Bonus Hands-On Time with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance

If you follow our coverage closely, we gushed recently about our time at Summer Game Fest with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. We loved it so much, we named it Best Game of this year’s Summer Game Fest Play Days press experience. This game is a gorgeous sidescrolling entry into the venerable franchise that dates back to arcades in 1987. This game is beautifully designed, and while featuring a bevy of minor foes to clear out, the delight is using a batch of light and heavy attacks in unique configurations to dispatch them. This incarnation of Shinobi has a beautiful and fluid art style, making each major combo and heavy attack a painterly feast for the eyes.

One of the most satisfying elements in Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is how once bringing an enemy close enough to little remaining health, a red character appears above their head meaning they can be executed. You press the right button, and a form of bullet-time happens and a vibrant red slash is shown as you assassinate the enemy. Combine this with kunai throwing weapons and the game’s lead character Joe Musashi is a force to be reckoned with. When his abilities have charged enough, it opens up the ability for a super attack that kills all but the strongest enemies on the screen.

This time with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance we were given two new levels to fully explore along with the ability to climb walls with claws and grappling hook to ascend at great speeds. The first level was a more linear path through a city market-type area and ultimately a dockside shipping area. The second was a more open-ended skyscraper-laden area where we had to navigate Musashi to rescue a series of kidnapped children. The first section was a great ramp-up to the main mechanics of this entry in the franchise. In a very Double Dragon way, this level takes you through easier-to-figure-out patterns in the combatants, before stronger enemies start being commonplace. A fun sequence riding inside a train car full of jarred laboratory experiments featured each jar breaking open and having to slay them a la facehugger attacks in the Alien franchise.

Later, we faced our first real boss fight. A giant octopus bursting through a beached container ship called Octostar. This was a balance of timing and pattern recognition, avoiding its numerous tentacles bursting through the ground. In the second section, the challenge was finding the right path to the next kidnapped child needing to be freed navigating the labyrinth of platforming madness. Once finding all three and using the grappling hook to rappel up to the highest reaches of the buildings, there was a thrilling sequence where the character is chased by a missile flinging helicopter. This was an exhilarating dash of timing, having to avoid the missiles and continue grappling from hook to hook before finally making the way to the finale. A brief burst through more enemies and a second boss fight, this one a balance of platforming and deterring the boss’ recovery speed.

It’s about time that a studio has taken the classic sidescrolling 2D approach and meld it with the quality and detail that modern technology allows for. SEGA has a real gem on their hands here with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance and we can’t wait to play more of it when it comes out on August 29, 2025.

Watch 30 minutes of hands-on time with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance on our YouTube below: