This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
As a young child I was reared on console games. Then my family got our first computer and I became enamored with computer gaming. By the time I was entering high school I had missed out on most of the PS1 era and because I was playing softball year-round. Between that and school I didn’t have much time to miss console games. It was around the time that I started to wonder if maybe I was playing too much softball that I began to be friends with a group of anime fans. It wasn’t long before I was enraptured with anything and everything Japanese. Soon I was watching anime and playing Japanese games during most of my free time away from sports.
One of my best friends and I used to go to the Family Video near her house and rent anime or games. Eventually we spotted a copy of Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. For those who missed it, the Tenchu series (beginning with Tenchu: Stealth Assassins on the PS1) revolves around the ninjas Rikimaru and Ayame as they stealth kill their way through feudal Japan. Being the otaku we were, my friend and I were blown away playing Wrath of Heaven. We were ninja! In Japan! With ninja weapons! This is the greatest game every made! For about the next two years we played Wrath of Heaven’s co-op mode at least once a week.
In case there are any doubts about my Tenchu fandom, then here are my Rikimaru and Ayame figures.
Yesterday (and about 5 years later) my friend came over bringing her PS2, and Wrath of Heaven, with her. We had laughed on the phone earlier that day discussing the prospect of replaying our old standby. Unfortunately sometimes nostalgia is best left alone. The fact is Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven is not that good of a game. Some of the problems I had with it are probably because I’ve played much better games since then, so I can’t be completely fair. But after playing it yesterday I can only assume that much of my love for the game arose from my teenage enthusiasm for all things Japanese.
For one thing, the camera is awful. While playing the easiest co-op mission I was spotted by an enemy who then knocked me into a pit. Naturally I wanted to do something about that. Unfortunately all I could do was block while staring at a wall and watching the camera slowly pan in the right direction. Once I remembered how to play and stopped doing things like falling in pits, I realized that the enemy AI is awful. Multiple times I was standing directly in front of an enemy and all I had to do was crouch and he no longer saw me. More generally the co-op mode (and multiplayer in general) is really shor,t both on substance and physical length. I couldn’t believe my friends and I had put so much time into Wrath of Heaven; there just isn’t that much to do.
After 30 painful minutes, I glanced over at my friend to see if she was as frustrated as I was, and casually suggested we play Soul Calibur IV instead. She didn’t argue.
Thank God we didn’t play Inuyasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale (she brought that over too). I think had we done that I would never be able to view high school the same again. Or maybe seeing these games for what they are is just a part of growing up. Who knows. Either way I think my friend and I will be playing more current games from now on.