Ninja Gaiden - Australian Review

There are many interesting things you can do with a knife. You can eat food with it, get burnt toast out of the toaster or even incorporate it into gestures during dinner conversations — alternatively, you can turn four healthy, well-armed fiends into regurgitated lasagne in ten seconds flat. Doubt me not young Padawans, as Ninja Gaiden will have you doing such acts with the grace and ease of Queen Elizabeth shooting fish in a barrel. Admittedly, his knife is bigger than that of the bread and butter variety, but so is everything else in this title. From the stunning visuals to the smooth controls and from the absorbing mythology to the creative level design — it takes everything you know and love about the veteran Ninja beat’em up genre and goes large.

During the Age of Ancient Myth a race of beings erased from memory defeated the Evil Dieties and took under their watchful eye three important artefacts; the Dark Dragon Blade, Dragon Sword and Dragon Eye. That duty has been handed down through the generations and now rests in the hands of the Hayabusa Clan, which includes Ryu, bearer of the Dragon Blade. Of these items, the Dark Dragon Blade, carved from the bones of a black dragon is the most feared of weapons, able to transform its wielder into the devil himself. Now Duku, Lord of the Fiends has taken the sword and it’s up to Ryu, you, to take it back and destroy it, sealing the fate of the Evil Dieties for ever. Well, until the sequel anyway. It’s a powerful story and NG goes to great lengths to immerse you in the world of the Ninja. You begin in a traditional Japanese village and the attention to detail immediately marks this as top tier development. Watch the lens flare in the setting sun, the leaves drift down from the trees, the way Ryu’s outfit wafts with each movement — you’re as good as there.

Ninja Gaiden transcends usual beat ‘em up barriers, moving the story forward via cut scenes that defy Xbox capabilities and allowing you the freedom of movement and nimble agility for which the Ninja hold such awe. Indeed, when you decapitate an enemies head, then kick the gushing carcass up against a wall, you’ll thank God for their existence.

Of course combat is NG’s primary focus and its no easy task making a dude who roams the streets in his pyjamas look mean enough to eat steel, but Team Ninja have excelled. Ryu has three main attacks; quick hit, hard hit and projectile (bow and arrows, shuriken etc.). Most of your early action will take place with a blade, but as you progress you will pick-up new weapons such as Nunchuckas and a War Hammer. These weapons and moves can be combined into various combos or tweaked through jumps, counters, grabs or power attacks. The latter is particularly impressive. By absorbing the essence of dead souls into your Dragon Blade you can unleash violent combos so quick you only see the echo of your sprite as he dashes around the level.

And we mean around. Ryu can climb and run around walls Prince of Persia style, delivering deathly strikes from above with his sword or his feet. You literally crawl into the svelte robes of the Ninja, moving with the speed of Speedy Gonzalez and the agility of the female Russian gymnastics team.

With such a barrage of action at your finger-tips, it’s a credit to Team Ninja how fluid and orchestrated the controls are. You never feel tangled-up, or a step ahead of the action, in fact, you always feel like you haven’t reached their full potential. Naturally there is a bit of button bashing — this is a beat’em up after-all — but the way the level design integrates with the combat, combined with the large array of animations ensures that it never gets repetitive.

A large component of this enjoyable gameplay is the AI. Fast, smart and deadly, watch how enemies dodge shurikens, block counters and work in teams. There are no difficulty settings, but the action proceeds at just the right pace. And don’t worry about the bosses, when they do appear they do so with the grandiose spectacle arcade veterans have come to love.

Unfortunately the whole show is let down by the camera. Unlike most action titles, you do not control the camera with the right thumbstick (which is instead 1st-person view), leaving it to the game-engine to keep up with the action. This it can’t quite do and while it doesn’t hinder proceedings to any major degree, gamers do contract the dreaded ‘beat’em up blindspot’ syndrome.

There are a few issues with the level design too. Awfully linear and a rampant back-tracker, it in many ways suffocates the action’s superior clarity. However, it does remain inventive and original. Whether you’re inside ancient Japanese buildings, battling a boss on top of a moving blimp during a thunderstorm or roaming the streets of a desolated city, you’ll forget these shortcomings, absorbed instead within the sheer scope of proceedings. In one level, for example, you come across wooden bridge felled by bandits. Jumping into the river, you can swim amongst the debris or, if you don’t touch the controls, watch the current slowly move you down river. It may seem like a small touch, but it’s the amassed total of this meticulousness that elevates NG into the Heavyweight arena.

Having jaw-dropping graphics doesn’t hurt either. The cut-scenes are the best the Xbox has seen, while the animations and textures complete the package. Just watch the background blur as your sword parts the air on its way to its sticky climax. Unfortunately, the collision detection doesn’t fair as well and provides the only downfall on an otherwise unparallel optical onslaught. Your auditory receptors will be singing for joy, however, with a wonderful score, sweet SFX (with solid, western voice-overs) and top hair-metal influenced boss music. Michael Dudikoff should be shitting his dacks.

A touch of Onimusha, a twist of Devil May Cry and a dab of Prince of Persia, but very much Ninja Gaiden — the story and action will keep you enthralled to its very end. Improvements in the level design and camera control could have shot this title into a stratosphere all of its own, but for Xbox owner’s fleet of foot and quick of blade, this is essential gaming.

Score = 9.5/10