of three provincial warlords, you get to side with whichever you like, or work for them all, and your success or failure in helping them fosters respect. Instead of a linear group of missions, the main story mode sets itself up with a playable prologue (effectively there to demonstrate the core death-dealing mechanics, although there are tutorial videos afterwards to ram the points home if you had trouble) and then gives you almost free reign over what you do.

Where Shinobido distinguishes itself is in structure. Meanwhile, here we see Crow collecting nuns. If you're caught in the act of killing, you can try and perform a killing move anyway. You can then either dispense with bodies by hauling them away with triangle (the all-purpose pick-up button, outside of death-dealing) or move on anyway. It's all as simple as hitting triangle at the right moment, whether airborne, running, or creeping. Once you're in a position to strike, you can leap onto shoulders and score windpipes like a can opener, or simply sneak up behind and draw your blade across throats. If you're spotted, or he confronts you, it goes red, and he'll start searching for you as you make a getaway. A compass in the top-right is used to gauge the nearest guard position, while little eyes appear in the top-centre to indicate the nearest guard's alertness level. There are slight differences in this area but they don't make much actual difference, if you see what I mean. Stalking and misdirecting your way to perfect, invisible executions was always satisfying sport, and Shinobido gets this quite right.

It maintains the thrill of the hunt - the thing that's always carried Tenchu along in my affection - with plenty of room for skulking across rooftops, luring guards away from the herd with tasty treats and unexplained noises, and then slaughtering them out of sight. Shinobido takes what Tenchu was doing and builds on it. Second, the team stepping in to try and make this point is Acquire, and since Acquire did the last decent Tenchu anyway (the current crop is in the inconsistent hands of fellow Japanese From Software), you can't really blame the team for making a game a lot like it. First, Tenchu, which gets 7/10 on a good day even though it hasn't had any lately, is actually a lacklustre game with tons of room for improvement. Well, there are two things wrong with all of that.

Tenchu, you're expecting me to say, is not. GTA is a wonderful template with room for improvement. If you ask me, that's nonsense - but you can understand why they'd want to make the argument. If you ask Volition, GTA is a genre, and Saint's Row is a game in it.

At first glance, Shinobido is to Tenchu what Saint's Row is to Grand Theft Auto.

Shinobido way of the ninja iso