Ninja Gaiden Series

[Spark Of Spirit]

I still hope Ninja Gaiden 4 is a 2D sidescroller. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

At this point, I highly doubt that the current Team Ninja could even make a good 2D side-scrolling action game. I'm willing to bet that rather than cribbing off popular movie games, they'll instead attempt to copy pretentious arthouse platformers like Braid or Limbo rather than trying to actually make a good game. As long as people like Hayashi are left in charge of Team Ninja, that's about all we can expect from future NG games made by them.

Honestly, I just want the next NG game to be made by a different development team entirely.

In the meanwhile, I'm growing ever more impatient for the TRUE Team Ninja (aka VGS) to release some new info about Devil's Third.

[Spark Of Spirit]

In the meanwhile, I'm growing ever more impatient for the TRUE Team Ninja (aka VGS) to release some new info about Devil's Third.

After Bayonetta 2's reveal... I'm just spit-balling here but what if....

I think the internet would destroy itself to kill Nintendo.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

LOL!

That'd certainly stick it to all those anti-Nintendo snobs out there.

That said, Devil's Third has been confirmed for a cross-platform release (including the Wii-U and the PC) for over a year, and I'm pretty sure that isn't going to change (assuming that the game actually DOES ever come out).

[Foggle]

Inafune is making a Ninja Gaiden spin-off.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Lost Planet 3 developer, Spark Unlimited

Sigh.

Also, it's still not 2D enough. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Hey, if Keiji Inafune is involved, that's enough to get me excited. Granted that....I don't now how much influence he has over the development of this game, but I'll gladly take Ryu slicing up zombies, whether it be in 2D or 3D.

I'm sure it'll be no Ninja Gaiden Black or Ninja Gaiden II (NES), but it'll probably be the best NG game we've had in years, and as a huge NG fan that's a big deal to me, especially after the travesty of NG3. Also, if you look closely in the trailer, I believe you can vaguely see in the footage that Ryu is wearing his classic blue ninja costume from the NES games!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Also, the concept for this game is awesome. I always though it'd be cool to play a game in a franchise with an established hero where you play as an enemy of the hero. In this case you play as some guy named Yaiba who's out for revenge against Ryu, which completely makes sense because Ryu has killed a lot of rival ninjas. It'd be awesome if he turns out to be a fallen Black Spider ninja, which is from Ryu's rival clan.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

OK, I just realized who Spark Unlimited are....and all of a sudden any hope I had for there being a good NG related game coming out anytime soon has once again vanished.

How did the series fall THIS fucking far as soon as Itagaki left?

Also, I do sincerely wish for a Ninja Gaiden game that would touch back to the series's NES routes. I mean, I'd LOVE a great new 3D NG game that can be as good or even possibly top Ninja Gaiden Black, but I'm pretty sure that such a feat is now impossible since nobody at Tecmo or Team Ninja seems to be interested in making a good 3D NG game that the fans want.

At least I'd love a great classic 2D NG game, and many fans have been begging for one, but Tecmo and Team Ninja apparently aren't aware that they exit. That, or they refuse to make an NG game that can't rip off of modern shooters and movie games....because when one things NG, they think of Call of Duty....yeah, that logic makes perfect sense.

[Foggle]

Well, Inafune's studio is involved, and Spark Unlimited has only made shooters thus far, so I'd say it's safe to be cautiously optimistic for this game.

[gunswordfist]

Hmm, zombies and mechs. Those things are too slow for super fast ninjas (or whatever the hell Yaiba Dabba Doo is). I also have no clue how Inafune would do on a hack n slash game.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Another thing that bothers me about the idea of this game when I think about it is the idea that the main enemy type (or possibly even the only enemy type) in this game will be zombies. That's fine for an ordinary hack n' slash game, but its not quite what I look for in a Ninja Gaiden game, whether its 2D or 3D. With 2D NG games, I would want a lot of emphasis on intense and challenging platforming combined with simple but fun slash-based action, and of course some classic ninja magic would always be welcome. A game full of zombies certainly doesn't fit the profile of making for a good 2D NG experience. Now the problem in the 3D realm of things is that it also doesn't fit in with what I have come to love a bout the 3D NG games, anyways (or at least the first 2). I love the idea of having really challenging enemies that really put your skills and wits to the test, as you have to constantly be reflexively alert to any quick and deadly attacks that they can throw at you while also having a mental strategy going into tough battles to ensure that you prevail. The whole idea of zombies pretty much rules out the idea of good AI altogether, as there is just supposed to be a lot of them and they usually amount to nothing more than fodder for your sword. That's the last thing I want to see from an NG game, especially a 3D one after the greatness of NGB and how it showed me the rewarding feeling of fighting tough enemy AI.

Now, to be fair we've only seen flashes of gameplay, so that's really nothing to base the entire game off of. For all I could know the zombies in this game could be completely different than the stereotypical zombies of most modern games, and they could be more along the lines of the undead ninjas from NG2 (which would be fucking awesome, just so long as they removed the projectile spam from them in this game). That said, I sincerely doubt it'll be like that. It just seems that no developer who makes or has made hack n' slash games seems to have anything close to that mentality save for Itagaki. Its really a shame, as  I've wanted something that can step up from what NGB offered me in the enemy AI department and yet no game (not even its own sequel) has come close to delivering on that, IMO.

[Spark Of Spirit]

They should have gotten WayForward, Treasure, Inticreates, or Dreamrift to make a new Ninja Gaiden.

Yeah, I know I'm a broken record at this point, but Tecmo is really missing out on money here.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Apparently Spark Unlimited approached them to make a Ninja Gaiden spin-off, based on what I've read.

I have to wonder if the good modern developers of retro-style games even give a shit about classic Ninja Gaiden. It sure doesn't seem that way.

Then again, Tecmo clearly gives even less of a shit about the series.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I dunno, it seems that Sega even made a classic style Shinobi game, and Nintendo (their new best buddies) seem to have no problem making 2D games and selling bunches of them... and Ninja Gaiden was huge back in the NES days, it just seems like an easy thing to do. I mean, NES NG3 didn't even really hurt the series much. It seems to me that getting the series back on track at this point is not gonna come through relying on terrible third party developers, but a reworking of the original formula with a modern twist to get people excited again.

But I'm heavily biased here, so I dunno if they've even thought of it and have discarded it already. then again, they haven't re-released NES Rygar yet so maybe they really don't know what's going on.

Still, a 2D classic-style Ninja Gaiden with a more modernized soundtrack like this would be killer.