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Bury the Shovelware: Tenchu Dark Secret
The fall from grace. Unless your heart is nothing more than a cold, shriveled lump, you probably don't like to witness a once-respectable series slowly degrade. It's happened to many franchises. Often the decay is gradual, with gamers slowly noticing a decline in quality and is correlated with slumping sales. Other times a single misstep can throw an entire series against the ropes and nearly into submission. Either way, it's never pleasant to witness failure. Well, almost never. What was once a prominent pillar in the stealth world has been slowly regressing into mediocrity. The Tenchu series was one of the first and most successful entries in the emerging stealth-based genre of the late 1990's. Though games involving evasive maneuvering over combat had been around for awhile, they truly flourished in 3D. From the onset, Tenchu was there. Peered with and rivaled against other top-notch franchises such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, the word "Tenchu" was synonymous with heart-thumping, adrenaline-pumping sneaky gameplay. But everything eventually dies. And the Tenchu series received a terminal illness in the form of Tenchu: Dark Secret. Unless somebody steps in and performs some sort of miracle, we might have to talk to Tenchu fans about video game heaven. It's where all game franchises go when they pass away. All of Tenchu's friends are there, like Golden Axe, ToeJam & Earl, and Ecco the Dolphin (Sega, please prove me wrong on these).
Tenchu is a bad ninja
We all already know that ninjas are better than pirates. They are crafty, skilled, live by honor, have a dojo and hide in trees. How could some sea-dwelling, loud-mouthed pirate ever beat that? It couldn't. End of discussion. Recently, ninjas were very disappointed by one of their own. Tenchu: Dark Secret just didn't quite represent. In fact, it did such a horrible job of holding up the ninja honor that IGN only scored it a 3.5. Ouch Tenchu, ouch. We didn't quite understand what went wrong. The PlayStation version rocked and now we have this awkward DS version with dodgy controls, crap graphics and mute-worthy sound. Looks like the score for Tenchu: Dark Secret is now: Pirates: 1Ninjas: 0
