It slices, it dices, it frustrates and humiliates!

by Jamil Bhatti

Fun factor: Average

Worth to: Rent

The speed and skill at which you can decimate your foe will astound, but the monotony, difficulty and technical limitations keep it from greatness

Ninja Gaiden (pronounced “Guy-Den”, it turns out I had been saying it wrong for 19 years - embarrassing!) in its previous incarnation on the original Xbox was widely praised, and despised, for its unapologetic difficulty and blistering gameplay. For better or worse, things remain largely unchanged.




Sharp enough to cut through a tin can, and your ego too!

Your motivation as Ryu Hayabusa is about as well thought out as your average Mario story: save your village, rescue the damsel, and stop the Arch Fiend from world domination (yawn). The real reason to play this game is the combat, which has been tweaked and refined to include a greater selection of weapons and magic (called Ninpo), all of which are upgradeable. All of the weapons wield varying attacks and are suitably cool. My favorite is the Lunar Staff which, in its upgraded form, has two spiked balls on each end that (depending on the combo) detach and spin around like giant nunchaku.

Combinations of moves are easily strung together and can deal out impressive amounts of carnage. The Ninpo attacks are less useful, and even in their fully upgraded state, succeed only in severing limbs from surrounding minor enemies. You do have ranged weapons (bow, throwing-stars, etc.) but they are gimped a little in their inability to take out enemies on the move; although, keep in mind, enemies have no problem targeting you.

Your most effective attacks will come from your melee weapons (Staff, Katana, Kasuri-gama, etc.) which satisfyingly slice or break opponents’ limbs off and deal crushing finishing moves. Charging the strong-attack button will unleash a death-dealing barrage that can quickly decimate groups of enemies (obviously, a crowd pleaser). Any enemy missing a limb will attack more aggressively (i.e. blow up) and should be dealt with post-haste using the slick “Obliteration” technique which instantly kills your wounded foe in a furious one-button combo. Afterwards, Ryu shakes the blood off his weapons (a nice touch).



As you progress through the levels and acquire scrolls of knowledge, your list of moves expands with such things as wall-running, evasion, and counter moves. Combos are surprisingly user-friendly to pull off and do not require rote memorization. But alas, it is not all awesome carnage...


Enter: The Camera

As in many 3D games before it, the A.I. camera operator in Ninja Gaiden II is, in fact, your nemesis. After every satisfying beat-down, the camera will helpfully point backwards so as to disorient you, forcing constant manhandling of the camera or frequent tapping of the camera button to snap it back in place. Problem solved you think? NO. To further bother you, the designers of this game have made tons of really small confined halls and closets for you to fight in. I frequently found myself swinging my sword at enemies I couldn’t see or (worse) taking damage from an undetermined location. Enemies love to hog-pile on top of you while the camera swings, causing disorientation and a complete inability to determine what is happening.

Then come the giant monsters with big wings that totally obscure you and the action, forcing players to watch their health gauge to see if they are taking damage or meting it out. In boss fights the camera will often stick to a certain location (which cannot be adjusted) making picking up crucial items (such as more arrows) a game of trial-and-error. Team Ninja needs to partner with “Team Camera” before they even think about producing a part III. No master ninja should have to put up with such annoyances.


Become a Ninja, see the world

I was pleasantly surprised at the length of the game (about 13 hours for my first playthrough). There are 14 levels with an astonishing amount of different locations. Of course, there is the obligatory Japanese village, but also skyscrapers, sewers, giant airships and eventually the demon underworld. The graphics are good. Occasionally, they amaze, like running around inside a giant clock, through bio-luminescent caverns, over hills of human bones, through blood-red rain, and (my favorite) the demon’s backyard full of undulating tentacles and flaming trees.



The music is well-suited to each environment and covers just as much ground as the level design: from feudal Japan style twang to hard rock. Sadly, its synergy during the gameplay makes the story seem even dopier, and cut scenes, painful. I really hope we are not meant to take this tale seriously; the acting is cheese-tastic and the storyline itself is completely disposable (all you really need to know is: kill everything). Fortunately, the enemies themselves come in as many varieties as the levels they exist in -- including some that will shock with their weirdness, such as flying piranha skeletons or assassin dogs that wield swords in their mouths.

Despite the variety, the game will start to drag its heels about halfway through. The constant acquiring of new and (arguably) cooler weapons kept my interest for awhile, as did the strategy of which to upgrade first. But after a time I started to realize all I am doing is fighting the same types of enemies in the same types of waves. After which, I would scour the battlefield for items and perhaps a hidden skull (just like Halo, except these skulls don’t appear to do anything).

The levels themselves are strictly linear. At times, there appears to be a branching path, but it’s really just a tangent to acquire an item or reach an out-of-the-way skull. To spice things up the developers added something that I cringe at every time I see it in a 3D game: the underwater stage. Only Mario and occasionally Lara Croft have pulled off underwater swimming with any ease, and poor Ryu is just not trained for this sort of thing. Swimming would have been awkward enough, but then someone decided to add enemies (good thing you picked up a ridiculous underwater-only Gatling gun). All I could do is float in place and unload my weapon until everything was dead. You can run on top of the water, which is cool, but total lunacy to try in a fight. As soon as you attack you lose your momentum and plunge back under the surface, leaving you open to retribution before you can force the awkward controls to let you come back up. Mercifully, there is no oxygen gauge, so you can stay underwater with no fear of drowning.


Not quite ready for primetime

I was surprised to encounter a few minor bugs in the game, considering how long this game has been in the making, and how long they have had to patch it since release. Twice my system locked up completely forcing me to re-start, and once some Ninpo magic released at the wrong time dropped the frame-rate so much I could barely keep my bearings, much less defend myself. But the worst offender has to be the haphazard balancing of enemies. When opponents have hand-to-hand weapons, the game is aces. Trouble starts when bad guys increase in ranged attacks (throwing stars, exploding knives, bows, cannons, fireballs, even rocket launchers).



Often, the enemy can strike you at such a rate that you cannot move, fire, or block. You have to wait for them to take a break before you can either charge them or run away. When these bothersome foes are mixed in with regular enemies it becomes eye-gougingly frustrating, especially towards the end when their attacks deal more damage and checkpoints are scarce. Imagine this: you are surrounded by ten enemies but can’t move because two chumps from across the map (whom you can’t even see) are shooting at you. The result: the other ten beat you down. Add to this the random flipping around of the camera and you have yourself the precursor to a burst blood vessel in your brain. By the time you reach the last few stages, you are in no mood to fight EVERY BOSS CHARACTER all over again. That kind of game mechanic sufficed in the ‘80’s, but now, it just seems lazy.


Embrace the pain

Make no mistake: even though they included an “easy” difficulty level, this is a very hard game. Only the most grizzled veteran should even attempt a game set above “Path of the Acolyte”. I fought the end boss for over an hour before I finally brought the fiend down (Note: I have a predisposition to hate final bosses who continually die and are reborn in alternate forms). If you are up to the challenge, there are reasons to play the game over again. You can upload proof of your skills to the Xbox Live leaderboards; play the game again on a heightened difficulty using different weapons and tactics; try to find all of the hidden skulls, or conquer all of trials (which are giant arena battles where you must survive a barrage of enemies) to be rewarded with items you can’t get anywhere else. There are also the requisite unlockable costumes, and the ability to play over using all of your previously upgraded equipment (my favorite).


Summary

This can be an enjoyable game, but only gamers of the utmost perseverance will be able to extract its full value. For me, it was a very solid rental, worth playing, which I will promptly delete from my hard-drive and forget about. It really feels like an arcade game from about ten years ago which is best played in small 20 minute bursts. If you spend all day with this thing you will be pulling clumps of your hair out. You have been warned...