I’ll admit I have never played any of the original Shinobi games, so I went into this demo knowing nothing but that Ninjas are involved. This one was announced just a short while back, and I was surprised to see it playable at the Sega booth at E3 this year. You have a few abilities to quickly learn. A grappling hook is used for climbing up to roofs and high ceilings. The basic sword attack which can be chained into combos up to 3 times. The right shoulder button will trigger your counter/deflect ability which has to be timed very accurately. You can also rapidly throw shuriken.
The way some of the abilities were mapped onto the 3DS buttons came off as awkward. However, the Sega rep assured me that in the final game the player will be able to fully customize the controls of the game. Still it made for an awkward demo session, for me at least. The first stage was a standard side scrolling level. I had to grapple onto and underneath buildings to climb on top of them to avoid fires and other objects blocking my path. And fight off the occasional ninja grunts and a few more powerful enemies.
