Being a Ninja at its coolest
After a long 4 years with the Ninja Gaiden 1 iterations of Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden Sigma Turbo and Ninja Gaiden: Championship Edition (where you place the bosses), Team Ninja has released the first totally new Ninja Gaiden game for a current generation system. The Ninja Gaiden series has been running since the late 1980's and has been doing very well for its self the past few years with its 3D re-imagining under the guide of Itagaki, however the future now looks a little rocky with his recent departure from Team Ninja, giving this game the potential to be the end of series, or at least end of an eara. But enough about game politics, lets get this started.
As soon as you jump into Ninja Gaiden 2 you'll get a pretty good idea of how things are going to play out for the next 10-15 hours, you are greeted with a cinematic that lasts just a couple of minutes and sets you up with a basic plot, rescue the girl, without a pause for breath you are quickly dropped into a circle of foes, sword in hand. Combat seems straightforward on the surface, you have the usual, high, weak, dodge, block moves to get you by in the early combat of the game, smash a few buttons and on the starter difficulties you'd be quickly fooled into thinking slaming down on butons will send you on a one way cruise to Ninja victory, soon you'll find that's not the case. Many people find the title of "Ninja Gaiden" to be synonymous with "Brutal Difficulty" and although the easy mode from Ninja Gaiden Black has been adopted in Ninja Gaiden 2, even on the easy setting your going to die and not just a few times, there's a reason why this game has an achievement for restarting 100 times and a reason that all your friends who have completed this game have it. Before we get to far into this I have to warn you all that Ninja Gaiden 2 is hard, really very hard indeed, if you don't fancy yourself as someone who is very good at games, or someone who is easily frustrated then this isn't the game for you, otherwise please read on.
To survive in the brutal world of Ninja Gaiden 2 you'll need a lot to patients, skill and sharp weapons Ninja Gaiden will gladly provide you with the tools as long as you have the talent. There are 9 different melee weapons available that you are able to 'level up' by visiting a shop and spending essence that you've absorbed, once these weapons reach level 3 the move list looks like something out of a a DOA fighting game with a whole host of available moves for each of the weapons. Those long attack lists will be very welcome when you see the list of foes, and while you won't be seeing new targets at every corner, there's enough difference to keep you on the toes on your ninja boots. Throughout the game's 14 chapters you'll be fighting all kinds of different creatures, you might start by fighting two different types of Ninja, some with explosive shuriken and others with bows and you'll find that they each have a different behavior and will require different strategies to beat, especially when you start fighting strange beasts, dogs, robots and dragons. It'll take some time to decipher what tactic you'll want to be using and what weapon fits the moment, but combat will often revolve around some well timed blocks and parrys, absorbing essence for a quicker power attack when you have a moments breathing room and then clearing half a room, then more of the same guys will start flooding towards you and you'll attempt to repeat the process, on paper (or internets) this may seem rather tedious, and it sure would be, if the combat wasn't just so much fun. The joy of the combat does partly lie in the difficulty, you get a honest feeling of accomplishment for getting through each wave and real fear about what could lie around the next corner while you pray it's finally the save point that you well deserve. Combat is also helped by the brutal dismemberment, sometimes you might wale away at a for for several hits before your target drops, other times you might just get the right move at the right moment and slice a leg and a arm clean off, the crippled ninja will lie on the floor and throw shuriken at you until you run up and drive a sword through his back, bringing out new weapons will give you a whole set of new 'Oh Snap!' moments when you pull off that final kill. Between fights you will now auto heal, this new mechanic works extremely well as it does keep the game moving at a fast pace without you constantly worrying about healing, but at the same time it doesn't mean that if you barely survive a fight that you'll be doing just as well as an ace Ninja since every hit you take reduces your maximum available health until you use an item or reach a save point.
While Ninja Gaiden 2 falls into the same genre as God of War 2 and the far more recent Devil May Cry 4 it does have a very different tone and pace to it, firstly you won't be finding any of the God of War style puzzles, the closest you'll find here is confusing level design where the camera spins you around in a small cave and you loose your direction and start walking back on yourself, or you'll wonder around for ages, then realise you need to backtrack through the level and find a crossroads you didn't see before because the camera obscured it. You won't be getting much help from the camera showing you where you need to go, instead think of the camera as just another enemy to conquer, the view is often passable as long as you keep attention to it and it does zoom in nicely when you pull off that final blow. You'll hear many reviews complaining about the camera, perhaps I'm just so used to bad camera games that it just washed off my back, just be aware of the angle and you can get by.
After each act there will be some story handed to you in the form of a cut scene which you can hear in either English or Japanese, you won't find any surprises here however, it's all very run-of-the-mill stuff and its main focus seems to be explaining why you were just fighting in San Francisco and now your halfway across the world. The environments are nice throughout the game, rather varied in both scale and design, from a tight underground cave to a large open area in a city, you'll be having to change tactics as you worry about creatures getting behind you and switch to a different style of weapon to survive. Sometimes these areas get a little too large for their own good and you'll get far to may creatures on screen at once and the frame rate drops well past just being noticeable and at a couple of points in the game it becomes a slide show if your running high resolutions, this gets to be a real heavy frustration when you are simply trying to survive against a screen full of creatures. Even when the screen isn't full the game often pushes beyond hard to just grueling and unfair, some creatures will be able to bypass your block from a distance and cause massive damage, the solution to the problem can often be to run past the entire fight (if you can) or to exploit the AI somehow and shoot from around a corner or lure a smaller group of foes with you. I hate to go on about the difficulty, but at the hardest settings the game wears it's challenge like a pretentious badge of honor, sure it's possible, but sometimes it seems like it's being unfairly tough just for the sake of it. The boss battles are equally challenging and sometimes harder than the preceding levels, the difference with the boss battles is they challenge you without being overly ridiculous. As long as you are well prepared with healing items you can persever through the bosses by just learning their attack patterns and exploiting their weaknesses, just like a good boss should.
Since Ninja Gaiden 2 is missing any kind of Multiplayer, much like most games of its kind, online interaction is limited to sharing your score and recording and sharing video. Video recording and sharing is a nice feature since you can really show off a lot of style although the features are limited to simply start record, end record and upload recording, still, it's a nice feature to have.
Some people will welcome the challenge that Ninja Gaiden brings them, others will become frustrated and leave the game in their "Do not want" pile next to Ninja Gaiden 1 and Dead Rising. For those who can get past the difficulty and fame rate issues you'll find a solid game with a lot of polish and style, since the Xbox Live Marketplace has a downloadable demo, users with a Hard Drive and internet should check the demo out before jumping in, playing the demo will undoubtedly prove to you just how cool it is to be a Ninja.
As soon as you jump into Ninja Gaiden 2 you'll get a pretty good idea of how things are going to play out for the next 10-15 hours, you are greeted with a cinematic that lasts just a couple of minutes and sets you up with a basic plot, rescue the girl, without a pause for breath you are quickly dropped into a circle of foes, sword in hand. Combat seems straightforward on the surface, you have the usual, high, weak, dodge, block moves to get you by in the early combat of the game, smash a few buttons and on the starter difficulties you'd be quickly fooled into thinking slaming down on butons will send you on a one way cruise to Ninja victory, soon you'll find that's not the case. Many people find the title of "Ninja Gaiden" to be synonymous with "Brutal Difficulty" and although the easy mode from Ninja Gaiden Black has been adopted in Ninja Gaiden 2, even on the easy setting your going to die and not just a few times, there's a reason why this game has an achievement for restarting 100 times and a reason that all your friends who have completed this game have it. Before we get to far into this I have to warn you all that Ninja Gaiden 2 is hard, really very hard indeed, if you don't fancy yourself as someone who is very good at games, or someone who is easily frustrated then this isn't the game for you, otherwise please read on.
To survive in the brutal world of Ninja Gaiden 2 you'll need a lot to patients, skill and sharp weapons Ninja Gaiden will gladly provide you with the tools as long as you have the talent. There are 9 different melee weapons available that you are able to 'level up' by visiting a shop and spending essence that you've absorbed, once these weapons reach level 3 the move list looks like something out of a a DOA fighting game with a whole host of available moves for each of the weapons. Those long attack lists will be very welcome when you see the list of foes, and while you won't be seeing new targets at every corner, there's enough difference to keep you on the toes on your ninja boots. Throughout the game's 14 chapters you'll be fighting all kinds of different creatures, you might start by fighting two different types of Ninja, some with explosive shuriken and others with bows and you'll find that they each have a different behavior and will require different strategies to beat, especially when you start fighting strange beasts, dogs, robots and dragons. It'll take some time to decipher what tactic you'll want to be using and what weapon fits the moment, but combat will often revolve around some well timed blocks and parrys, absorbing essence for a quicker power attack when you have a moments breathing room and then clearing half a room, then more of the same guys will start flooding towards you and you'll attempt to repeat the process, on paper (or internets) this may seem rather tedious, and it sure would be, if the combat wasn't just so much fun. The joy of the combat does partly lie in the difficulty, you get a honest feeling of accomplishment for getting through each wave and real fear about what could lie around the next corner while you pray it's finally the save point that you well deserve. Combat is also helped by the brutal dismemberment, sometimes you might wale away at a for for several hits before your target drops, other times you might just get the right move at the right moment and slice a leg and a arm clean off, the crippled ninja will lie on the floor and throw shuriken at you until you run up and drive a sword through his back, bringing out new weapons will give you a whole set of new 'Oh Snap!' moments when you pull off that final kill. Between fights you will now auto heal, this new mechanic works extremely well as it does keep the game moving at a fast pace without you constantly worrying about healing, but at the same time it doesn't mean that if you barely survive a fight that you'll be doing just as well as an ace Ninja since every hit you take reduces your maximum available health until you use an item or reach a save point.
While Ninja Gaiden 2 falls into the same genre as God of War 2 and the far more recent Devil May Cry 4 it does have a very different tone and pace to it, firstly you won't be finding any of the God of War style puzzles, the closest you'll find here is confusing level design where the camera spins you around in a small cave and you loose your direction and start walking back on yourself, or you'll wonder around for ages, then realise you need to backtrack through the level and find a crossroads you didn't see before because the camera obscured it. You won't be getting much help from the camera showing you where you need to go, instead think of the camera as just another enemy to conquer, the view is often passable as long as you keep attention to it and it does zoom in nicely when you pull off that final blow. You'll hear many reviews complaining about the camera, perhaps I'm just so used to bad camera games that it just washed off my back, just be aware of the angle and you can get by.
After each act there will be some story handed to you in the form of a cut scene which you can hear in either English or Japanese, you won't find any surprises here however, it's all very run-of-the-mill stuff and its main focus seems to be explaining why you were just fighting in San Francisco and now your halfway across the world. The environments are nice throughout the game, rather varied in both scale and design, from a tight underground cave to a large open area in a city, you'll be having to change tactics as you worry about creatures getting behind you and switch to a different style of weapon to survive. Sometimes these areas get a little too large for their own good and you'll get far to may creatures on screen at once and the frame rate drops well past just being noticeable and at a couple of points in the game it becomes a slide show if your running high resolutions, this gets to be a real heavy frustration when you are simply trying to survive against a screen full of creatures. Even when the screen isn't full the game often pushes beyond hard to just grueling and unfair, some creatures will be able to bypass your block from a distance and cause massive damage, the solution to the problem can often be to run past the entire fight (if you can) or to exploit the AI somehow and shoot from around a corner or lure a smaller group of foes with you. I hate to go on about the difficulty, but at the hardest settings the game wears it's challenge like a pretentious badge of honor, sure it's possible, but sometimes it seems like it's being unfairly tough just for the sake of it. The boss battles are equally challenging and sometimes harder than the preceding levels, the difference with the boss battles is they challenge you without being overly ridiculous. As long as you are well prepared with healing items you can persever through the bosses by just learning their attack patterns and exploiting their weaknesses, just like a good boss should.
Since Ninja Gaiden 2 is missing any kind of Multiplayer, much like most games of its kind, online interaction is limited to sharing your score and recording and sharing video. Video recording and sharing is a nice feature since you can really show off a lot of style although the features are limited to simply start record, end record and upload recording, still, it's a nice feature to have.
Some people will welcome the challenge that Ninja Gaiden brings them, others will become frustrated and leave the game in their "Do not want" pile next to Ninja Gaiden 1 and Dead Rising. For those who can get past the difficulty and fame rate issues you'll find a solid game with a lot of polish and style, since the Xbox Live Marketplace has a downloadable demo, users with a Hard Drive and internet should check the demo out before jumping in, playing the demo will undoubtedly prove to you just how cool it is to be a Ninja.
