Ninja Gaiden Series

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, the news is that apparently Team Ninja can't even get a freaking port right anymore. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Plus released on the PSV a couple of weeks ago, and its marred with all sorts of technical issues that weren't present in the port of the first game. For one thing, the game has slow-down....and that's on top of it already being cut down to run at 30 FPS.

Just in case there are any hater of Itagaki who thought to themselves that Team Ninja would be fine without him and his head members which he took with him, just take a moment to consider that Team Ninja's ONLY successful games over the past few years since his departure are ports of games that HE lead the development of, and with the latest port, they can't even get that right anymore. Truly this series is doomed. I anticipate that we'll still get sequels because this is basically the highest selling series that KoeiTecmo has at its disposal aside from Dynasty Warriors and Dead or Alive. And by highest selling, I mean that it can't even break past a million copies like the previous games did. So we're basically going to get half-assed sequels that only a small number of fanboys, who can't admit that this series has gone to shit, will ever play. And thus this series will die a slow painful death.

Honestly, I'd rather just have the series die with NG3 if that's the case. At least its only one incredibly shitty game to hamper its name, as opposed to like a series of shit that follows.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I just played through the Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge demo. Here are my thoughts:

Basically, the game is way more polished and challenging than the original release of the game....but its all for naught, because it still sucks. To be more specific, yes the game is filled with more content than the original game, but it all feels like shallow add-ons with not much thought put behind how these elements could better be incorporated into the game. I can use any of 6 different weapons for Ryu, but unlike NGB or NG2, I really can't find any incentive to use one over the other. The game just seems to reward button-mashing in terms of actual combat inputs. The challenge comes more from putting up with bull-shit, and in that regard, its difficult, but not in a way that's fun. Yeah, NG2 had those damned rocket launcher enemies as well, but in that game you could cleverly use your enviroment to your advantage and lure enemies to places that they couldn't fire at you, or prioritize them and take them out first. In NG3RE, you have to constantly deal with these ass-holes in places that you can't reach while fighting enemies on the ground and constantly having to avoid rockets from off-camera. You could try shooting the rocket launcher enemies and killing them off first, but its nearly impossible to get a chance to hit them when you have too many enemies on the ground attacking you, and even if you do manage to kill one of them, another one will be ready to re-spawn in his place. Its just tedious difficulty rather than something that's fun. The melee combat challenge just comes from knowing when to block and dodge, which is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that the controls are CLEARLY far less responsive than they were in the first 2 games. I don't know how Team Ninja actually managed to fuck up something that was as close to perfect as possible in the first 2 games, but they did. The timing for chaining combos and linking them into evasion (in this game you slide instead of roll or dash), is totally off. That means the best tactic ends up being that I just have to run to one corner of the room, charge up a ultimate technique, and unleash on the dumb-ass AI when they get close enough to me. Its monotonous and boring, and really makes the combat feel extremely shallow.

I also played the Ayane chapter in the demo. For what its worth, she is far more quick and fun to play as than this game's version of Ryu, but her combat unfortunately succumbs to the same issues as Ryu's gameplay, so its still not very fun to play as her. It was after having played through her chapter that I realized that, despite how much Team Ninja has added to the game, it still feels so fundamentally mediocre, and in some cases downright bad. It just proves that there really was MUCH more to the first 2 NG games besides cool looking action and violence. Those games were so fine-tuned to offer the most precise combat possible, and they had some of the most fluid and responsive controls in the genre. They also took better care to make for more interesting level design (even NG2's linear levels were still better designed than the glorified combat arenas linked by hallways approach that NG3 goes for). They also had much better enemy AI, where in NGB your enemies blocked and dodged as much as you would, and they wouldn't stupidly let you use obvious tactics like charging up a UT at free-will (they could easily interrupt that before you could pull it off). In NG2, the individual enemies weren't as smart, but instead they worked better as a team or unit, with some enemies trying to surround you, while others stayed back and fired any ranged attacks that they had at you from a distance, forcing you to get to strategically better ground to carry on attacking them, or prioritize which enemies to take out first.

Ninja Gaiden 3's enemies offer up none of these complex roles, and they just feel like fodder to kill over and over again. Its just fighting wave after wave of enemy, with the challenge coming from endurance and putting up with bull-shit as opposed to being reflexively adept at combat and strategically using your weapons and various attacks, while properly conserving healing items and Ninpo. So, its safe to say that after having played NG3RE's demo, that the game is just a failed project, plain and simple. Its not incomplete, its just badly designed. Team Ninja really has to start from scratch and re-assess what makes a Ninja Gaiden game good if they ever plan to continue this series, because if they think that just copying NG3's formula and adding in a lot of other features is going to be good enough from now on, then this series will be dead before long.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, as you would expect, early previews of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z aren't very favorable, right now. The comic-book art-style is apparently the only thing the game has going for it. Keiji Inafune himself has stated that he does not consider the combat to be very important, and apparently the animations in the game look uneven and stiff. That said, the game is still early in development, but I'm still already expecting a disaster just so that I won't be monumentally disappointed again.

You guys have absolutely no idea how badly it hurts to be a Ninja Gaiden fan, right now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

OK, this bit from this interview made me chuckle:

"Back in the day when I was creating Onimusha, I was friends with [former Team Ninja head Tomonobu] Itagaki-san," Inafune said. "He complimented me by saying he really liked Onimusha, but he also said that 'I'm creating this new title that's better than yours.' He was talking about the Ninja Gaiden reboot. I played it and thought it was good but I still feel competitive [about it]."

That's Itagaki for you. He loves to rub his work in rival developers' faces. I could imagine it going something like:

Inafune: So, Itagaki, what do you think of my new hack n' slash game, Onimusha?

Itagaki: Oni-whatever? Yeah, its kind of cool, I guess, but my new Ninja Gaiden game will absolutely destroy it. Hahahaha!

[Spark Of Spirit]

Team Ninja is now two separate teams. I wonder why? Maybe they're planning on having Hayashi make a NG game and then having the second team Razor's Edge it upon completion.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Its sad to see that the Ninja Gaiden fan-base has lowered their standards so much, and many consider Razor's Edge to be a good game. Its improved from NG3 vanilla for sure, but its still complete ass compared to what we previously got, and I can't stand fans just accepting some shit like this as being "good enough" when its clearly just a sub-par hack n' slash game. The demo showed me that just adding content isn't enough to make a good NG game, The controls feel WAY less responsive than Ninja Gaiden Black ad Ninja Gaiden II, and the difficulty feels cheap more than ever in this game compared to previous games. Even the rocket launcher enemies in NG2 weren't as ridiculous as they were in this game, and at least in that game you could actually find them in places that you could physically reach (meaning that you could take them out with melee attacks), whereas in this game you are only limited to ranged attacks to take them out, which is really frustrating given the finicky auto-aim that this game has to offer. At best this is a below average hack n' slash game, and as a huge NG fan myself, I just cannot except this as being good design, in any form. I do hope that the next proper NG game (NGZ doesn't count) turns out to be a true return to form, but until then, I'm not going to lie to myself and say that any form of NG3 is the least bit satisfying, because it really isn't. Its still pretty much the DMC2 of the NG series, even with the added content.

[Foggle]

I tried playing the Razor's Edge demo. It made a good first impression; it's fast as hell, and Normal mode is pretty tough. But it still seemed offensively mediocre overall.

Good fucking lord is it boring. The levels feel like brief hallways connecting to glorified arenas. I swear, half of Ayane's demo stage takes place in the EXACT same circular area. You get one wave of at least 20 enemies, then another wave of 10 more who take extra hits to kill, then a boss fight against three enemies who can kill you pretty fast, and if you die on the boss fight, you have to restart from the second wave. Every major encounter is at least five minutes long for no goddamn reason, and the enemies don't drop health pickups at all - meaning that the game is only hard because the checkpoint system is, quite frankly, stupid. And then of course there are those goddamn rocket launcher ninjas. They were somewhat annoying in the previous games, but easily killable/avoidable if you knew what you were doing. Razor's Edge just spams them at you, and usually puts them on high ledges so you have to take the time to use the bow while each arena spawns 50,000 enemies and you get killed by some dude with no legs crawling around with a grenade because taking <2 seconds to auto aim and fire your bow at someone means certain death. Also, it felt like I had less moves at my disposal than in NG2. In fact, I actually did better at the game when I randomly mashed the buttons than when I tried to play strategically like in the other games.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Precisely how I felt after playing the demo. It's clear proof that there was much more to Itagaki's NG than just simple gore and violence. This and future NG games can try and throw as much of that in as they want to try and please the fans, but there's really just no substitute for a creative mind and actual good game design. Unfortunately, the NG franchise is now in the hands of complete amateurs.

[Foggle]

Yeah, I read your impressions after I posted mine and laughed at how similar ours were. Team Ninja Dog has truly ruined NG.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The humor in Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is the least Ninja Gaiden thing I've ever seen....yet shamefully I have to admit that I chuckled at how intentionally ludicrous it was. Actually, the line "Honor and death go together like hot sauce and my balls" is so godawful that I should hate the writer but I hate myself more for actually laughing at it. Perhaps its just the fact that Ninja Gaiden has always kind of been such a bland Universe on a character-basis that its automatically kind of funny to stick a guy with ANY personality at all into that very Universe. On the downside, the few bits of gameplay I saw look like shit, but to be fair the series already hit its low point with NG3, so it can't really phase me if this game sucks as well.

[Foggle]

"Honor and death go together like hot sauce and my balls"

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, at the very least it'd be interesting to see how the stoic and completely unemotional and indifferent Ryu Hayabusa would react to someone like Yaiba. Hell, Ryu would just look at him indifferently for a second and then cut him in half like every other enemy he has killed....oh wait, he does that in the trailer.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

IT'S NOT DEAD!!!!

Please don't let the game suck after all of this time. And I'm praying that it's still going to be released on the last-gen consoles as originally planned.

Meanwhile NGZ still looks like shit. Shame on you, Team Ninja.

[Foggle]

IT'S NOT DEAD!!!!

Hooray!! I still remember how awesome that trailer looked. I guess this means they secured a publisher?

Even if it does come out for current gen consoles, it'll probably still be on Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I remember hearing Itagaki talk about the gameplay before. It seems like it'll be more of a multiplayer focused game, but if it's by Itagaki then I'm certainly willing to give it a try, especially since it'll have melee combat just as much as shooting.

I do think that this game will end up being smaller scale than Itagaki wanted, though. It's now an independent game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but without a big budget backing him, he undeniably would've had to cut some things that he originally wanted to do.