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    Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

    Game » consists of 9 releases. Released Feb 27, 2014

    One of the many ninja henchmen slain by Ryu Hayabusa is back for blood in this Ninja Gaiden spinoff. The project is directed by Keiji Inafune of Dead Rising fame, and jointly developed by Inafune's company Comcept, Team Ninja and Spark Unlimited.

    So I finished the first two levels. Impressions.

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    musubi

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    #1  Edited By musubi

    So, the good news is it is far from being the worst thing I've ever played. Actually technically at least the PS3 version looks great and runs fine. It hitches up a little bit when auto-saving but other than that I never really noticed the frame rate dipping to horrible levels.

    It also looks pretty damn nice. They were going for a comic book style and by god that thing looks like a comic book. It feels like they took Comix Zone and Ninja Gaiden and smashed them together with a dash of Duke Nukem for seasoning. The entire thing feels like it should have been an arcade game.

    The game starts off and you get little to no reason why Yaiba wants to kill Ryu other than he is an asshole and then Ryu promptly kills Yaiba which sets up the conceit of the game. You're then just instantly dropped into a city full of zombies to hack n' slash through with no real justification for why the zombie outbreak is happening or why this busty red head Ms. Monday keeps popping on your screen talking to Yaiba like she knows him or better yet why Yaiba is even agreeing to go along with what she is telling him to do.

    That being said the game has its moments and its ideas that seem almost cool. And that is really what this game is a game of almosts. The one interesting mechanic it has is that various enemies can have their body parts ripped off to use as a weapon. An early game clown zombie can have his arms ripped off to form wait for it.... Nun-chuckles. Its almost a cool idea until it basically devolves into just stunning enemies hitting a button winning a small QTE event and getting rewarded with your weapon. Had it been a more tactical thing where various attacks might lop off specific body parts that you could then harness it could have been a way more interesting mechanic. One of the things that really feels lacking is the level design in fact Id say the level design is one of the worst features. Also, levels are pretty linear. You'll go down a path kill dudes then go down the path further to kill stronger dudes.

    So in short should you buy it or at the least play it? I would say its worth a buy at any price point from 30$ under it has some charm to it as brief of flashes as they are. It won't be the worst game you'll ever play its just sort of well... a really mediocre one. Feel free to shoot questions if you have em'.

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    ArbitraryWater

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    Did you spend $60 on this? How does that make you feel?

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    #3  Edited By musubi

    Did you spend $60 on this? How does that make you feel?

    I knew what I was getting into. I just had to know for myself what it was like. I've spent more money in worse ways.

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    Milkman

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    Glad you seem to be getting some fun out of it but everything about this game seems completely and utterly insufferable.

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    ArbitraryWater

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    @arbitrarywater said:

    Did you spend $60 on this? How does that make you feel?

    I knew what I was getting into. I just had to know for myself what it was like. I've spent more money in worse ways.

    I am morbidly curious about what you consider to have been a worse use of money. I'm not condemning you, I bought Thief because I had to know how it was for myself, so I've clearly made poor choices with discretionary income.

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    NMC2008

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    I know nothing and have seen nothing on this game, I wonder why? I guess I will check out some videos(are there any?) or something.

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    crithon

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    huh, sounds pretty decent, like in that House of the Dead Overkill camp value..... But you are pretty early, just keep hearing it's a grind of mediocer game.

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    edsone

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    #8  Edited By edsone

    How about the camera? It didn't look too good/comfortable during previews despite being "cinematic".

    Not like I'll be buying anyway (mainly because of zombies).

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    musubi

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    @edsone: Well, its a static camera so... you kind of don't get to choose what you're seeing that being said there are areas like with any action game of this ilk where there is just going to be bad camera placement. I'm not finding it unmanageable but it sure does have its moments where it does get pretty bad.

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    musubi

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    @crithon said:

    huh, sounds pretty decent, like in that House of the Dead Overkill camp value..... But you are pretty early, just keep hearing it's a grind of mediocer game.

    Its basically that exactly. Its fun smashing mindless hordes of zombies and occasionally they sneak a joke in that actually will make you chuckle but its mostly just an action game that goes through the motions. Not really offensively bad but not really good either.

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    crithon

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    #11  Edited By crithon

    @demoskinos: No shame in that.... I guess the reviewers just needed to rant on something and this was an easy target.... might be more fun then they make it out to be.

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    awesomeusername

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    #12  Edited By awesomeusername

    Fucking nun-chuckles. I can't take this.

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    deactivated-5d0d1bbdad7de

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    The one interesting mechanic it has is that various enemies can have their body parts ripped off to use as a weapon. An early game clown zombie can have his arms ripped off to form wait for it.... Nun-chuckles.

    GAME OF THE YEAR RIGHT HERE, FOLKS

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    Tennmuerti

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    I would probably have picked this game up at some point at a cheaper price. If only it wasn't for zombies being your main enemies. I mean I don't really give a shit about other people's humor tastes most of the time and am easily able to enjoy stuff like Bulletstorm constant cussing, or Borderlands 2 overbearing hamfistedness, or Deadpool's stupidity (because fuck at least they aren't bland in that respect). And if it's a decent action game that should be all that matters. But man, fucking zombies man, shit, I can't, I just can't, it's like a personal kryptonite at this point.

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    Freshbandito

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    @arbitrarywater said:

    Did you spend $60 on this? How does that make you feel?

    I knew what I was getting into. I just had to know for myself what it was like. I've spent more money in worse ways.

    I can understand that, that logic right there is why I own 2 (two) copies of MorphX.

    Alright it probably only explains paying for a single copy but let's just say I'm really stupid also.

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    ImmortalSaiyan

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    #16  Edited By ImmortalSaiyan

    Is it worse than Ninja Gaiden 3? I think the idea of playing as a random grunt killed by Ryu is a interesting one. Seems they do nothing with that. Is the writing similar to the trailer, because that alone is reason enough to never touch this game.

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    musubi

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    Is it worse than Ninja Gaiden 3? I think the idea of playing as a random grunt killed by Ryu is a interesting one. Seems they do nothing with that. Is the writing similar to the trailer, because that alone is reason enough to never touch this game.

    Are we talking vanilla? Because if so then Id say its on about on par with that although compring it to the main games is just folly anyways. It plays entirely different in its combat. If we're talking about Ninja Gaiden 3 Razors Edge then yes because I thought Razor's Edge was actually legitimately pretty damn good. Then again the re-issues of Gaiden games always are the best versions.

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    altairre

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    @immortalsaiyan said:

    Is it worse than Ninja Gaiden 3? I think the idea of playing as a random grunt killed by Ryu is a interesting one. Seems they do nothing with that. Is the writing similar to the trailer, because that alone is reason enough to never touch this game.

    Are we talking vanilla? Because if so then Id say its on about on par with that although compring it to the main games is just folly anyways. It plays entirely different in its combat. If we're talking about Ninja Gaiden 3 Razors Edge then yes because I thought Razor's Edge was actually legitimately pretty damn good. Then again the re-issues of Gaiden games always are the best versions.

    Razor's Edge is awesome, I still play it every now and then. The combat just feels really good, has a lot of depth to it and is basically the only thing I care about in a NG game. Sure, some moves are overpowered and there is a tendency to rely on them too much but if you're willing to try out new approaches to combat scenarios there is a lot to be found.

    I guess my only question is if there is enough to Yaiba's combat. You say it plays differently but does it play well and is it interesting once you get the body part weapons? OTEs are certainly never a good start if we're talking about fluid combat. Is there a parry? That's always something that makes character action games better instantly.

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    musubi

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    @altairre: There is a parry although I haven't attempted it much at all as I haven't had to really play defensively just yet outside of a encounter with a helicopter where you have to use the parry to make Yaiba throw the missiles back at the chopper to take it out. Combat wise I'd say it has more in common with God of War than it does any of the 3D Gaiden games. You have a Sword for your basic attacks on one button your heavy attack comes in the form of your robot arm and lastly you have a sort of flail whip thing that you can use for crowd combat this button for the flail also doubles as the button that you use to attack with enemy weapons like the aforementioned "Nun-chuckles".

    There is no jumping. "X" or I'm assuming "A" (on the 360) is for Dashing instead of jumping. The combat is serviceable not great mind you but I didn't think it was awful either. So I'd say worth playing if you can get a rent from GameFly/Redbox or find it for cheaper than 60$ which there IS a PC version so you never know with steam sales coming up in the spring.

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    #20  Edited By altairre

    @demoskinos: Hmmm, that doesn't sound too great. Not being able to jump is certainly weird as I generally dislike having my mobility restricted. I also never played God of War for the combat. It's serviceable but feels sluggish when compared to the better games in that genre like Revengeance, NG, Bayo or DMC.

    Another thing. Are the enemies fun to fight against? Having zombies as your main enemy type doesn't sound that interesting. I'm hoping they're mixing it up enough because slashing your way through endless hordes of dumb zombies seems like it would be a bummer. I might still check it out some time in the future but I'm gonna wait for it to drop to about 20 bucks on PC. I think Killer is Dead comes out on PC soon, too. Will give that a shot as well.

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    JJOR64

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    I'll probably get this on Steam eventually.

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    musubi

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    @altairre: They do have a variety of more advanced enemies that you have to specialize your approach to.

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    Vod_Crack

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    #23  Edited By Vod_Crack

    I have played through the first 3 levels and I hate this game at the moment. It flip flops between being really easy and being really hard. Even with low expectations, I am floored by how poorly made this game is.

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    baka_shinji17

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    Should this be first Ninja Gaiden game? Is Ayane in it?

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