10 Video Game Franchises Microsoft Needs To Win The Console War

9. Tenchu

You might not have realised it, but Tenchu Z was an Xbox 360-exclusive. Since then there's been one for the PSP and an extremely misguided turn-based puzzler on the Xbox Live Arcade, but as one of the original stealth franchises that twinned cinematic kill-cams with buckets of gore and levels with a few different ways to complete them, Tenchu remains the unsung hero of the genre as others like Metal Gear, Hitman and Splinter Cell get all the glory. The last great Tenchu game was the aforementioned Z, coming complete with a brilliant sense of progress that saw you unlocking new abilities for use in the field alongside plenty items to customise your character and a plethora of signature execution-kills to pad out your guard-maiming options. Let's just say if you thought Splinter Cell's split-legged corridor-drop was badass, you've not seen Rikimaru hang-strangle a guy below from a rooftop. Arcade to the core and incredibly satisfying when it came to dispatching entire levels in a blur of broken bones and bladed-kills, Tenchu has the right mix of old-school allure and new-school gameplay mechanics to deliver a truly great sequel.