Ninja Gaiden Black

"Simply a must have for the xbox."

Ninja Gaiden: Black is a fun game and experience for anyone who likes action and adventure games. Even if you don't like those genres you may still like this game. Here is now, my review, of it.

Graphics: 10/10

Ninja Gaiden Black has some of the most amazing graphics of this generation. Everything from the character models to the backgrounds is an absolute pleasure to look at. The frame rate remains steady through out the whole game. The graphics will not displease any at all.

Sound/Music: 8.5/10

The sound in Ninja Gaiden Black is crisp as you can hear everything from the main character Ryu slashing enemies with his sword, to hearing the sound of shuriken being thrown. The sound is excellent. The music is good for the most part, but some of it gets repetitive quickly and annoying. But for the most part, the music is pretty good too.

Story: 9/10

The story is not ground-breaking, but good none of less. You play as Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja of the dragon clan. The clan protects the Dark Dragon blade, which is an evil sword. Soon, Ryu's village gets slaughtered by a demon fiend named Doku and gets stolen. Ryu then swears vengeance against Doku and vows to get the Dark Dragon Blade back.

Gameplay:10/10

This is easily one of the best features of this game. The gameplay is magnificent. Ryu has a dozen of weapons to use for melee, and another dozen for ranged attacks. The combat is nice and fluid. This is not a game where you can just button mash the whole time, or is it easy in any way. You must block a lot and time your attacks right. The game has a lot of combos and moves that you can do and a lot are exclusive to each weapon that you are using. The learning curve would be about maybe half an hour to an hour, depending on you fast you can comprehend. The game also has 5 difficulties, Ninja Dog which is the easiest difficulty of this game but about as hard as other games are on normal, Normal which can be frustrating at times, Hard which the name implies, Very hard which is even harder, and Master Ninja which is so incredibly frustrating, you will probably need to buy a new controller.

Replay Value:10/10

Ninja Gaiden Black has a lot of replay value. There are, of course the 5 difficulties as I said earlier, which have different items and little extras in each of them. There is also Mission mode, which has 50 different missions that you can do which are a lot of fun. Also, if you have xbox live, you can check your score against thousands of other gamers on the scoreboards for Every difficulty and even mission mode.

Overall: 10/10

This is an EXCELLENT game and should be in nearly every one with an Xbox's Collection. If you have doubts about this game, you could try and rent it, but for the price of this game (30$ usa), I don't see why you shouldn't buy this awesome masterpiece.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/06