Ninja Gaiden Series

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As far as I'm concerned, Devil's Third is Ninja Gaiden 3. I mean, it even has "third" in the title.

It's like how Bayonetta is really the fourth Devil May Cry since Capcom skipped over # 2 for some reason.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, Devil's Third is technically a different genre, but according to Itagaki its a TPS that incorporates elements of both fighting and hack n' slash games (and Ninja Gaiden itself was a hack n' slash game that incorporated fighting game elements into it), so it'll be interesting to see what the gameplay for it looks like in action. Knowing Itagaki it won't just be some standard shooter where you primarily use your guns and your melee weapons and martial arts skills turn out to be just some close-quarters melee combat gimmick. The way he'll design it, the game will probably play out like a hybrid of Ninja Gaiden and Vanquish, where you are tactically required to mix up your strategy between using heavy firearm assault and crazy over-the-top melee combat. I really hope he finally shows off some real gameplay at this year's E3, since he totally left his fans hanging at TGS last year despite saying that he would be showing off the game at that time.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Alright, I saw that one scene of the game where Robert T. Sturgeon makes a cameo with his trademark sunglasses like in the NES  NG2. That's pretty much the only genuinely cool part in the entire game, IMO.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Everything Kotaku hates about Ninja Gaiden 3

There are times in life when you shouldn't mess with a good thing. To me, Ninja Gaiden III exemplifies this. Why are there Quick Time Events in Combat? What's with all the cheesy British stereotypes? What the heck happened to the Ninja Gaiden I know and love?

In the video above, you'll see exactly what I mean. In it, we present every weird and questionable design decision I came across in the game.

Come back Itagaki. We miss you.

That video is fucking hilarious....and disturbing at the same time, seeing as how its the bastardization of an entire franchise.

[Rynnec]

Ugh, the fact that you don't get a choice on whether or not you kill the soldier begging for his life bugs me. What the hell is the point of a scene like that if you don't get to choose? No More Heroes had those same "slow-walking exposition" gameplay bits as well (and it got pretty annoying in that game too) but those only happened right before you reached a save point.

If nothing else, at least Ryu has a pretty cool voice (Troy Baker for the win).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

It pisses me off more than anything else because for what little character Ryu had since the NES games, at least he was always portrayed as a classic honorable protagonist. Hayashi probably thinks he's being dark and edgy by pulling shit like this, but he's just fucking with over 2 decades of gaming legacy by making Ryu just as big of a douche as a character like Kratos in a scene like this. Even Dante wouldn't be that much of an ass-hole. This is the type of characterization that I HATE in gaming. Somehow developers and other people think shit like this is "bad-ass," when its really just stupid and gratuitous.

Ryu's voice actor is fine in this game, though I preferred his NG2 voice actor (Josh Keaton, from TSSM) as he seemed to just fit the character better (granted that Ryu was actually likable in previous NG games unlike the dick he is in this game). Of course, I prefer Ryu in these games when he mostly doesn't talk unless he feels the need to. He makes a much better "silent"-type character.

Also, I'd just prefer if situations like this never came up in an NG game altogether. This is the polar opposite of the enemy philosophy that Itagaki had (in that in NG games, enemies existed to kill you, not the other way around). In NG2, even if you cut off a ninja's leg, he would still be crawling towards you ready to give up his life with a suicide kill. In this game, if you so much as touch one of these pansies they start begging for their lives. Enemies like those aren't even worth killing.

[Foggle]

So I'm watching a playthrough of the early bits of NG 3... did you know that the first enemy you kill in the game is not only taken down with a quick time event, but also crawls away and begs for his life until you finish him off? Sickening.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That's been known ever since E3 last year. Didn't you see me bitching about all that shit endlessly on these threads for the past few months?

Notice that enemies crawling away from you is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Itagaki's philosophy on enemies (and really game design in general). In Ninja Gaiden II, enemies always came at you, and even after losing a limb they would still come towards you ready to give up their lives with suicidal attacks just to take you down. They were completely aggressive and didn't intend on giving you any breathing room. Even if you cut off one of their legs, they would slowly crawl towards you inch by inch, and wouldn't give up until one of you finished off the other. In NG2, if you mortally wound an enemy (without actually, you know, cutting off any of their limbs....which is pretty ironic for a game that is all about emphasizing "cutting" according to Hayashi), they will beg for their lives and crawl away from you. That's just pitiful, and Itagaki's Ryu wouldn't see such enemies as even worth killing. Hayashi's Ryu is a fucking pansy. Itagaki once said that in other games, enemies existed for you to kill, but in NG games, enemies existed to kill you. Its a gameplay design philosophy that I was quite fond of, and its one of the core pieces of an NG experience that made it stand out from every other game in the action genre. Hayashi basically stripped this entire series of its identity with NG3 in order to make "his" NG game, and I'm not opposed to him taking a different direction of Itagaki and putting his own spin on an NG game, but I am very much opposed to it when "his" version is nothing more than a bad collection of all of the modern gaming trends and cliches all rolled up into one boring as fuck game.

If Hayashi wanted to make a game about the consequences of killing and the moral dilemmas it presented, then fine, but it should NOT have been a Ninja Gaiden game (he should have actually been creative and made a new IP), and it shouldn't have been something so pretentious that it lets increased focus on story be an excuse for decreased focus on gameplay with actual depth to it (and even in that regard the story is even WORSE than previous games, because its told just as badly, except now there's more of it that you have to sit through than ever before). Furthermore, after having seen so much of how the game plays out, Hayashi is a complete amateur designer and I can see that he tried to talk big and arrogant like Itagaki, but the difference between him and Itagaki is that Itagaki can actually BACK UP his arrogance, something Hayashi clearly forgot about.

Also, the whole consequences of NG3 isn't even done remotely well. Early on there is an interactive scene in which a soldier begs for his life and you have to press a button to cut him down. I thought that maybe it was some generic moral choice sort of thing that other games would do and that you could choose to let him go. It turns out that its just a glorified QTE and you have to cut him down no matter what, so what was even the point of putting something like that in there? At least if it gave you a choice and had some repercussions on later events in the story it might be mildly amusing as a gameplay feature, but no, Hayashi was so blinded by his pretentious "vision" that he couldn't even get basic game design like that right.

Also, this game got lashed really good by critics, and for once I'm happy about the negative review scores, because while the NG series didn't deserve such an atrocity, Hayashi, Team Ninja, and Tecmo really did for being so out of line and so full of themselves. They had no interest in actually listening to what fans wanted (which was basically an improved NG game with the best aspects of NGB and NG2 in one game). They were more interested in cutting corners and just copying other gameplay elements from other games that don't fit in-line with NGs style of gameplay and which just do it better than an NG game ever could. For me, Ninja Gaiden is about challenge, skill, precision, strategy, and FUN (yes, I consider all of those elements to add up to a fun game), and this game delivered absolutely NONE of those elements. Its like Hayashi forgot somewhere along the line that he was supposed to be making a game, and that games, by definition, are meant to actually be fun to play, aside from whatever pretentious notions he thought was supposed to define a game.

At this point I hope Tecmo realizes just how fucking lost they are without Itagaki. I'm not saying that the man is the best developer ever or that he's even on the same level as some of the greatest developers of all-time, but the man knows GAME design and what most people generally want to see in a game, and he comes up with creative ideas to integrate into games that adds to their depth, challenge, and overall level of fun, and that's something that clearly NO ONE else at Tecmo seems to be aware of. Fuck this company. I don't think I'll ever buy another NG game again, as long as its made by this team. Call me if and when they ever outsource an NG game to a development team with actual talent behind it. Then I "might" actually be somewhat interested in checking it out.

[Spark Of Spirit]

What fun is it to kill enemies running away from you?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just to be clear, this game (to me) is so bad that it makes Ninja Blade look like a fucking masterpiece (and no, I'm not even joking). Every other so-called "bad sequel" to a game series that I know of probably can't even compare to this. I would much rather play Devil May Cry 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, or Resident Evil 5 (single-player, at that) than this piece of garbage.

If even that's not enough, let me put it this way: compared to this game, NG3 on the NES is actually legitimately great. Once again, I'm not joking in the slightest (and I'm not just talking about the superior Japanese version, I'd rather play the unfair North American version that we got as well).

Its not that this game is mechanically flawed (aside from being god awfully shallow) or has lots of technical bugs or glitches or anything like that. Its that this game is soulless. It has no heart to it. That may sound corny and useless to some people, but it basically means that this game has absolutely 0% substance. There's nothing to it. It holds your hand the whole way through and its even an insult to casual gamers, who I know could at least put up with more challenging games than this piece of shit (the game's difficulty is below average; whether you're playing on Normal or Hard, just mash "X" and 99% of the time you'll win; even casual NG fans have confirmed this).

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Furthermore, after having seen so much of how the game plays out, Hayashi is a complete amateur designer and I can see that he tried to talk big and arrogant like Itagaki, but the difference between him and Itagaki is that Itagaki can actually BACK UP his arrogance, something Hayashi clearly forgot about.

Itagaki's arrogance is also funny as hell. His Top 5 Most Hated Games list (Tekken, Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Tekken 4, Tekken 5) is just brilliant.

Hayashi somehow had the balls to call NG 2 and Bayonetta "outdated." What a joke.

[Rynnec]

What fun is it to kill enemies running away from you?

My thoughts exactly.

Furthermore, after having seen so much of how the game plays out, Hayashi is a complete amateur designer and I can see that he tried to talk big and arrogant like Itagaki, but the difference between him and Itagaki is that Itagaki can actually BACK UP his arrogance, something Hayashi clearly forgot about.

Itagaki's arrogance is also funny as hell. His Top 5 Most Hated Games list (Tekken, Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Tekken 4, Tekken 5) is just brilliant.

Hayashi somehow had the balls to call NG 2 and Bayonetta "outdated." What a joke.

What the hell does that even mean in this context? Those games were released fairly recently. Had he said that about the original Devil May Cry and God of War, I would maybe understand hwere he's coming from (though I still wouldn't agree) since it's been quite sometime since those were released.

God I hope that Metal Gear Rising show's him what a real hack'n slash game is.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Itagaki's arrogance is also funny as hell. His Top 5 Most Hated Games list (Tekken, Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Tekken 4, Tekken 5) is just brilliant.

In that regard, he's actually just joking. He definitely doesn't like Tekken (but he has said that he honestly doesn't hate it THAT much, either), but he has a lot of respect for Katsuhiro Harada, that series' director. They actually had a pretty harmless rivalry as fighting game developers back in Itagaki's DOA days, and in an interview last year Harada admitted that he kind of missed having people like Itagaki around since he quite enjoyed the exchange of trash-talking and insulting one another in a mostly non-serious way. They even met up for a double-interview and went at it and had fun roasting each other for old times' sake in a Famitsu magazine interview last year. So believe it or not, despite what he says he's not really on bad terms with most big-name competing developers. Basically Itagaki does speak his mind, but a lot of people in the West take it as him just bashing other games and their developers, when its really just him sort of showing his sense of humor and sticking it to his rivals. He's also the type of guy who doesn't give a crap what haters say. I love how when some gamers and maybe even a few critics bashed in the first NG game on the XBOX for being too difficult, he simply retorted that they just weren't good enough for his game (as in, they weren't worth the GAME's time, lol ). Shit like that is fucking brilliant. I wish we had more developers who could speak their mind like that. It leads to some pretty fun interviews, at the very least.

Here's a post from someone on another board that kind of explains Itagaki's relation with other developers that he "talks smack about."

^^
the funny thing about the bashing is that it is just a form of "developer" trolling.

I was going back and forth with Hideki Kamiya on twitter, and he told me that these game directors constantly bust each others balls and bash each other's games. He even tweeted me a cool pic of him, Itagaki, and Hideo Kojima together.

We just dont get the Japanese culture and their sense of humor some times. Also, I'm sure some stuff gets lost in translation from Japanese to English as well.

Hayashi somehow had the balls to call NG 2 and Bayonetta "outdated." What a joke.

Wait. Hayashi has balls? That's news to me....

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Itagaki's arrogance is also funny as hell. His Top 5 Most Hated Games list (Tekken, Tekken 2, Tekken 3, Tekken 4, Tekken 5) is just brilliant.

In that regard, he's actually just joking.

I know, that's why it's hilarious. As your quote says, I'm pretty sure he's actually friends with Harada, Kamiya, etc. and that's why they're always giving each other shit. It's really funny and kind of cute.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, Tecmo has opened an online survey to collect fan reception on the game. That said, that 500 character limit is not NEARLY enough to list the problems with the game, and I doubt that they'll even listen to a survey for real, but I did it anyways because its worth it to at least give it a shot for NG fans to have their opinions heard (or I guess read, in this case) for once. At any rate, I heard that after DMC2 Capcom held a survey of their own for what fans wanted to see improved in the series, and it turns out they actually must have listened since then we got DMC3, a complete 180 in quality and by far the best game in the series to date (IMO), and that was of course without Kamiya on board to supervise the game. That said, its still a total stretch for something lucky like that to happen with NG, but I figured that with NG being one of the most important gaming franchises to me, personally, it was worth me sparing a few minutes of my time to basically just tell these guys to get the series back on track and not totally abandon what worked about previous games. That said, given the low review scores for this game, I have a feeling that it won't sell well and it may be doomed to fade into obscurity, but on the off chance that it doesn't, I'd at least like a future NG game to be actually good and fun to play again.