Ninja Gaiden Sigma

"Good, but by no means great"

I was wrapped when I heard that Ninja Gaiden Sigma was coming out for the PS3, I have never owned any type of Xbox system and I was very curious the find out what all the hype surrounding the Ninja Gaiden series was all about. So a few days after the release date, when I had saved up enough money, I wandered down the the gaming shop near my home whistling with excitement, and picked up a copy.

Sadly, I had very mixed feeling regarding Ninja Gaiden Sigma.

I personally think that the reason many people bought Ninja Gaiden in the first place is because they think ninjas are cool, thats it. But in history, ninjas were assassins by trade, they were quite, lurked in the shadows and where very agile and sneaky. The main character Ryu, although he can jump on walls, walk on water and all that he is invariably the terminator in a ninja getup. I would have liked to have seen Ryu sneak past enemies and assassinate someone with no fuss, not casually stoll around town killing swarms of people and wrecking up the place. With that said, lets move on to the story..

Whilst not fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, it is solid. You play Ryu, a ninja who belongs to a clan that possesses a scared sword. One day Ryu leaves the village temporarily to visit a friend of his, whilst he is gone, the sacred blade is stolen, Ryu's home destroyed and left in ruins, with the story revolving around him getting it back. Although there is an interesting twist, its pretty easy to see, but all together the slow developing, shallow story pretty much unravels in the background and isn't really noticeable.

The graphics however are a very strong point of the game, cutscenes look amazing, characters are rendered very well and all look very genuine. However, some of the backgrounds, whilst still looking good, are a bit bland and repetitive. However, all of the ingame action, from Ryu majestically striking with his swords to the multiple enemy kicks and flips are all dope very accurately, with very few movements looking out of place.

The sound was done fairly poorly in my opinion. In todays games a 1-2 minute repetitive beat just doesn't do it anymore. Sigma's beats are all just filler for the gameplay, thinking about it now, I cannot remember any of the musical scores in the entire game. Thats simply because they never stood out, I never said to myself “thats a really good track”, the music did nothing, didnt set the mood or make me feel nervous or cautious, nothing.

The sounds effects were a bit better, although just slightly. The voices are a bit corny but overall well done, none sounded horrible or nail on a blackboard bad. But the sound effects werent very flashy, a block from a gun and from a sword produced the same sound. But still, the grunts, jumping movements and the sounds of Ryu cutting through hoards of people were all done very well in my opinion.

Next, allow me to elaborate on the gameplay, in my opinion a very double edged sword (mind the pun). To begin with, your given an array of weapons, which you must collect to use on your quest, these range from dual sword to nunchucks to many others, however, some of them behave and perform very similarly to say the least, with similar combos and effects. Your also given a series of magical attacks called ninpo, however, these series of attacks count for nothing and are very rarely used in actual gameplay.

Now onto the actual fighting. As said before, this has a series of good and very bad points. As per my tradition, I'll start with the bad points. First of all allow me to say that some elements of this game are extremely broken. I have spent hours, several hours just clearing a corridor of enemies, the only reason it took me so long is because some aspects are very flawed. For example, I was standing their blocking, as you do, and a soldier comes up to me and starts chaining a string of physical attacks together, fair enough, I blocked them all, but then another soldier comes up to me straight away, I think hes going to chain attack too, but no, he grabs me, does a grappling hold and takes off a quarter of my life bar. The problem is, I had NO idea he was going to grab me, I was given no warning at all and their was NOTHING I could do about it, its just bad luck. But after I got owned in that situation, I got back up, and hit that guy with a few good combos and killed him. Then I found myself blocking again, this time my guard was broken, now when its one on one I can see this coming, as the guy takes a bigger swing, but not when Im being attack by three people at once in a corner, needless to say I got pawned again and died. Not happy.

The second part that made me clearing this corridor so difficult was a series of little bombs which were thrown onto me. Here I am whipping some guys ass with my cool looking dual swords and I suddenly see a little glowing arrow fired into me, 5 seconds later I blow up and my guard is broken, leaving me open to a severe beating and with little to no health left. I asked myself, can I get these bombs off? And if I can how? Do I press buttons randomly? Whats the deal? The morale is the game should tell you, but it doesnt. Also, HOW do I know when a bomb is going to be fired at me? Especially from behind, I don't have eyes in the back of my head, and I can't keep moving cause I need to attack sooner or later. However, I did get through it eventually, how? Luck, I was just lucky enough that the ninjas facing me didn't feel like throwing bombs or doing cheap grabs on my 32 run. And thats the problem with Ninja Gaiden, more importance goes to luck than it should, and thats not fair.

And all this came after defeating the previous levels boss, a fat guy with a huge gun. This is another problem with Ninja Gaiden, in good action games there is a strategy that works, i.e, do this and you will win, or hit that and you will win. And that strategy comes to you after evaluating the enemies moves. I remember playing God of War and saying to myself, “hes second attack is weak, I can hit him there to do damage” I would then execute that strategy and I would win. The good thing was, the timing didn't need to be PERFECT, close enough was good enough, and the strategy was always findable if you were observing carefully.

None of this in Ninja Gaiden, you just get your ass kicked and try to smile and have fun doing it without throwing your controller at the dog. After I got owned by this big fat boss about 40 times I finally went to youtube to try and get some answers. It turned out that his very close range attack was blockable (although he somehow always hit me) and that I had to stand close to him and wait for him to attack, block it, then roll out of the way whilst he was doing his second attack and then hit him with a STT combo and then roll back, and that would get the job done, when I repeated the above pattern 15 times, one slip up and a third of my bar is gone. Now on my own, their would have been NO way I could have figured that out, I have been playing games for years and it has never taken me more than 10 tries to beat a boss. Not only is the games damage system unfair, but the method of killing bosses requires a microscope, video camera and two hours of study, joking but you get the point.

However, with all that said, the parts of the game were I wasn't fighting a butch boss, or soldiers that grabbed me and threw bombs ony my back, were actually very enjoyable. The combat system flows very nicely and there is an eery cool feeling when you fly across walls and slam down on the ninjas below, followed up by a 10 hit combo with the nunchucks. Fighting with dual swords is actually very fun when your taking on three ninjas at once.

In the end, although Sigma wraps itself up in a ninja theme its just another action game with a few broken fighting elements and a cheesy japanese feel. If your a diehard fan, or just curious about the series then go and pick it up or rent, its your money. I personally think that there are better games out there at the moment.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/07

Game Release: Ninja Gaiden Sigma (AU, 07/13/07)