Welcome one and all to the first dual review of Maxon and I. We decided to do these in the case of some games we both have played, and in this case, both can offer different insight to the game at hand. The game in question is Ninja Gaiden II, and the difference here is that I have a lot of experience with all versions of it’s predecessor, and Maxon has never played a Ninja Gaiden game in his life before picking up II. Because of this difference, we can provide two different views of this game which should help anyone decide based on their experience with this series whether it is worth playing or not. Also, an acquaintance of mine, the_Predator, made a custom wallpaper, which you can find at the end.
The Stats:
Title: Ninja Gaiden II
Genre: Action/Hack and Slash
Format: Xbox 360
Release: June 2008 (worldwide)
Summary:
Hybridial: Ninja Gaiden II is the work of Team Ninja, formerly headed by Tomonubu Itakagi. However, as some of you may know, there is a tense legal situation involving the employees of Tecmo, Team Ninja’s owners, and their management, which started with a public resignation of Itakagi and a public threat of legal action. We will get to that in the end of the review, but for now, it is worth noting that the development of Ninja Gaiden II was quite possibly tumultuous, which may help explain some issues the game has. The story is simple enough. Ryu Hayabusa, the baddest Ninja on the planet and the last of the Dragon lineage sets out to thwart the re-summoning of the Archfiend by a bunch of ne’er-do-wells using a demon statue stolen from the Hayabusa Village, a Village which must have been destroyed six times by now. Helping him is Sonia, a busty CIA agent with very big guns… both kinds. In his way, are the four greater fiends, and the main rival of the Dragon lineage, Genshin, master of the Black Spider clan. Oh, and the entire population of hell, most likely. The plot might be cliché and typical brainless good vs. evil, but you know, I enjoy that. You don’t need more than that in a game like Ninja Gaiden but it does at least give you some satisfaction and reason to kill things by the truckload. The sequel is more or less identical to the original in that respect. But the main meat of the game is how it plays, which we will go into soon.
Maxon: The Ninja Gaiden series has earned itself a notorious reputation for being merciless, brutal and unrelenting. Ninja Gaiden II is no exception. This is what some hardcore gamers consider a real “hardcore game”. As you may expect from any medium that involves ninjas, the story revolves around a single ninja that is caught up in a war between his clan, and the so-called “rival clan”. In this case, Ryu Hayabusa has been tasked with stopping the Black Spider Clan from resurrecting an ancient demon-like beast known as the Archfiend. Of course, the Black Spider Clan isn’t going to make it that easy and have dispatched hoards of monsters and ninjas to halt Ryu, as well as four Greater Fiends.
Presentation:
Hybridial: This is a good looking game for the most part. Huge environments are rendered in the background, although the levels are completely linear. Nonetheless, the game has a certain sense of scale that was never possible in Ninja Gaiden. That is my main counterpoint to those who have tried to claim this game looks “last gen”. Levels take place in a huge futuristic city, the canals of Venice, the streets of Moscow, and the forests of the Amazon, all rendered in detail. The enemy models are also a lot more detailed than the Xbox original, and are on par with the PS3’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma. The game might not look like MGS4 but it does the job. But there is one major problem. The game’s framerate can dip greatly at times, something that never actually affected the original at all. This is in part due to at times, the sheer amount of enemies on screen at once as well as all the different weapon effects, which are far more complex than the previous games, but it is still disappointing and could have been fixed with a longer quality control phase, something the game could have been denied.
Maxon: It looks awesome. Ninja Gaiden II makes full use of the Xbox 360’s graphical potential. Every surface looks smooth and there’s no hint of lazy design for them. Ryu himself looks pretty badass. His costume is pretty damn cool. I don’t think there’s ever a moment I thought something was graphically ugly. Of course, the monsters and ninjas are ugly buggers and need a shuriken to the face. The character design for all the characters is very good and I got a good sense of originality from them. I mean they never tried to be too different with the character design, and that’s something I always prefer. All the backgrounds are great to look at, and all the lighting effects are very pretty. The lighting effects are put to best use through the use of Ryu’s ninpo attacks. They look powerful. Each weapon has a unique design and you can tell a lot of work has gone into determining their design as well as their functionality. While the blood effects look nice (especially when Ryu swipes his weapon to get the blood of and the blood lands on the ground), they don’t work when Ryu swipes his weapon on an uneven surface. Some will just be floating in mid-air, and parts of stairs will be clean. Also, while the obliterate/decapitation moves look great, the wounds that they give leave a lot to be desired. All that can be seen is pink stuff which the player is supposed to assume looks like flesh, but I think any sensible person will tell you it doesn’t look like flesh, save for the fact it’s a wound/severed limb. However, considering how good everything else looks, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Sound:
Hybridial: There isn’t too much to be said about sound. Sound effects are meaty, the music is minimalistic but sets the tone. The voice acting, especially in English is frequently slammed but in my opinion, isn’t badly acted at all. It’s a little hammy and some actors phone it in at points, but I’m someone who remembers the days of Resident Evil voice acting and frankly the voice acting of Ninja Gaiden II shows that these days, even games with lesser voice acting still at least reach a level of acceptability, to the point where I at least don’t cringe when I hear it.
Maxon: While the musical score itself was pretty sound (no pun intended), it just never felt that memorable. I mean, there was never a moment the background music intruded upon my enjoyment of the game, but I rarely took notice. Of course, this can be due in part to the high level of concentration needed to survive. Basically, it does its job, and nothing more. However, the splatter of blood never sounded so satisfying. The sound effects are top notch. All the clangs and chings from clashing weapons are a treat to the ears, as is the sound of shredding flesh. The English dub made me want to stab my ear drums. Ugh, I just couldn’t listen to it. Sure, I’ve heard worse, but that hardly qualifies this as good. I’d say the English dub is average at best. As for the Japanese dub, I approve, and the subtitles are decently translated.
Gameplay:
Hybridial: And here we go, this is where the bulk of this game lies. First to get out of the way, the game has some glitches and bugs which are the result of likely the same problem as the frame rate dips, but the game is not broken in anyway, and in my experience I did not encounter any really bad glitches, although I’ve heard of them from others. The camera, is at first a little difficult to get to grips with as players need to adjust it themselves in most instances should the view become obscured, however, this quickly becomes instinctual, remaining only a hindrance to those that can’t find a way above the game’s learning curve. But apart from all that, the gameplay to this game, is extremely good. It is very fast, and offers many weapons and ways for which Hayabusa can see off the many monsters out for his blood. The major new element to the gameplay over the original is the Obliteration technique. By hacking off a limb, Hayabusa can insta-kill an enemy with a suitably gory animation. This addition is also more than window dressing, as a well timed OT can give Hayabusa a generous few frames of invincibility, which can help very much in defeating monsters stylishly. Some of the practical issues of the original game has been addressed. Projectile aiming such as that of Hayabusa’s bow has been improved, and save points now heal the player, giving them a little bit of necessary help. But whereas Hayabusa’s abilities have been improved greatly, enemy AI has took a step back. That does not mean to say the enemies are easier, far from it. But they will use far more cheap tactics than before, including sudden grabs, explosive projectiles and moves that go through Hayabusa’s block, rendering it useless in a lot of cases. This does mean the player has to be very offensive, there is not much room for defensive tactics in this game, unlike Ninja Gaiden. The game is fun, but the difficulty balancing is less meticulous than Ninja Gaiden, Black in particular, making it a slightly lesser sequel. However, it still offers the best gameplay in an action game in quite some time
Maxon: It’s fast. Really fast. In fact, it’s almost blindingly fast. I might go as far to say it’s too fast. The whole control set-up is quite simple since your attacks consist of 3 buttons, and one of them is a projectile attack. The other two buttons are used for melee attacks and create combos with those attacks, which can create some awesome moves if you start to get inventive. With some weapons, like the double katanas, it feels like Ryu is beyond your control. However, the game more than makes up for it with weapons like the scythe. The scythe is definitely the best weapon in the game. However, blocking and evading are just as important. You can’t just run into a group of ninjas and chop them up! It all sounds simple, but this game is so difficult, it almost borders on cheap and unfair. Sometimes there’s too much happening on screen and you’re being attacked on all sides by multiple enemies, so you just give up and ninpo them to hell. Other cool moves include running along walls and running on water. This is what real ninjas are all about. However, aside from the first Greater Fiend, all the bosses provide a fair challenge, and their weaknesses aren’t difficult to find (but watch out for the giant armadillo when you defeat it).
Verdict:
Hybridial: Ninja Gaiden II, for all it’s faults, remains the premier action game so far this generation. It’s a fast and bloody adventure full of incredible sights and intense action. It still feels fresh and doesn’t steal too much from it’s predecessor or competition in carving out it’s own niche. The story is the kind of cheese one must expect from this genre, but at least it doesn’t carry any pre-tenses, providing a reason for Hayabusa to destroy all in his path, and leading the player to get on with it. Whilst it’s possible another three months of testing could have brought this game to perfection, this game doesn’t fall too far at all, but still behind it’s predecessor due to difficulty balancing, frame rate and glitch issues. The fun however, still remains.
Maxon: I didn’t emphasise this enough. This game is hard. I’m not talking Level 9 CPU Smash Bros Melee opponents hard. I’m talking old school hard. The kind of hard that will have you cursing very loudly and then proceed to throw your controller in frustration. The only other game of recent years to make me act that way was Dead or Alive 4, which, incidentally, is yet another Itagaki/Team Ninja product of punishment. However, I wouldn’t go as far to say that Ninja Gaiden II is as cheap as DOA4. It’s lack of restraint can be rather infuriating. There are some fantastic moments where you’ll be on form and not take a single hit. It’s moments like these that make Ninja Gaiden II such a fun game to play. Itagaki never intended for it to be a deep game. Perhaps it’s deep in the combat system, but otherwise, it’s a game that’s built to challenge the gaming elite. Ninja Gaiden II is a game that shines among today’s games because it’s unashamedly violent, but it never draws attention to that aspect. All that’s expected of the gamer is to bask in incredible action scenes and all the eye candy on offer. There’s no pretension or strutting here. Ninja Gaiden II is what a game needs to be. It is fun.
Tecmo’s legal troubles :
Ninja Gaiden II is a game with unusual circumstances as it’s producer chose the eve of its release to announce that he would be quitting Tecmo, the company which he has worked with for many years now, and that he would sue them, citing unpaid bonuses as a reason. Tomonobu Itakagi is a controversial figure, who was never shy about speaking about other games, however, the fact that half of Team Ninja followed suit suggests that there is a serious internal problem at Tecmo. As a gamer and as a human being, I believe that work should be rewarded justly, so my personal opinion of this is that Tecmo are clearly in the wrong, if so many of their employees are willing to take the risk of walking out, there is no other conclusion. Itakagi’s games, including Dead or Alive, largely saved Tecmo from bankruptcy, so for this to happen is a sad thing, but one can only hope that this helps to expel corporate corruption within the industry.
Wallpaper:
By the_Predator
Posted by Maxon 
Posted by Maxon 
Posted by hybridial 