of
gameplay into the next generation weren't met with much success. Plot points
in these games had always been thin, and the need to utilize better technology
to explain what was going on actually killed a lot of the fun. The live-action
intro to Shin Shinobi Den for the Saturn was so ridiculously cheesy that
it was actually dropped from the U.S. release, though the equally ludicrous chapter
cinematics were left painfully intact. Save for Sega's brief revival of the Shinobi
franchise on the PS2 -- which, though well done, sold below expectations and spawned
an underwhelming sequel -- gamers wouldn't get another chance to embrace their
inner shadow warrior until 2004.
Enter Itagaki Tomonobu, the head
of Tecmo's Team Ninja and creator of the Dead or Alive games, who announced
that he would be revisiting the classic series and crafting "the greatest action
game ever". Given that Tomonobu's credits included the glorified tech demo/breast
simulator that was Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, reactions were
mixed at best. The series' main character, Ryu Hayabusa, had been moonlighting
in Team Ninja's DoA games as a hand-to-hand fighter, but nobody was sure
if Tecmo's flagship development house had the chops to bring him back to his old
stomping grounds as an action character.
I was one of those many people
who voiced doubt, even as the pretty screenshots began to trickle in. Even up
to the point of the demo being released, I wasn't sure this was the game I was
looking for. It wasn't until I had the full version in my hands and around four
hours of battle under my belt that I realized how much I was enjoying myself.
When I saw that the third chapter of the game had Ryu stowing aboard a massive
Zeppelin to break through the closed borders of a fictional Asian nation in order
to reclaim a stolen cursed sword from the Emperor and avenge his slaughtered clan,
I knew they'd nailed it.
It's a point that probably won't mean much to
anyone who didn't emerge, bloody and triumphant, from the credits of the original
trilogy of games for the NES, but the new Ninja Gaiden captures that spirit
far better than anyone could have hoped, and in the process single-handedly resurrects
the game design that made everything work years ago and blends it seamlessly with
all the technological advances of the past decade. This game is to the classic
series what Kill Bill vol. I is to old samurai action movies; equal parts
mix tape, homage, and update.
The game begins with Ryu headed up a mountain,
for a reason that isn't initially explained. It's here that the player learns
some of the mobility that will literally be critical to survival further down
the road. The available moves, even this early, are impressively responsive and
versatile. He can along vertical surfaces, triangle-jump from wall to wall, and
survive a plummet from nearly any height. Combat is fast, frequent, and deadly,
with an invisible auto-locking feature that aims at whomever is closest, though
it can be directed with the left thumbstick. In classic fashion, initially the
only weapons available are the requisite ninja sword and an unlimited number of
shuriken (which are non-lethal to most opponents). Combat shows off Team Ninja's
3D-fighter experience and plays as a miniature fighting game, with the ability
to perform complicated combo attacks as well as roll-dodge, counterattack, and
even throw, all of which are completely necessary against the game's absolutely
vicious AI.
As deadly as Ryu is, the enemies he faces are hardly pushovers.
Unlike the superficially similar combat of other 3D action games like Devil
May Cry, the enemies here are incredibly aggressive and will press the player
at every opportunity. They'll duck and roll out of the way of attacks, perform
jumping strikes, throw shuriken to disrupt combos, and generally behave like they
want to kill this intruder and are perfectly capable of doing it. Play too defensively,
and almost every enemy from Chapter Three on up will utilize some kind of unblockable
grab move to punish you. It's learned quickly that passivity gets you killed in
short order, but this point isn't properly driven home until the boss of the first
stage.
I'm not kidding when I say that this guy makes people bring the
game back to the store and demand they have their money refunded -- I've watched
it happen. Up until this guy, who's name is Murai, it's possible to eek by through
random button-mashing. I have a feeling this was intentional, just so the resulting
beatdown when players reach the end of the stage is kicked home more forcefully.
It's not uncommon to watch a newbie-green Gaiden player charge Murai head on,
only to have him block every single move, instantly grab Ryu by the throat, smash
him on the ground and then clock him in the back of the head with his nunchaku.
And this is just the first boss of the training stage. Compared to the normal
enemies of the final chapters, Murai is a complete wimp.
This is where
we get to the most talked-about feature in Ninja Gaiden. It isn't the graphics,
it's the difficulty. All that fine-tuning of the enemies is brought out full force
once the player gets out of stage one, and it never relents until the credits
roll. As fast as Ryu can earn more weapons and skills, he gets introduced to new
enemies with increasingly efficient and painful ways to kill him. By the end of
the game, everything from RPG-wielding soldiers to oversized Velociraptors to
Apache Helicopters to Tanks (two of them at once!) to a ridiculously overpowered
"greater fiend" named Alma have been tossed his way.
This is definitely
going to frustrate gamers raised on the relatively light combat of most recent
games, and there are no bones about the fact that the game will simply be too
difficult for some people to complete. If the likes of F-Zero GX or Viewtiful
Joe were too much for you to handle, then don't expect any quarter from Ninja
Gaiden; it's just as hard. There is pointedly no Easy mode here, and even
veteran action gamers are going to have to let themselves acclimate to the breakneck
pace before they'll be able to survive some of the tougher enemy encounters.
Once you do, though, it's something to behold. Skilled ninjas can do things like
run up a nearby wall, fly off of it blade-first in an aerial slice and decapitate
a soldier, turn around and slit another groin to throat launching to them into
the air, and jump up to slash them another three times before grabbing them and
performing a spinning pile driver into anyone stupid enough to be standing below.
All this in about four seconds.
And it's all absolutely beautiful. It's
sort of weird to say that a lot of the aesthetics are lost early on in the game
because such an effort is required to merely survive, but once those moves become
second nature it's possible to just stroll around and notice the little details
that describe Ryu's world. There's been a lot of talk about the high graphical
quality of the game, and it's all very true, but what's even more impressive than
the solid 60 frames a second and the liquid animation are the hundreds of tiny
little elements that were programmed in. The game has a very cohesive art style
that mirrors that same kind of neo-fantasy I mentioned earlier, so an ancient
Japanese village coexists with the sprawling European vistas of Tairon, the game's
hub city. From there, the game spans Aztec-styled temples, glacial caverns, a
futuristic military base, and an underground Egyptian temple.
Crazy as
it sounds, it's both plot-cohesive and incredibly well laid out. The path through
the game is fairly linear, but due to the hub structure, it's possible to revisit
any area that's been "cleared" already and do some treasure hunting. The game
has Easter Eggs placed throughout in the form of either Golden Scarabs or a long
chain battle with 60 to 100(!) enemies, at the end of which the player is rewarded
with a special item. Likewise, if you need to beef up a technique or just pick
some fights for extra cash, it's possible to do that, too.
As Ryu battles
through the various landscapes, he'll acquire more powerful weapons, spells, and
items. Most of these serve as a sort of "level up", making him more powerful without
actually having an experience point system in the game. The end result is the
same, however; More moves, more life, special abilities by way of which armlet
is equipped, and increasingly powerful spells. The game also throws in some light
puzzle elements taken straight from the pages of The Legend of Zelda, which
acts as a nice breather halfway through the game without bogging it down. The
only snag in the action is a languidly-paced underwater stage towards the final
third, but once it's over, there's no more swimming for the rest of the game,
and it acts as a sort of buffer before the intense ending chapters are brought
down.
On the technical front, Ninja Gaiden is put together extremely
well. There's initially a very long load time when the game is played for the
first time while the Xbox caches some of the level information to the hard drive.
From there on out, load times consist of less than five seconds at the start of
a saved game, and only reappear briefly when the player completes a chapter.
The sound effects in the game match perfectly, though nothing is particularly
going to stand out. Swords clang, monsters shriek, and guns fire. In a nice touch,
most of the separate classes of enemies have unique sounds that lets them be identified
before they can be seen, and the bosses tend to telegraph their moves through
vocalization. It's not much of a help at first, but by a repeat game the player
is usually trained to react to specific sounds accordingly, and it makes things
like timed or score runs that much more efficient.
Voice acting is perfectly
reasonable, and both English and Japanese tracks are included for those who want
their ninjas to be slightly more culturally authentic. Nothing jumps out as amazing,
but there's nothing to complain about, either.
The music is surprisingly
well done. Initially themed with an old world Japan slant, it later switches to
a beat-driven techno groove that fits very well. It's gaming music, and I wouldn't
run out to buy the soundtrack or anything, but it's obviously something that a
lot of effort was put into. The old MIDI tune from the original game never surfaces,
but I guess we can't have it all.
Considering how ambitiously high this
game's production values are, it's amazing that everything worked out as flawlessly
as it did. There are a few snags, though how annoying they actually are depends
more on the personality of the person playing the game than anything else. Primarily,
the camera has some issues. There are a number of cases in the game, most notably
the chapter two boss battle, where the camera's steadfast refusal to aim anywhere
near the enemy you're supposed to be fighting is frustrating as hell. Most boss
battles from there on out will lock the camera on the boss, and it's not so big
of a deal when fighting normal enemies, but those few lapses account for a good
deal of the exasperation the game will generate. It takes some getting used to,
but it's something that doesn't help the game's early stages, and can try people's
patience if they're struggling as it is.
There's also a fairly inconsistent
placement of the save points throughout the game, particularly at the end, where
you'll sometimes be tossed into a major boss battle with no save point having
shown up for the past twenty minutes. Usually, this will only bite you once (since
you'll know better the next time) but it kills the momentum of the game to have
the past half-hour of effort wiped because a boss made an unexpected appearance.
My advice to first-time players is to either get a spoiler-free FAQ, or make the
effort to save often, even if it means backtracking; you'll be glad you did. Despite
this, the hiccups in design are minor enough that they're easily forgotten once
you adjust to them.
There's an online component for those with Xbox Live,
and that's a planned annual tournament where players compete for score and then
upload the results to Tecmo's scoreboard to be ranked. Winner gets a trip to Europe
for the semifinals, and there are some pretty expensive prizes planned. In addition,
there are plans to release a patch or two that addresses the player's concerns,
such as the camera, while adding things like new enemies and weapons to the game
to keep things fresh. Not too shabby.
Lastly, there's a nice bonus set
in the game for those players tenacious enough to track them down: The original
Ninja Gaiden Trilogy is included, and once unlocked can be played straight
from the menu. Granted, it's the Super Nintendo collection and not the NES originals,
but it's essentially the same thing. This is a becoming a tradition with remake
games, and it's a trend I'd love to see continue. Not only do the old games hold
up well, but it's a nice way to allow for a direct comparison between old and
new.
Overall: 9.5/10
The bottom line is that the modern Ninja Gaiden does what everyone
hoped it would do, and it's everything that you could ever ask for in an action
title. It distills everything that made the originals such classics and re-forges
them into a polished, relentless title that doesn't disappoint. If you consider
yourself a fan of the old-school style of action games, then consider this a mandatory
purchase.
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Videogames
have always had a soft spot for Ninjas. Not the type of Ninjas that Japanese history
buffs will tell you about, but 
