Ninja Gaiden II, if anyone actually cares, follows the continuing challenges of Ryu Hayabusa, member of the Dragon clan. Sonia, our gravity-defying friend from the CIA, informs Ryu of nefarious plans to resurrect the archfiend through destroying the Demon Statue, long protected by Ryu's clanmembers.
Being somewhat blunt, the story is laughable at best. With breast enhanced CIA agents, badly voice-acted fiends, and a schizophrenic arc that leaps around more than Ryu without his daily Ritalin dose, Shakespeare it's not. In fact, Pokémon probably had more meaningful story arcs. Still, it's unlikely anyone's actually been waiting with bated breath to find out what Ryu's been up to since Ninja Gaiden - as with all Ninja Gaiden games, it's all about the mechanics.
Would you like some blood with your blood?
Thankfully, the mechanics are still as good as they always were. One could be forgiven for thinking that the game is fundamentally a button masher, especially if they hadn't played the first Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. And, for the first five seconds or so, they'd probably be right. Right up until they were repeatedly beheaded by an overly eager demon, that is. Behind the apparent simplicity of 'weak attack', 'strong attack', 'block', and 'jump' lies a game of deceptive complexity.
Chaining button presses to execute combos and incorporating blocks is essential to long-term survival in the Ninja Gaiden universe. Failure to do so effectively is the guaranteed short path to ignoble defeat, frequently involving lots of blood and various body parts. And, make no bones about it, on the harder difficulty levels this is a game of sheer unbridled frustration. In fighting many of the bosses on normal, the time taken to die can easily be less than the time it takes to reload from the last save point. For some, this is a welcome challenge in a world filled with 'easy' games. For others, it's a stress-induced heart-attack in waiting, one that runs a serious risk of a controller through the TV.
The weapons selection is excellent with various close and long-range options on offer. They range from the traditional katana to more non-traditional options such as a scythe, nightstick looking tonfas, and a personal favourite, the kusari-gama, a scythe mounted on a chain with a heavy weight on the other end. It's also possible to slaughter enemies using shurikens, bows, and ninpo, a limited-use 'magic' system.
Come on ... open up to me ...
And, slaughter you will - this is one bloody game. It's a measure of just how bloody the game is that when the directions become confusing, the easiest way to work out which direction to go is to look for the blood. Where there's copious pools of blood on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, it's a sure marker that you've already been through there. While some of the bosses may initially appear unfair (a notable example being one that kills instantly during its death throes unless blocked), it's absolutely essential to remember that the mechanics remain largely consistent throughout, irrespective of how unrealistic they may be. After all, if one can block bullets with a scythe, why not an explosion?
However, it's not all good. The camera actively hates you. With a passion, actually. The number of times it moves behind a wall just as three fiends are about to jump makes one wonder whether it was bad design or deliberate sadism. On the plus side, it really encourages spatial awareness - like a true ninja, one ends up having to know exactly where all one's enemies are on the battlefield at all times. Even though it adds additional frustration, it actually feels somewhat authentic and adds quite enjoyable tension. Just as the Resident Evil designers added in poor motion controls to increase the feeling of paranoia and tension, one has to wonder whether Team Ninja restricted the ability of the camera to auto-follow to increase the difficulty level and improve internal battlefield visualisation. It's frequently easier to attack blindly in the right direction than it is to try and adjust the camera.
In the game, the level design is distinctly uninspired, with bland hallway leading into bland hallway. For example, one would think that New York might actually have some people in it somewhere. Instead, it's emptier than an Elf Bowling convention. However, the plain and simple truth is that it just doesn't matter - the appeal of the game is in the combat and controller crushing difficulty levels, and if, once one makes it to the next group of enemies, one has time to watch the scenery, they're either playing on too easy a difficulty level or they're dead. Normally within seconds.
The Farmer's instrument of mass destruction.
In fact, the harshest thing one can say about Ninja Gaiden 2 is that it doesn't advance the series as much as the previous release. Had Ninja Gaiden 2 been released without Ninja Gaiden to compare it against, it would have easily been just as revolutionary. As it stands, however, it simply refines the Ninja Gaiden model and leaves the most minute touch of disappointment in its wake. The visuals are attractive and clearly benefit from the higher resolution, but it just doesn't feel as 'next-gen' as it could have been. Various frame-rate slowdowns when the battles become truly massive don't help, either.
Even with those minor quibbles aside, it's still an excellent game. In what has to be one of the most unlikely comparisons ever made, dismembering ninjas, slaughtering fiends from hell, and taking on gun-toting battlebots has never felt so much like ballet. When one more hit will kill and there's still eight ninjas and three dragons facing you down, things can seem hopelessly frustrating. It's at times like this that one really achieves that true sense of flow, pirouetting from enemy to enemy, sending limbs arcing and shurikens flying, spinning in a maelstrom of fury, until finally there's only you remaining, standing in silence at the centre of an apocalypse. It's a powerful feeling, one still unmatched by many games, one that has to be experienced to understand.
Still a great review though Evan!
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