Kasumi Ninja... haha, in my traditional foolish fashion, this is a Jaguar game I have been eager to play for years. Ever since I first saw the Kasumi Ninja advertisements popping up in various videogame magazines at the time, I have wanted to give this so-called Ninja of Kasumi a shot.

Zoom forward to today, approximately 3:36 PM, August 1st of 2003: Kasumi Ninja arrival day. Well, technically the game arrived yesterday, but I was asleep when the delivery person came to the door, so the pick-up date was pushed back twenty-four hours. As I opened up the box on my way home from the post office, skillfully using a housekey to tear the packing tape surrounding the corrugated cardboard box containing the goods, I held a factory sealed copy of Kasumi Ninja for the first time (soon afterward I held a factory sealed copy of Checkered Flag that had come with Kasumi Ninja, but that in no way concerns this review).

Now over the past month or so, I have read many reviews of Kasumi Ninja. I have tracked down every piece of Kasumi Ninja coverage I could find, be it in the form of a magazine preview, press release, or just some random piece of information. I have scoured the internet for screenshots, all in an attempt to get a basic idea of what sort of experience I was in store for when the game would one day be mine. And after all of this research, I have compiled a list of things I should expect:

Horrendous character animation. Atrocious level music. A poorly executed character selection system. Awkward-to-perform special moves, and just generally shitty and unresponsive control. A hilariously bad announcer. Overdone blood. Neat backgrounds.

So as you can see, I am going into the Kasumi Ninja experience expecting it to be a waste of both my time and money. From what I can tell, this is probably the only way to guarantee at least a shred of Kasumi Ninja enjoyment.

There has to be something wrong with me... because after playing Kasumi Ninja for a few hours, I can honestly say that I was having a good time.

[GRAPHICS]

[SOUND FX/MUSIC]

I.. I.. uh.. it's just.. no! Bad! Bad! Music so... very bad! It... no! NO! ARGGG!!!

Sound effects? Eh, no problems really. Music? See above.

Besides completely rehauling the music, the one thing that would vastly improve Kasumi Ninja from an audio standpoint would be replacing that announcer. What Handmade Software was thinking when they chose this guy, I will never fully understand.. you have to hear what he sounds like to know what I mean. So horrible.. the words 'show no mercy' have never sounded so mangled.

It is obvious that the music in Kasumi Ninja (neat title screen tune aside) was one of if not the last priority of the developers. In many of the stages, it sounds more like the sort of thing that would have appeared in a very early version of the game and would then be redone before the project was complete - in other words, its presence being merely to show that, "Yessir, we will have music in this here game, I swear it. Until then, we'll slap this shit in place until we have the time to replace it with something that won't make you pray for deafness."

...at least, that's the impression the music gave me. Thankfully it isn't ear-splitting and shrill. The fact that it mostly consists of very simple percussion-free synth bass melodies is a bit of a relief simply for the fact that it does not constantly draw attention to itself. Angus's 'Synthetic Bagpipe Death Lullaby' may inspire suicide, though.

There is nothing all too exemplary about the effects o' sound. You have a set of male and female grunts and groans, a character-specific winning cry, and an announcer that deserves some sort of award for resplendent achievements in voice acting dumbassery.

..actually, I personally began to get used to the hilariousness of the announcer's voice and even find that it suits the overall feel of the game. Of course, Kasumi Ninja could best be described as 'A valiant, yet laughable, attempt at being taken seriously,' so an announcer that fits in with that description, well... you be the judge.

[GAMEPLAY]

Expecting a game to suck tremendous amounts of ass seems like a fine way to prepare yourself for anything it has to offer. In Kasumi Ninja's case, it worked wonders. Not only was I not suprised by the sluggish and unresponsive controls, but I was not left in shock by the remarkably cumbersome methods for executing special moves. Amazing, simply amazing...

Having to hold down the C button while performing the motions for special moves has its ups and downs. A positive of this is that for characters like Senzo and Angus, you can keep the C button pressed and then keep on doing the half-circle motions, pummelling your opponent with repetitive and completely cheap fireball blitzkriegs. A downside? Doing quick and spontaneous special attacks is near impossible, since holding down the C button makes whatever character you have selected stop dead in their tracks. The Jaguar's flimsy d-pad does not make things any easier, since most moves require accurate and occasionally quite complex directional taps.

[OVERALL]

...overall overall overall

[GRAPHICS] - 7.3/10

[SOUND FX/MUSIC] - 2/10 (for the "music"), 6.9/10(for the sound effects and hilarious announcer)

[GAMEPLAY] - 6.7/10

[OVERALL] - 7/10 (not an average)