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Ninja Gaiden Review for Xbox
Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 @ 03:15:31 am E.S.TLike a ninja flipping out of a shadow and decapitating all opponents, Ninja Gaiden arrives as the action game to end all action games. Not since Capcom’s Devil May Cry in 2001 has there been an action game with such intense gameplay, beautiful graphics and responsive controls, and Ninja Gaiden trumps that game in each category ten-times over. This is the first action game developed by Tecmo’s appropriately titled Team Ninja (headed by the somewhat eccentric Tomonobu Itagaki), and while they may be best known for the successful Dead or Alive fighting game series, Ninja Gaiden is easily their best game yet.
Perhaps it’s best that Team Ninja had some experience with fighting games before trying their hands at an action game, because it seems their familiarity with the genre has lent itself into the creation of Ninja Gaiden. This is the first 3D action game that really comes close to having the sort of depth usually reserved for a top-tier fighting game, and like a good fighter, success in Ninja Gaiden is truly skill-based. As Ryu Heyabusa (the same main character from the original Ninja Gaiden trilogy in 1989-91 on the NES), you really need to make effective and strategic use of all his attacking and defensive techniques to get to the end in one piece; button-mashers will find no quarters here. The amount of attacks and combos Ryu can pull off really is more similar to a fighting game character (which he also was, incidentally, in the Dead or Alive games) than an action game character. In fact, there are so many different combos, depending on which weapon Ryu is using, that the game offers a list of them in the pause menu, not unlike the moves lists you find in the practice modes of many fighting games.
Considering the immense importance placed on precise and deliberate gameplay, it’s a good thing that Ninja Gaiden has such tight and responsive controls. What’s impressive is how intuitive the control scheme is, despite the fact that Ryu can be quite agile and acrobatic. For instance, he can run both up and across walls for a short distance, very similar to the Prince in Ubisoft’s recent adventure game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The difference between that and this game is that these wall-run moves are done automatically. Simply jump toward a wall at the appropriate angle, and Ryu will start running. These techniques are not just for exploration and environmental puzzles, as it’s usually necessary to run up and across walls during combat to avoid enemy attacks. That jumping off of walls can make your downward slashes stronger only makes using walls during combat even more important.
Ninpo gives Ryu some amazing abilities.
The game is broken down into 16 chapters, but similar to Devil May Cry, these chapters are not separate, self-contained levels. Ninja Gaiden is actually an action/adventure game, in which you explore interconnected areas of one larger environment, sometimes having to backtrack through already-explored terrain to get to newer portions of the game. The cohesiveness of the game’s environments is not as fully realized as, say, the environments of Metroid Prime’s Talon IV, nor does it play as integral a role—the focus of the game is squarely on combat. But the cohesiveness of the experience does make Ninja Gaiden a more immersive game none the less. Thankfully, Ninja Gaiden is also a relatively lengthy game, lasting around 20 to 30 hours depending on how good you are.
The original Ninja Gaiden games were memorable for being very cinematic, and this new game lives up to that heritage with some rather remarkable pre-rendered cut-scenes. The plot itself, however, is nothing spectacular. As the game opens, Ryu is undergoing training in his ninja village when suddenly Doku, a demon warrior from the Vigoor Empire, attacks the village and steals the Dark Dragon Blade (a weapon with the power to transform its wielder into the Devil himself). Ryu sets off to the Vigoor Empire to avenge the death of his villagers and reclaim the Dark Dragon Blade, and ends up battling a demonic invasion as his quest for revenge takes him ever closer to the Vigoorian Emperor. The plot never gets much more interesting than that, nor is it tied to any events in the original Ninja Gaiden trilogy, so players new to the series needn’t worry about being lost in all the happenings. The simple quest for revenge, though, does provide enough of an excuse to justify the sheer amount of death and carnage you will wake throughout your quest, and that’s all a game like this really needs.
That’s not to say that you’ll be the only one dealing out death and carnage, because you will do more than your fair-share of dying as well. To say that Ninja Gaiden is a challenging game would be a bit of an understatement, because it’s almost sadistic in its difficulty. There is the option between a Normal, Hard and an unlockable Very Hard difficulty setting, but this is a bit deceptive since by the standards of most other games these essentially equate to Hard, Extremely Hard, and You Got to be Frickin’ Kidding Me. The important distinction here, which is what keeps the game from being too frustrating, is that it’s tough, but fair. While there are a handful of exceptions (such as an extremely annoying sequence with zombie archers, and a couple of other sequences with somewhat cheap ghost piranhas), Ninja Gaiden is legitimately difficult, with no artificial hardships like one-hit-kills, pits of instant death, or bosses with 15 health bars. The difficulty mostly comes from smart enemies that don’t have easily recognizable attack patterns to exploit. Moreover, the game is also very fair with the rewards it deals out. You’ll almost always get health elixirs or other useful items not long after particularly tough sequences or boss fights, and there are plenty of Muramasa kiosks throughout the game’s environments that act as shops where you can purchase all kinds of useful items with the essence orbs (read: money) that you acquire by defeating enemies. If you ever find yourself facing a tough battle while low on health elixirs, you can usually backtrack to a Muramasa kiosk and restock your supplies.
Another, slightly more subtle way that Ninja Gaiden keeps from feeling too frustrating is that Ryu Hyabusa truly is a very powerful character. Ryu is quite the formidable ninja right from the start, and he only becomes more powerful as you progress further into the game. As you play, you’ll acquire new melee weapons (a nunchaku, flail, war harmer, and more, although none ever really replace your katana in effectiveness); new projectile weapons (a bow and various types of arrows, explosive shurikens, etc.), new fighting techniques and combos; new Ninpo spells (ninja magic attacks); and various bracelets that Ryu can equip, each with specific positive effects. As if the arsenal that you collect isn’t enough, many of your weapons can also be upgraded at Muramasa’s shop, making them even stronger. By the end of the game, you really feel like an unstoppable super-ninja that can handle whatever is thrown at you.
Ryu is skilled with and without a weapon.
Part of this feeling comes from Ninja Gaiden’s outstanding graphics, which rank right at the top amongst all consoles. Every one of Ryu’s moves and combos look devastatingly powerful, and the results are as bloody as you would want. This is in fact a very violent game, with tons of blood gushing from your eviscerated, and often times decapitated foes. These foes, however, are no slouches themselves. Ninja Gaiden features a nice assortment of fantastic-looking enemies for you to tangle with, including enemy ninjas, modern-day commandos (not to mention, at one point, an entire army), and all sorts of hellish demons. But they all pale in comparison to the bosses you’ll face throughout your quest. These suckers are powerful, fast and unrelenting, and many dwarf Ryu in their stature. It’s kind of unfortunate that you don’t get to fully absorb the true beauty of some of the enemies and environments since you’ll be too preoccupied with trying not to die.
The audio in the game is almost equally as good. Sound effects are crisp and effective; stuff like shurikens thumping into wood, Ryu’s various grunts and yells during combat, and especially the exaggerated and arcadey sound of blood gushing from slain opponents all sound great. Furthermore, Ninja Gaiden features a diverse musical score that’s always fitting to your current area, be it Ryu’s ninja village, the slightly more modern streets of Tairon in the Vigoor Empire, or the funky tune that plays inside Muramasa’s shop. The voice-acting in the game isn’t exactly top-notch, but it’s certainly competent. It’s worth noting that Team Ninja were generous enough to include the option for either the English or original Japanese voice-acting, and while the English actors do a pretty good job, setting it to the Japanese actors with English subtitles just feels more appropriate.
As great as Ninja Gaiden is, it’s still not without its faults. The biggest problem (as so often is the case with thid-person action games) is the camera, which will sometimes give you an undesirable view while enemies attack from off-screen. It’s really quite manageable, though, as clicking the R trigger centers the camera behind you, but one gets the feeling that the right thumbstick would have been far better used if it rotated the camera (a la Splinter Cell) instead of putting you into a first-person view. The other problem is the abundance of clichéd puzzles. It would have been nice if Team Ninja came up with stuff a little less arbitrary and overused as doors that need shield crests to unlock them or cranks that are missing the handles necessary to use them. These key-finding puzzles aren’t entirely without their purpose, though, since a lot of them basically amount to excuses to send you into more exhilarating combat.
The camera could have been a little more manageable, the puzzles a little less trite, and it’s possible that the steep difficulty might alienate some players, but none of this changes the fact that Ninja Gaiden is simply an excellent game. It’s clear that the development team had the time, resources, and (most importantly) talent to create a game that all but conquers everything else in its genre. Ninja Gaiden is satisfyingly long, features cutting-edge visuals, offers an engaging challenge, and is, quite simply, a joy to play. Review By: Kris Pigna - 7217 Reads
Ninja Gaiden Review Scores for Xbox :
| Gameplay |
| 9.5 |
| Graphics |
| 10 |
| Sound |
| 9 |
| Replay |
| 8 |
| Overall |
| 9.5 |
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