Ninja Gaiden

"Awesome? Belief or disbelief rests with you"

Ninja Gaiden Review

Ninja Gaiden. We’ve heard about it, read about it, thought about it, and generally been extremely eager with anticipation for this game for what has seemed like a ridiculous waiting time. Now that we have it, we get to see where all the delays went in terms of a quality game, and if it was worth waiting umpteen months for. Was it worth it? Belief or disbelief rests with you.

Graphics 10/10
The graphics are mighty pretty. In every respect that DOAX was the best character modeling seen on the Xbox, so this game has the best environment renderings. The environments here are huge and very well detailed, from the glass-stained windows of the church to the massive cave you find yourself in. The church itself has to be some of the best looking 3-D level I’ve ever seen. Load times are almost nonexistent. The framerate rarely takes a hit, perhaps once in a blue moon., such as when there are a crowd of enemies onscreen and you’re flailing away at them with nunchucks. Weapon animations are extremely well done, you can see Ryu’s body react as he swings his sword/nunchucks/whatever, and enemy animations look equally smooth. It’s an impressive sight indeed when six black ninjas drop out of nowhere to encircle you in a city street. Spectacular graphics in the true meaning of the word, full of eye-candy spectacle.

Sound 8/10
Sound is very well done. The sword clangs, the shouts of ninjas and Ryu, all expert. The English voice acting, to put it mildly, is no good. Switch to Japanese if you have a problem with it, the Japanese just sounds better, but that is a pure matter of opinion. The music itself leaves something to be desired. It turns from psuedo-Japanese classical chamber music to hard rock guitar riffs, something I found jarring. After a while, I turned the music down.

Controls 8/10
The controls are almost flawless. Camera is re-centered using Left Trigger, X is your light, fast attack, Y is your heavy attack, B throws/shoots projectiles, and A jumps. Jumps and attacks are integrated extremely well, so that you’ll be cutting heads off with no problem. The problems start because X was also designated as the manipulate button, X is the button you use to manipulate the environment, opening and closing doors, picking stuff up, and the like. This can break the flow of a battle considerably when you go from fighting three ninjas and leaping about to walking through a door, wondering what just happened when you figure it out. Likewise, sometimes it can save you, in the aforementioned instance when you’re surrounded by ninjas there might be a chest in the room containing a valuable life-giving potion you ran out of and running by it and hitting X gives you a nice surprise.

I’ve broken Gameplay up into four separate elements. I’ll start with the bad.

Camera 4/10
The camera is lousy. It’s fine if you’re fighting one or two people but when the numbers go up (and they often do) the camera proves to be an enemy, as it will swing around to show the enemy in front of you but neglect the three behind you. This means you keep re-centering the camera using the Left Trigger button, something you always won’t remember to do when fighting seven shuriken throwing , leaping ninjas. Also, when fighting some bosses the camera stubbornly refuses to center, instead making the boss it’s focus, so while you get to see the boss’ attacks, you often don’t see Ryu as he runs in and out of frame, making some boss fights a hazardous guessing game as to where you are and how you respond. Also, the camera shifts every time you enter a room, so that instead of seeing what is in front of you, you see a great shot of Ryu opening a door, and not much else. This half-second gives the enemy all the time it needs to fire arrows/magic/exploding shuriken at you. The camera never sinks to Kingdom Hearts levels of awfulness, but it comes mighty close at times.

Save points 2/10
If you’ve ever played Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask you are vaguely familiar with the save points here. There are specific dragon heads (think Owl Statues) throughout the levels that you save at. The problem is A) you get no special song to warp you magically to these vital save points B) these in no way replenish anything you have C)when you re-load a save point all the enemies you killed getting up to it in the immediate vicinity are regenerated, so all the enemies you thought you were done with yesterday now magically surprise you today (at one point several ninjas ambush you immediately after you reload the game, and I mean within a second) and D) the save points are stingier than Monty Burns. There are a few, scattered throughout the level, and sometimes they are far, far away from where you actually have to go. Also, you may fight seventeen screaming ninjas, then fight a couple of giant dragons you’ve never seen before and therefore have no idea how to kill (using up all your health potions), THEN fight a boss, then get a save point. This is mind-numbingly infuriating. The promised feature of “save whenever you like” was left out for some unknown reason, and this game could use it. Also, the enemies regenerating around your save point is cheap, plain and simple, because if you have three life potions left when you saved you may use them all up without ever LEAVING THE SAVE POINT when you reload. This is the game’s worst feature.

Stores 4/10
Stores are where you buy things (duh) but here, the stores are even rarer than the save points. You get maybe one a level, sometimes none, and sometimes they are several country miles from where you are and all the aforementioned regenerated enemies are waiting between you and the store. Also, the amount of items you can carry is limited, and you use those quickly, so that by the time you need more health potions or magic refills, you’ve got to go through all the guys that drained those out of you in the first place to buy them back. Money itself isn’t a problem, its handled in the standard collect-from-the-dead way we’ve all seen a thousand times before, way back to Metroid and before. Like Metroid, you can leave an area and go back, killing all the enemies within and taking their stuff, this is a crude level-up system of sorts. More stores guys, cmon.

Enemy AI ?/10
This is almost entirely up to you because frankly, the enemy AI defies numeric quantification. Do you like insanely hard enemies? Do you like enemies that literally behave like you do? Itagaki was right when he said that “The enemies aren’t here for you to kill, they’re here to kill you.” And kill you they will. Many, many times. The enemy AI here supercedes HALO in terms of sheer bloodthirstyness. Some of the demons lack the Covenant’s tactical integration but the black ninjas sure don’t, because they will flank and encircle you, suppress you, and then kill you. There are no easy enemies in this game, except for maybe the bats, but even those are more annoying then you think. IF, and it’s a huge if, IF you like that kind of challenge, of enemies that really are going after you, then for you I’d say this game is a 10/10. If you don’t like that at all and want a puzzle-driven adventure game to the tune of Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask with some nominal fighting, then the enemy AI here rates a 1/10 for you, because you will be breaking your controller in rage, screaming at how cheap some of the enemies are. And some are viciously cheap, but can you rise above the cheapness, or just say nuts to this? The rating of the enemy AI depends on the player, because it’s all in your reaction and how you handle it.

Overall Gameplay 8/10
This is a game of extremes. The graphics are some of the most beautiful you’ll see in an action game. The level design is stunning. The enemies are the hardest challenge you see in a video game this generation. The camera is in no way there to help you, and at times seems like a deliberate enemy that you have to fight and overcome instead of streamlining the gameplay. The sound effects are awesome, the voice acting is so-so for English and pretty good for Japanese (I can’t speak Japanese, I just think it sounds cool) the music is not suited to the environment. The controls are almost flawless. The store placement is abysmally horrible, and the save point system is about as well thought-out as Rob Lowe leaving the West Wing. If you’re a die-hard action game fan and you thought DMC was way to easy, buy this game. If you’re in doubt, rent it, and if you thought Legend of Zelda 64 was way too hard, stay away.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This game DOES NOT HAVE AN EASY MODE. This is somewhat off putting to many and can alienate some. Rent it first if you’re in doubt.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/04