Shinobi and the Art of Criticism

Can it be hard? Absolutely. Is that worth dwelling on in this case, the way everybody with a keyboard and CMS access is currently writing about the difficulty level of Hollow Knight: Silksong? Not really. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance can be selectively brutal, primarily in the most extreme of its platforming sections, but you expect that from a game that serves as a reboot and/or belated sequel to a famous action platformer from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Difficulty would only be worth remarking upon with a game like Art of Vengeance if it was inexplicably easy, and not in conversation with the relentless punishment of the gaming era it memorializes. 

There’s a strand of belief in certain quarters that games writing is insufficient when it doesn’t serve as deep, nuanced critique. That we as a culture and games as an artform have moved past the need for a focus on mechanics and writing about how a game is played instead of what it’s trying to say or how it tries to say it. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor, though. There might not be significant value in exhaustively detailing the finer mechanical aspects to playing, say, Life is Strange or And Roger, two games interested more in story than physical interaction. But Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is here to remind us that there are still games that want it to be 1990 again, when technology and the commercial concerns of a smaller, more rigidly defined audience limited the narrative scope and ambition in presentation that a game could strive for.  

It’s hard to say anything of note about Art of Vengeance without talking about how it feels to jump in it. (It’s a well-ordered jump, with noticeable weight and a reliably predictable arc, and yet overly responsive to midair lateral movement and with a few distinctive rhythms that will lead to frequent mistakes—like how if your feet land on the periphery of a ledge you’ll slide off the side, or automatically pull yourself up the corner of a cliff, occasionally spelling unintended disaster.) The swipe of your katana, knowledge of its reach and timing and the different combos that can be stringed together, are infinitely more interesting and more important than any aspect of the game’s story. What is there to be found about life, though, or the human condition, within the jump of a platformer? The repetitive slash of a virtual blade? The routine tasks in each level—finding exactly five hidden artifacts, defeating precisely three “elite” squads, making it through a hair-rending challenge arena introduced by a friendly grim reaper that appears once (and once only) on every stage—loom much larger than why the titular shinobi—his name’s Joe Mushashi, as always—does any of it. Yes, the game gives a reason—again, almost everybody he knows and cares for, including his dog, has been murdered—but it’s thin and cursory and Art of Vengeance itself clearly has little interest in investigating it. This is a game about doing, not thinking or feeling, and that constant action should represent the sum totality of any discourse around the game. 

Some critics would be tempted to use the cliche “empty calories” to describe a game almost exclusively concerned with moving, killing, and collecting. That’s bunk. There’s nothing empty about Shinobi: Art of Vengeance’s steadfast belief in classicism. Sure, its cinematic or literary ambitions are essentially nonexistent. It spends almost no time in developing Mushashi’s relationship with his people, almost all of whom are killed off camera within the game’s first 10 minutes. Joe Mushashi doesn’t even speak—he reacts to literally everything said or done to him with a wordless grunt. But for Art of Vengeance action isn’t a placeholder between emotional reveals. It’s not something leaned on to make sure the game reaches a certain length. It’s not just what you do to get from one story beat to the next. Action is why you play a game like Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. It’s why the game exists. And it’s not something that can really be understood or explained through cultural criticism adjacent to the kind used to analyze movies, books, TV shows, or even narrative-focused games. Art of Vengeance is about how it feels, not how it makes you feel, and that purity and simplicity can be just as powerful and important today as it was when a game’s story was nothing more than fuzzy white block text on a stark black background. Art has never been one thing, and neither has arts criticism, and Art of Vengeance is a forceful reminder of how games need to be approached and discussed on their own terms.

Editor-in-chief Garrett Martin writes about video games, theme parks, pinball, travel, and more. Find him on Bluesky.