Camera is terrible and if you hold crawl near an object it automatically makes you stand up against it, but otherwise Spike's Shinobido Imashime has brought the fun back into stealth ninja games.
If you're like me and tired of the slow "watch enemies and then creep out and kill them" formula, you'll like the approach to this game. Instead of slow creeping, it's all about SPEED. You have a crazy run button that makes you can insanely fast and it's quiet enough that enemies don't hear it. So you just spot a guy, dash at his back and stealth kill. You can also auto stealth kill while hanging real quick so you speed around and run on walls and double jump to get above or behind guys and then quickly take them out. Surrounded by enemies? No problem. Just speed run away from them, get on a roof, run behind them, drop down and stealth kill the guy furthest back. Repeat this as their numbers drop. Feels just like the movies. Game does a great job at letting you know where enemies are and if they can see you, plus instead of guessing if you're ok for a stealth kill you get a very apparent cue that you can auto-stealth kill by hitting triangle so no messing up and leaving yourself open.
Like the Way of the Samurai games and Samurai Western, the game's not perfect by a long shot. But also like those games, it's damn fun. Graphics are better than all the Tenchu games as well, plus it's got a top-notch level creator. Early thoughts are positive.
