Ninja Gaiden Series

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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.

Hopefully that means cooperative rather than competitive. Since it no longer has a big publisher backing it, DT will probably go the way of Anarchy Reigns if it turns out to be a deathmatch-focused game. Then again, the existence of a PC version will likely extend its shelf life far past AR's.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, and they do have another independent developer experienced with PC games handling that port, so that may be the version to go for. I think it's going to be more about competitive play, though.

Even so, we do know that it will still have a single-player mode, and knowing Itagaki, it'll most likely be something that's infinitely replayable.

[Foggle]

Even so, we do know that it will still have a single-player mode, and knowing Itagaki, it'll most likely be something that's infinitely replayable.

Oh, that's good! The trailer made it look like a single-player game, though since it showed off two characters I figured that meant it'd be co-op focused or something. Devil's Third is probably my most anticipated game right now after Bayonetta 2, though it could become number 1 after more substantial gameplay footage is released.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Bayonetta 2 would be my most anticipated game if I owned a Wii-U, but I still need to play through the first game again.

Oh, BTW, speaking of Ninja Gaiden....did anyone else remember that it was this franchise's 25th anniversary? No, well don't worry, Tecmo didn't give a shit, either.

You know, while I can't stand the way that the NG series is going without Itagaki, I do think that one thing they have the right idea about is treating the series mythos like a comic book. I mean, if you think about it, the characters and world are so all over the place and inconsistent that it feels like a long-running comic book series. So using that as an excuse to do whatever you want with the Universe could lead to actual good story possibilities. Team Ninja would do better to higher a good comic book writer as opposed to some hack who writes most of their stories.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is coming out tomorrow and I only JUST remembered that this was even a thing. It says a lot about how much NG3 destroyed the series for me that I'm now at the point where a new NG game is coming out and I can't even bring myself to give a shit.

At this point I'm just praying that Devil's Third will come out this year to give me at least some taste of great action-gaming. But even though Itagaki said it would....the guy's word is about as good as his bizarre sense of fashion. He's made several statements that it would come out in 2012, then it got delayed to 2013, and now he says 2014, but until I see an actual trailer for the game, I'm seriously doubting that it'll be coming out this year. I think that VGS really needs to find a publisher first, and the fact that apparently nobody would buy the property from THQ is not a good sign.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

And speak of the devil (pun fully intended): http://playeressence.com/devils-third-announcement-coming-soon-says-former-thq-games-boss/

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

At this point the only thing I'm worried about is where this game (Devil's Third) will release. I want to save up for a good PC, so I just hope it comes onto that platform, which I think it will. Still, I'd like to see it on XBOX360 if it does indeed come out this year. If it comes out for the XBONE and PS4 only, I likely won't get to play it for a long while.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, NGZ is getting shit reviews as predicted. No surprise there, and quite frankly I don't care like I did with NG3 because I was never really interested in this game. What I do want to point out is one of the funniest (and completely true) fan comments that I've ever seen:

Its amazing how the franchise just gets worse and worse with every new installment. You think they hit the bottom, but they just keep digging.

At this point, Ninja Gaiden 4 will probably destroy your console upon pressing start and maybe give you cancer.

Thank you random forum poster. That comment just made my day.

[gunswordfist]

 :DRight on the money!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just realized that NGZ is the only NG game to have been released on Steam, and thus is essentially the only NG game with an "official" PC port (at least in North America, since I believe some of the classics got ported to the PC overseas, way back in the day). Now I can't stop thinking that the only exposure PC-only gamers will ever get to this series (unless they use emulators), is this vulgar mess.

Granted that, I don't think PC-only gamers care for these types of action games for the most part, especially the elitists a who snub their noses at any and all console games, but it's still an inexcusably bad showing for a franchise that frankly deserves better treatment.

On another note, shame on you, Keiji Inafune, for putting this project into motion. It annoys me that he was apparently the one who approached Team Ninja about the concept for this game, yet then he an "Hayashit" decided to hand this over to a third party Western developer who are known for having a shitty track record of games. The clear lack of respect that this long-running, well-established series has been getting, even from its own company and developers, is just fucking sad.

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Granted that, I don't think PC-only gamers care for these types of action games for the most part, especially the elitists a who snub their noses at any and all console games, but it's still an inexcusably bad showing for a franchise that frankly deserves better treatment.

Actually, PC-only gamers love third person action games if the Steam forums and Rock Paper Shotgun comment sections are any indication. Devil May Cry 4 and DmC received much better reception on PC than consoles because that's really all they had to play in terms of the genre. People have been clamoring for ports of Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden 1/2, and a redo of DMC 3 for ages.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm surprised that Capcom never ported over the DMC HD collection to the PC, though from what I've heard, porting some of those older games over to the PC isn't as easy as it sounds. DMC4 runs on the MT Framework engine, which works much better for PC ports (once again, according to what I've heard). Games like NGZ and DmC run on the Unreal 3 engine, which was pretty much designed with PC games in mind, so those are no-brainers. I have no idea if the engine that TN used for the NG games makes it hard to port them to the PC, but if Hayashi proved at least one thing, it's that they can be ported. By all accounts, porting NGB to the PS3 as NGS was no easy task, since that game was designed to run specifically on the XBOX's hardware, and as we all know, Sony's consoles have a very different set-up, which is why so many of the early third party ports do XBOX360 or PC games ran like shit on the PS3 (F.E.A.R. being one of the many casualties).

From what I hear, the new RE4 port runs really well, and makes up for the shitty one they tried to pass by back in 2006 or so. Going by that, they can still definitely port these games. It'll just take some more time and effort....which kind of makes it obvious why we haven't already gotten these pots in the first place.

It'd be great for the genre to get many classics ported to the PC, though, to expand the user-base of players. It's just like how this gen allowed console gamers to get some older PC games that couldn't be handled on the original XBOX or PS2, and now games like Half-Life 2 and F.E.A.R. have way more fans than before. The same could be true for stuff like Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta if those ever got the same treatment, but I seriously doubt that it'll ever happen, unfortunately.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, I just beat Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge. God, that was painful. Story mode was terrible to the point that I feel compelled to write a full review nailing everything wrong with this game as an action game in general. I think what hurt me the most was the unresponsiveness of the controls for Ryu. It artificially increases the difficulty of the game. That's right, Team Ninja doesn't know or understand how to craft genuinely challenging gameplay anymore. I mean, what happened? Even without Itagaki and some key members, how did they allow the bar to fall this low? I'm really not interested in NG4 at this point. The only half-way decent thing about this game is the Ninja Trials, which are kind of fun since they are pure combat without all of the shitty gimmicks from story mode, but even those pale in comparison to the excellent Mission Mode from NGB and Sigma, which feel much more fair and less monotonous.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Seraphim17 gave his thoughts on NGZ in this Balls Deep video: http://youtu.be/IrutfVY0QXk

He does a good job of pointing out why the game sucks while not coming off like an angry fanboy, since you can tell that he was trying to be positive about this game in terms of highlighting some of it's more interesting ideas, but also showing why they still don't save it from being shit.

He really does bring a lot of insight into games of this genre, which is why I love watching his playthroughs and listening to his commentary.

But, what he says near the end is so true: Ninja Gaiden as a series is pretty much dead. Team Ninja or another developer would have to do something MASSIVELY amazing to make up for the past couple of games, and that's just flat-out not going to happen.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Since Desensitized has done it for Contra and Castlevania, I thought, why not give one of my favorite franchises the same treatment?


Ninja Gaiden (1988/Arcade)

While many believe that this iconic series was started on the NES, the truth is that it took its first step out the door with this more obscure arcade game, just a year before the NES release. The game was....not exactly great. While not necessarily a bad game for its time, it felt like a cheap knock-off of Double Dragon, and from experience with the XBOX port of the game, it felt like it was designed to eat quarters with some unfair difficulty that you kind of had to use cheap tactics to get through unless you wanted to spare a lot of continues. Overall, it's a noble effort, but certainly not the best way to start off such an iconic franchise.


Ninja Gaiden (1989/NES)

Now, this was more like it. Whereas the original Ninja Gaiden took influence from Double Dragon, beat-em-ups weren't quite as popular of a genre when it came to consoles. With a new development team at the helm in-house at Tecmo, it was decided to make a completely different kind of game, and rather than taking inspiration from beat-em-ups, they wanted to go for more of an action platformer vibe, and most prominently took influence from the Castlevania series. However, what they managed to do was to make a game that arguably had better controls and more intuitive level design than the older Castlevania titles, and thus while the game was just as hard, it arguably felt a lot less cheap when you ended up dying. Sure, they also took some of the less than stellar elements from Castlevania as well, such as the birds basically being replacements for the Medusa Heads, and your character seemingly gravitating toward bottomless pits whenever he was hit, but thanks to much tighter design, it felt like it was genuinely your fault when you did get hit, more often than not. The game isn't perfect by any means, and it has its cheap moments, especially with that grueling final boss gauntlet which sends you back to the beginning of the level after just 1 death, but even so, nobody can deny this game's status as a classic, and its popularity persisted because, at the end of the day, it was still fun.

Of course, it only goes without saying that the game did one other very incredible thing that very few games of its time can claim, and that's the addition of story-driven cutscenes. While the story can be seen as very cheesy and poorly written by today's standards, it was undoubtedly a spectacle in its day, and helped pioneer the advancement of videogame story-telling in a way that's still being felt to this very day. It's pretty ironic considering that these games never had great story-telling, yet had so much influence on the medium in that regard. And while the story in this game itself is nothing truly special, it still feels very charming and helps give your character a purpose, which makes each new cutscene that you earn by completing a new level feel all the more rewarding. And on top of all of that, this game has what I consider to be one of the greatest videogame soundtracks of all time. This is right up there with Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog when it comes to classic, iconic videogame tunes. When you put the complete package together, it's no wonder that this game was a hit, and thankfully this is what really kickstarted the franchise that we know and love to this day.


Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990/NES)

Honestly, while this is my favorite 2D Ninja Gaiden game by far, there isn't that much to say about it because I already covered most of what makes 2D NG great in the first place with my entry about the first game. This game essentially takes that, and amps it up to 11 in every possible regard. The controls are just as tight, but now Ryu's abilities are even sharper, including his ability to scale walls (whereas before he had to jump back and forth between them, which you can still do here if you want), and the power-ups are the best the series has ever had, with my personal favorite being the ninja clones that can fight alongside you. Now that's innovation. On top of that, the levels are really creative with the different weather conditions affecting gameplay, which some may hate, but I found it to be an interesting and fair challenge. The music is also somehow just as good as it was in the first game, making this another one of the greatest videogame soundtracks of all time, which is a tall order that they somehow managed to fill. And finally, while still not great by today's standards, the story is even better than in the original, IMO, and went into fairly dark territory for an NES game, including the death of Irene, one of the main characters (even if Irene was resurrected by the end, it must have been a shock to kids to see her stabbed to death in cold blood). Overall, the 2D games just never got better than this.

Also, this game introduced us to Robert T. Sturgeon, a side character, and arguably the biggest video game bad-ass before Duke Nukem even existed. That alone is enough to make this game amazing.


Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991/NES)

For the longest time, this game has been regarded as one of the worst games in the franchise, and generally terrible, and after having replayed it on more than one occasion, I have to say that this is simply not true. But, just to get it out of the way, let's see what this game does wrong. Well, for one thing, the music is not nearly as good as in the first 2 games. Admittedly that's a big hit for a series that was known for its excellent music, but sometimes music isn't everything, either. Additionally, you also took double damage than what you previously used to take, and had limited continues whereas the previous games let you continue as much as you want, as long as you didn't give up. That was certainly a huge problem....in the North American version of the game, whereas the original Japanese release had you take a normal amount of damage from attacks and let you continue infinitely, like in the previous games. Also, you could say that the difficulty was a bit more uneven, with some sections alternating between ridiculously hard and laughably easy. It certainly didn't feel as well-paced as its predecessors. I've also heard it said that the story was crap and didn't live up to the first 2 games (and also confusing for some because it takes place in-between the first 2 games, but the American instruction manual said that it was a sequel to NG2), but honestly, for a series that has always had campy and nonsensical stories, I've always found this complaint to just be flat-out silly.

Those are what we call flaws, and yes the game has them, but does that make it a bad game entirely? Not if it makes up for it with improvements to the general gameplay formula, which it most certainly did. For one thing, the platforming in this game is actually the most intuitive that it has ever been in the series. Ryu can do everything that he did before, in addition to hanging from ledges, and when it comes to scaling an edge to the top, he no longer has to do that really weird jump, but instead just automatically climbs up when you push up on the d-pad, as he should. The power-ups aren't as creative as in the second game, but it does redeem itself with the sword extension power-up, which is incredibly awesome and probably my third favorite in the entire series. Also, the stages show some more creativity with new sections where you have to scale up a level before something like lava or spikes end up getting you. These sections are really intense and a lot of fun since they manage to be challenging but mostly fair. So, I don't know what it is that makes people give this game such a bad rep, which quite frankly it doesn't deserve. It has flaws, yes, but it also has strengths, and IMO, the strengths outweigh the flaws.


Ninja Gaiden Shadow (1991/Game Boy)

This game was actually never originally meant to be a Ninja Gaiden game. It was meant to be a GB adaptation of the NES game, Shadow of the Ninja, made by a different development team than the NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy, called Natsume, until Tecmo had them re-purpose the game as an NG spin-off. You may recognize these guys as the ones who also made the excellent beat-em-up title Ninja Warriors on the SNES, as well as that kick-ass Power Rangers game for the same system. That said, I honestly can't comment on this game specifically, as I've never played it. I've heard that it's decent, but doesn't quite stack up to the NES titles, which is about what I would expect. But, maybe I'll give it a try someday, all the same.


Ninja Gaiden (1991/Sega Game Gear)

Yeah....this one pretty much speaks for itself. It's easily the most obscure Ninja Gaiden game ever released for a reason. It looks like crap, and from what I've heard, it plays like crap as well. Moving on....


Ninja Gaiden (1992/Sega Master System)

This is the third NG game in a row that I haven't played, and to be fair, it's hard to find since it's also pretty obscure these days. I may just end up going ahead and using an emulator for this so I can play it, but the fact that I am willing to play it is saying something. Would you believe that this game was actually very well-received by critics at the time of its release? It was praised for its sharp gameplay, and while being developed by a different development team, was considered to be just as worthy as any of the NES games in bearing the Ninja Gaiden name. It also had its fair share of cutscenes, and the game's aesthetic look seemed to take influence from the Shinobi games, a series which you could consider to be Ninja Gaiden's rival during that era of gaming, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.