Ninja Gaiden

"Name me one other game that can have so many sucky aspects and still get 10/10?"

Everyone will, at some point in their lives, have played a game that had endless innovative features, genius, originality and assorted forms of greatness and still managed to suck. If ever a game has surprised the player, it will have been for the worse. Well, Ninja Gaiden's similar, except for one tiny little difference...

Ninja Gaiden is one of those games that surprises you - but this time, it's for the better. You'll play for a while and you'll just be thinking "my god, this sucks". You'll think this way for days, maybe weeks, and then one day, it'll dawn on you that in fact, Ninja Gaiden rocks. This will surprise you. You'll be thinking "How does this game manage to be so great? It has all of these features that suck, and still it manages to be one of the best game's I've ever played". Well, don't complain.

Once you've loaded up and seen the opening cutscenes, the first thing you'll notice is that you, as young ninja Ryu, are thrown straight into the action with very limited tutorials. Never mind. You'll walk forward a few steps, and immediately you'll notice the game's camera.

The camera is one of those features that you really hope someone at Team Ninja got fired for, but you know they won't. Ninja Gaiden is a very challenging game but the camera doesn't help. If you were expecting the usual dual-analog control system, you're in for a shock. The only way you have of controlling the camera is pressing one of the trigger buttons to center the camera behind Ryu. This will bug you considerably. But never mind.

So you're getting to grips with the camera. Now you're busy running along walls and searching the initial level. A short way in, you'll run into a few hostile Ninjas. At this point, it should occur to you that you are getting your ass kicked. This is because Ninja Gaiden's enemies have both high strength and excellent AI, even on the easiest difficulty setting. You will then shortly find that you have no more healing items, so challenging is the game for newbies. Ninja Gaiden's difficulty curve is immense, perhaps too much so. But never mind.

And then, you'll find yourself head to head with some fat guy with Nunchaku. This is where the last big thing for a while will occur to you - the game's bosses are very, very, very challenging. It may take you tens of tries to best each one, or maybe less if you can pick up the game quickly. But never mind.

Let's sum up. So far, we know that Ninja Gaiden rocks. We also know that Ninja Gaiden is an overly unnecessarily challenging game with a learning curve that's too steep and a camera that causes problems. So how does it still manage to be so good? All the signs point to one of those stupidly difficult games that's a chore to play, and at a few times, you'll wholeheartedly agree with this description, but there's still something that keeps you hooked.

Well, let's put this simply. It's either the graphics, the presentation, the detail, or the fragments of gameplay that aren't ruined by the camera. Most of the game's shining moments combine all of these and usually come in the form of the fighting segments. A fair bit of the non-fighting oriented parts revolve around acrobatics that would remind many of Prince of Persia. However, at times, positioning Ryu and getting a good look at the upcoming leap of faith can be infuriatingly tricky - yep, the camera again. But - if you can make the camera work during a fight (which is easier than using it during acrobatic sequences) - the swordplay more than makes up for this. The thing one needs to understand about Ninja Gaiden's fighting system is that it incorporates several systems that wouldn't feel out of place in a fighter game - perhaps unsurprising, considering that Ninja Gaiden came from the same folks responsible for Dead or Alive. True, the system as a whole isn't quite as complex and intricate as a fighter, but fighter fans should feel right at home playing Ninja Gaiden. It incorporates the usual combo, grapple, throw and context sensitive techniques and eventually begins to mix it up with entirely new weapons.

In the beginning, it'll be just Ryu and his Dragon Sword, one's typical Ninja Blade, and a mysterious neverending supply of shurikens. By the time you're done, you'll be packing Nunchaku, Flails, Warhammers, Bows and even explosive Shurikens. There's something to deal with every enemy in the game here, and then some more. Before long, you'll be flinging around magic "Nimpo" techniques as well, and mixing up increasingly devestating combo moves that leave nothing standing.

And the thing is, despite the initial shock of continually getting your ass kicked, you'll find that it actually becomes fun, especially in boss fights - there's not much that's more fun than getting your ass kicked by a Ninja Gaiden boss. These guys are generally even tougher than the extra tough regular enemies, and engage you in some of the most climactic clashes known to videogaming. The presentation shines here more than anywhere else - reasonably early into the game, you'll discover the true meaning of tension when one's arch nemesis bursts in through stained glass windows and has a brief stareout with you before the asskicking commences. If there's one thing Ninja Gaiden consistently delivers, it's atmosphere, using a combination various ambient noises and the solid voice acting (not overdone, but good enough to be believable), the game's excellent soundtrack (the soundtrack alone creates enough atmosphere to fill an entire game), some of the most detailed environments in a game, ever, and assorted visual effects and tricks. I tell you, Ninja Gaiden's graphics are of the amazing kind. Maybe not truly, truly mind-blowing, but still amazing, and they definitely do justice to the Xbox platform. And you know you're onto a winner when you figure out you can steal the souls of your vanquished foes and use them as currency. I mean, come on, how cool is that? "Yes, Mr Blacksmith, could you sharpen my here Dragon Sword for me?" "Of course, Mr Ninja, that'll be 5000 LOST SOULS, please".

Let's fast forward a few days, or weeks, or however long it takes you to finish the game. You will probably want to play again. As you replay that first training level, it will truly dawn on you how pathetically easy it is. And thus, you are encouraged to up the difficulty level. Aside from increased resistance to damage and increased potential to cause damage, the enemies from mode to mode are pretty much exactly the same. And you'll complete the game on Very Hard mode, and, horror of horrors, you'll get... bored.

This is exactly the reason why some smart guy at Microsoft came up with the idea of Content Download, undoubtedly Ninja Gaiden's saving grace once you've got completely bored with Very Hard mode. If you have an account, you'll be able to download two "Hurricane Packs" that mess with the game's systems so that some items are gotten earlier, and others are harder to get, and more importantly, it messes with the enemies' AI. A lot. Under the Hurricane Packs, EVERY enemy, down to those common grunt-like zombie things, will have SOME sort of trick to cause trouble for Ryu. And finally, there is a major upgrade to the Karma system - effectively the score - by which your progress is judged. Oh, and guess what? The Hurricane Packs actually fix that ****ing camera!. If the difficulty puts you off, the camera fix alone may convince you to give them a go. Sweet.

In case you're still not happy, Live also includes the option of a scoreboard to post your overall Karma scores for entire playthroughs, which, let's face it, just adds to the incentives to play again. Tecmo have even been known to hold Master Ninja Tournaments from time to time, but details surrounding future tournaments are somewhat nonexistent, as is the hope for their return. Only when you complete Hurricane Pack 2, with more Karma than the next guy, can you truly claim to be finished with Ninja Gaiden.

Let's put it this way - whatever way you look at it, Ninja Gaiden will last you a long, long time. Because even once you've completely, completely, totally, utterly indisputably mastered the Hurricane Packs, there's still the matter of all three of the original Ninja Gaiden titles from years gone by to keep a guy busy for ages. So yes, there's no replayability problems here.

So what have we got now? We've got graphical style to kingdom come. We've got ambient atmospheric audio, backed up with very decent voice acting, on top of deep, intricate gameplay (which manages to be good despite the initial camera mode) that blends some amazing platforming with a detailed, technical fighting engine, and overall, lots and lots of attitude. That's fortunate. Whoever heard of a Ninja without attitude?

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/04/05