Ninja Gaiden (Xbox): Blood, Ninjas, and blatant Fanservice.

One
of the more exciting aspects of sequels, especially when they entail
franchise revivals, is that initially you haven’t the faintest as to
what direction the game will go in. It could go to insurmountable
lengths in order to reinvent the franchise or, more daringly, reinvent
the genre it’s already established in – enough that numerous copycats
will begin to take its ideas to “incorporate” into their own works so
much that the said idea will become passé in due time because of it.

Ninja Gaiden
for the Xbox is one of the more interesting examples, as it doesn’t
feel like its progenitors at all in terms of feel. Whereas the original
titles involved the shadowy ninja protagonist leaping through platforms
in city landscapes and caves with endlessly respawning enemies, the
newest iteration has much less of a focus on platforming and more on
exploring a variety of beautiful environments and, most especially,
combat. The types of enemies are more fantastical than the original,
many of them mutagenic monstrosities. Gone is the opposition that’s
grounded in a sort of reality.

Though it’s a reinvention of the Ninja Gaiden franchise, it would feel right at home as a standard sequel to a Shinobi
title, except in 3D, of course. Ninja Gaiden was always the more
realistic series, while Shinobi was more, say, “out there.” It’s
actually more like a new Shinobi game than Shinobi for the Playstation 2 was. Heck, some would argue that, aside from its devoted hardcore fanbase, it’s what that game should
have been. Ninja Gaiden attempts to combine the best elements from both
popular ninja series in order to create one of the best action game
experiences of its generation.

The
game is every bit a reinvention of the franchise, especially in the
sense that it doesn’t acknowledge the continuity of the previous games.
The game begins in Japan, where the Hayabusa clan is under attack by a
rival force known as the Vigoor Empire. The empire’s goal entails
acquiring the Dark Dragon Blade for its own nefarious purposes, and the
only person that stands a chance at putting the villains in their place
is Ryu Hayabusa.

As you begin the game in a cavern seemingly
arbitrarily designed in order to help you learn the ropes of the more
basic movements of the title before it becomes challenging (pretty
quickly), you’ll notice the attention to detail the game has. Water
flows through the cavern at a natural pace, birds fly away when
disturbed by a nearby presence, and shurikens with notes magically
appear from a then-unknown person instructing you to tread carefully.
And to not be a show-off when the time comes, and a serious battle
arises.

It’s here when the game warns you of its steep
difficulty. It’s no lie: Ninja Gaiden is quite difficult, and even
veteran gamers who dedicate an admittedly unhealthy amount of hours to
video games may not stand a chance against its challenges. At least not
initially. While daunting at first, the controls are precise enough to
allow mastery of the mechanics in order to fend off enemies with
finesse, granted you give the said controls enough time to
psychologically sync with your reflexes.

That’s what makes
Ninja Gaiden stand out from the majority of action games on the market.
Sure, the game is relentlessly difficult, but it’s rarely ever cheap.
One of the initial notes basically warns you that if you take a hit in
this game, it’s because you’re not good enough at it yet. Every enemy
presents a new challenge, but they all have a pattern, and with a
precise combination of thought and skill, a solution will manifest
itself in due time.

Mastering
the three weapons available to you throughout the game takes quite a
bit of time. Using them in the most efficient manner takes a lot of
patience, a level of patience most people playing undoubtedly won’t
have. It’s OK. No one will blame you if you can’t grasp the ropes
quickly.

But those who do are in for a very rewarding
experience. One occasional turmoil hack-‘n-slash games suffer from is
repetition, a flaw you could probably level against the me-too
actioners that were all too prevalent last generation – especially on
the PS2. But Ninja Gaiden always keep you on your toes with new enemies
to fight around every corner within its 16 chapters, as well as AI that
has the ability to think for itself. Don’t expect enemies to
majestically gravitate towards your weapon like a magnet to a
refrigerator, because these enemies actually take outsmarting.

If
a few battles begin to get a little too frenetic, you also have magic
attacks at your disposal. This is called “Ninpo” here, and it consists
of an attack that will either create a huge physical or elemental
attack that hits multiple enemies at a time. The majority of these
attacks are more useful when taking on a pack of enemies at once; many
of them aren’t as effective in boss battles.

You’ll also have
items to use whenever you need to heal yourself or refill your Ninpo
attack meter. The currency in the game is the yellow Essence that
enemies will often leave floating in the air after you defeat them.
Sometimes the Essence is blue or red, which will refill your health or
restore your Ninpo, respectively. All of them can be used for attacks
that require charging by holding the Y button, which will unleash a
devastating physical attack on one or more enemies.

Surprisingly,
the music is also very pleasant to listen to. Here’s a genre where the
majority of its games contain a bunch of uninspired techno-rock, or a
pale imitation of it. What little there is in Ninja Gaiden is good, and
the music always fits the place you’re currently exploring. For
instance, an ice level will be accompanied by a more melancholy tune,
while a fire-dominated level will increase the pace of the beat, as
you’re surrounded by more dangers in them.

If there’s something
that isn’t smart here, it’s the storyline. Sure, it starts off with
enough promise: The Hayabusa Village is ravaged after an attack to
obtain the Dark Dragon Blade, and Ryu witnesses the bloodshed of the
shrine maiden and lifelong friend Kureha right in front of his eyes by
one of the head Greater Fiends. It’s a shame that the plot never gets
that good again, and just proceeds through an arbitrary and predictable
routine.

This is a game produced by Tomonobu Itagaki and
developed by Team Ninja at Tecmo, the same team that developed Dead or
Alive. Unsurprisingly, the game bears their trademark: oodles of
fanservice. A little less than a quarter through the game, you come
across your main ally for the game, Rachel, the fiend hunter. She’s a
huge breasted vixen brandishing a large axe in a tight-fitting
dominatrix outfit. It’s here when you’re clearly made aware of what
demographic the game is aiming for, in case you still had any doubts.
And if you still didn’t know, there’s one scene clearly aimed at the more depraved players, leaving a little less to the imagination. If any of you wanted to see a little more of her in the game, Ninja Gaiden Sigma for PS3 — the remake graphically-enhanced version of this game — ups the ante and makes her playable.

The
camera can also be a problem at times. The original Xbox version
required you to use the right shoulder button to center the camera
whenever you wanted to move it; moving the right analog stick would
only revert the camera to a first-person view mode. The second
iteration of the game, Ninja Gaiden Black, includes a better camera that manages to make it less of a problem. Even so, it was still manageable in the original version.

It’s
also a shame that anything that involves water in the game isn’t fun at
all. There’s even one level entirely based around swimming, which is
very confusing to navigate around because of the camera making various
twists and turns the whole time. The fact that everything in the area
looks the same doesn’t help matters either. Thankfully, this doesn’t
dominate the majority of the game; still, it feels out of place
compared to the other superlative parts.

There are number of
reasons why Ninja Gaiden stands as the best hack-‘n-slasher of the last
generation. It was the only game to balance its difficulty well enough
to be challenging and not frustrating, and it was never boring. The
fact that it had the best graphical prowess behind it was only a bonus;
and the game is still a graphical spectacle today, even if it didn’t
have the involving aesthetics to back it up. Not that it needed it,
since it requires your attention to be squarely kept on the opposition.
Ninja Gaiden’s combat and controls are some that will probably never,
ever be topped.