I somehow knew the minute I posted my impressions on Shinobi that I was going to regret it. I just HAD to complain about the supposed lack of wall-running. As it turns out, immediately following the obnoxious period of hardly any wall-running at all that I was stuck in, there came a level where there wasn’t actually any ground. Just water that a single wrong move could toss you directly into.

This is what I love about that Hotsuma guy: his PRINCIPLES. “I don’t mind defying the law of gravity,” he confided, “I just don’t think I can swim with that much clothing on!”

After that level, as if I hadn’t learned my lesson, there was a section where you had to wall run to avoid lasers, get past pits, and huge sections during which wall running was all you could hope to accomplish. Then there was an impossibly hard boss fight where wall running was like breathing, in that you could not go long without doing it and hope to survive.

So I take that back. In looking at a walkthrough for some help on how to kill a blind man I also learned what all the extras are, and I have to say that I have seen few games so skillfully dedicated to keeping me interested. I’m currently stuck on a four-armed fat guy, and Shinobi gets all the approval I can possibly give.

I do, however, have one complaint: What kind of tanks are these, that bleed?