Nightshade - PlayStation 2

• Take to the air as you run along walls, hop across rooftops and battle demons in mid-air.
• Improved fighting engine offers unlimited combos and much wider variety of powerful attacks.
• Stunning graphics bring you the fight against ultimate evil -- you'll face demonic creatures on moving trains, fighter jets, industrial cranes and more.
• As you battle your Chakra Gauge will fill, for unstoppable ninja magic -- or unleash the deadly Shadow Dance on the forces of darkness.

Product description ------------------- A new evil sweeps across Tokyo and a young female ninja Hibana is called upon to battle the menacing demons and monsters. Fight enemies atop moving jets and trucks while dodging enemy missiles. Master the ancient Tate Attack and Stealth Dash moves to land multiple al blows. Fight your way through 13 destructible locals and defeat the Hellspawn awakened by the ancient Akujiki curse. Put your skills to the test in game modes including Story, Time-Attack and Survival. Review ------ The release of Shinobi in 2002 disappointed a lot of people by taking a revered series and turning it into an unfortunately average action game. Its follow-up, Nightshade, is also depressingly lackluster, though it does manage to fail in different ways than its predecessor. The main focus of this title is aerial combat, zipping from enemy to enemy and slashing them up without touching the ground. In a game where you spend so much time in the air, you wouldn't think that there would be so many ways to plummet to your death. However, due to the imprecise controls, you are bound to end up falling off of every building, truck, and elevated walkway you encounter, and thus being forced to restart the entire level. The game has hordes of uninspired cybernetic goons, dull level design, and a plot thinner than water soup. In fact, the only thing that saves Nightshade from being entirely unplayable is the fun you can have stringing together kills while dashing through the air. You feel pretty stylish when your ninja strikes her pose as you see all of your foes fall to pieces around her. Unfortunately, the sense of accomplishment fades quickly, and then it's back to the mundane chore that is Nightshade. Concept: Take an idea like "super-powered flying ninja" and somehow make it not fun Graphics: Instead of a long red f, Nightshade has an equally captivating bandana that is easily the graphical highlight of the game Sound: Generic techno-thumping does nothing to enhance the experience Playability: Mournfully inadequate. I died more often due to clunky controls and poor auto-targeting than at an enemies hand Entertainment: For every one time you think the game is fun, there are nine times that you're cursing life due to either boredom or frustration Replay: Moderate Rated: 6.5 out of 10 Editor: Joe Juba Issue: March 2004 2nd Opinion: Hack. Slash. Yawn. Repeat. If there is one word to sum up Nightshade, it's "uninspired." Take away the flashy gimmicks like tates, and there's nothing here that you haven't seen in dozens of other games. It's not a bad game, just one that doesn't do anything to move past stale genre conventions. You see something; you kill it. That is all. Rated: 6 out of 10 Editor: Jeremy Zoss Subscribe to Game Informer ( http://www..com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AN45D/ ) -- Game Informer Review