Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)
Filed Under Reviews
Ninja Gaiden’s debut on the Xbox resurrected the old school franchise for a new generation of players with a thumb blistering experience that questioned their skills with a bipolar mix of tear jerking frustration and burning, blood rushing fury. The difficulty of the game was made legendary by those that dared to take up designer Tomonobu Itagaki’s gauntlet, and now that the 360 has arrived, Ryu Hayabusa returns in an all new adventure designed to bring even more of the pain.
It seems that the Black Spider Clan is up to no good and Sonia, a CIA operative who looks as if she had spent time with the Dead or Alive girls on New Zack Island, runs into trouble in trying to find the only ninja that can stop them. Fortunately for her, Ryu Hayabusa is on the case and after a harrowing rescue, they both go on to stop the clan’s leader, Genshin, from unleashing unspeakable evil on the world. While some ninja-philes may ignore the story, Team Ninja has provided enough background information in the manual and scattered throughout the game to give players looking for a reason to kibble their enemies enough to care why as they travel from one corner of the world to the next, all the way to the somber conclusion.
Veterans of Ninja Gaiden and its Black and Sigma siblings will feel at home with the responsive controls and discover that Ryu’s ninjitsu abilities will now be leaving assorted limbs flying everywhere with nearly every combo. If unbridled carnage leaves you queasy, you might want to think twice before stepping into this particular title. Hitting an enemy with a weapon may part them from a valuable body part and if they’re still staggering around, Ryu can perform an Obliteration Technique finishes them off for good. You can also power up Ryu’s attacks, as long as a pesky foe fails to disrupt his concentration, and unleash an Ultimate Technique, a savage attack dervish of deadly power that can leave those still standing around wishing that they were dead. Further mercy is granted by save points that will heal you when you first use them and when you die at a boss encounter, it will start you off from that point as opposed to making you fight all the way back.
A variety of glowing orbs are also released with every enemy’s death allowing Ryu to earn cash which can be used to purchase items such as valuable healing aids or to help upgrade his personal arsenal which opens up additional devastating combinations and powers. Using Ultimate Techniques can also reward Ryu with better rewards. Powering up to use an Ultimate Technique will also draw in floating orbs that haven’t yet flown to Ryu, only now by absorbing them, his Ultimate Technique instantly powers up for immediate carnage making it a valuable tactic to add to his arsenal of combos.
Ninja Gaiden 2 is not a game for players with a casual attraction to hardcore action which can narrow its appeal, even though it may have an “easy” mode to ease newcomers into the wired reflexes and tactics that they will need to survive it. If you have never played a Ninja Gaiden title before, expect to die, and die often, perhaps often enough to earn an Achievement for continuing past the reaper a hundred times. Enemy ninja will swarm you, mug you with exploding arrows, and break your turtle blocks with a vicious grab attacks, and that’s typical stuff for pretty much the entire game until you manage to learn how to defend yourself. Even then, the game’s challenge can be something of a mixed bag with linear levels funneling over the next batch of victims to resorting to spammed encounters that it will often pound your reflexes with.
Quick jumping and slash-happy ninjas to giant, flying demons are only a few of the enemies that can make life miserable. It doesn’t matter if they’re cannon fodder, every foe has a variety of attacks that they will use against you whether it is a punch to the face with a fist as large as a small boulder to firing missiles and spitting hellfire at point blank range, and they’ll usually be accompanied by many of their friends. The bosses, in particular, have an array of savage attacks but will always have some weakness that you can exploit if you can discover if you can survive long enough to find it.
Breaking the sequel’s zen-like adherence to the flow of its action is the surprising lack of technical polish marring the action. The camera hasn’t changed much from the first Ninja Gaiden so expect to see plenty of attacks from offscreen to ruin your day, forcing you to focus on fiddling with its quirky behavior while trying to survive the gameplay. Get used to dying from attacks that you might never see because of this, or because of the chaos onscreen, especially at the more harrowing difficulty levels as explosions, blood, and even more explosions obscure everything other than the Game Over screen.
Slowdowns can also break your concentration in particularly busy scenes and the game has a tendency to freeze up for a second or two at certain points for loading such as while running from one part of a level to the other. This can sometimes affect certain fights when you accidentally cross that invisible line, suddenly throwing your reflexes into “PARK” because of the delay. Then there’s the instance of when the game spawned in flying bat-monsters to fight me before it would open the gate to the next area, only I couldn’t kill them all because one of them appeared in an area that I couldn’t get to no matter what I tried. The only solution? Restarting from an earlier save and fighting my way back. Or when nothing happened when I entered one area after wiping out all of the monsters until I found the “spot” I was expected to walk over to trigger the actual cinematic.
Most of the pixels have been spent in creating gushing, gory geysters and spectacular effects but enough have been left over to lend some detail to the world around it, although not every scene looks quite as good. Blood decals hover over surfaces and edges, textures lose detail up close, and most every monster looks as if they were laminated in plastic. Later on, however, the stages really begin to flex the visual candy that the console is capable of drawing onscreen, especially with the last few venues. The music easily matches the fast pace of the action and the horrifying terror of awakened evil that Ryu will be facing, and dual language tracks feature voices in English and Japanese with appropriate subtitles.
There’s no question that Tomonobu Itagaki and his crew at Team Ninja have tweaked the Ninja Gaiden formula with plenty of bloody extras in what has turned out to be the outspoken developer’s final take on the series. Fans have plenty to sink their swords into with the sequel and even if they finish the game for the first time, more difficulty levels await without apology to serve up humble pie. Hidden challenges within the game lie in wait and with Ninja Cam, your greatest triumphs and failures can be recorded allowing you to upload them to the world for everyone to witness. The harrowing difficulty and blood soaked action might not appeal to everyone, but for those that take up the sword in defiance of evil, get ready for a bloodbath.
Primotech Rating: 
Second Opinion by Jorge Fernandez
The plot of Ninja Gaiden II borrows a little bit more from the original NES series than its Xbox predecessor; A demonic tribe has stolen an ancient statue once safeguarded by the Hayabusa clan. It falls upon the clan leader’s son, Ryu, with the help of a female CIA agent, to retrieve the statue from the Black Spider Clan, before their dark priest can use the artifact’s power to awaken an ancient evil from enslaving the human race.
In Team Ninja’s retelling, however, the Black Spider Clan is assisted by bloodthirsty demons, the CIA agent conforms to Itagaki’s infamous standards for female proportions, and the originally unskilled and naive protagonist has evolved to modern day standards of speaking softly and carrying a big stick to decimate and eviscerate anyone enough to stand in his way.
Like the Xbox original, Tomonobu Itagaki finds that the best homage to a classic series is by recreating its oldschool level of difficulty and random yet frantic action. In his quest for vengeance, Ryu will instantly travel to several areas that share nothing in common with one another, save for the enemies he must pursue; Areas range from a futuristic Tokyo with flying cars and cherry blossom trees, a modern day New York with famous landmarks enveloped with pouring rain and thunderous lightning, a venetian city surrounded by water, to the organic cavern of the Fiends themselves. There is little exposition for these disconnecting areas, but anyone looking for a deep plot had best try elsewhere, for Ninja Gaiden II lets its gameplay do the talking.
Indeed, the action in Ninja Gaiden II is brutal, unforgiving, and all around sadistic. But with new weapons and techniques, players may find themselves relishing in the pain enemies will give them, just so they can dish it back three times over. As the original game already featured silky smooth controls, Team Ninja decided not to tamper with a good thing, and instead added some minor tweaks that practically perfect Ryu’s feats of fury.
In addition to quicker dodging of enemy attacks, Ryu now possesses a handful of new attacks to deal further damage to his enemies. The most notable is the Obliteration Technique, a finishing move that occurs with a single press of the Y button to any enemy that is missing a limb or two (or three); Chop off an enemy’s arm or leg, and Ryu will instantly finish off the foe in a number of ways, depending on his positioning and equipped weapon.
Ultimate Techniques make a return as well, except that now the attack can continue to charge even when Ryu is taking enemy damage, though some of the more powerful blows will cancel out his charging stance. Succeed in charging to level 2, however, and Ryu will explode into a dizzying frenzy of slashes that will literally rip apart all nearby enemies into bloody chunks.
Oh yes, there will be blood, and lots of it. Nearly every enemy defeated by Ryu will lose a limb or head, followed by a cartoonish stream of blood emanating from their wounds. Combine this with the sheer number of enemies appearing at once, and it becomes a mystery how Ryu does not drown from the limitless gallons of blood. Even in the brief moments where there are no enemies to face, blood continues to flow in the background of later levels, including one area where the sky literally rains with blood.
Without question, Ninja Gaiden II is one of the goriest games this generation, but the way the carnage is presented with silky smooth animation and an almost constant rate of 60 frames per second, it makes for a beautiful showcase of death. The new weapons, including a hulking scythe and a pair of Wolverine-inspired claws for both the hands and feet, along with returning favorites like the Lunar staff and the Dragon’s Claw and Tiger’s Fang pair of katana, will only increase the players’ blood lust for more action.
But don’t think because an enemy has lost an arm or leg that they will remain helpless; most handicapped ninjas will continue to attack Ryu from a distance, or crawl close enough that they will latch onto him and perform a final kamikaze in the form of bombs, taking themselves out along with Ryu if his life bar isn’t full enough. Fortunately, Team Ninja has allowed a few additions to ease players’ frustrations, such as a life bar that will heal to a certain point when all enemies are defeated, as well as a one time full rejuvenation for every save statue in the game.
While these additions may help reduce the number of deaths a player will experience, it will not hide the fact that the enemies are every bit as relentless and deadly as they were in the first game; Ninjas jump and slash up close, and fire shurikens and bombs from the distance, while Fiends will come in varying sizes, but will all possess claws and teeth to tear away at Ryu.
Every enemy behaves differently, but they all deal heavy damage at quick bursts of speed. While there is room for players to mash buttons mercilessly to deliver deadly combos, later encounters will require precise blocking and dodging, or face death within mere seconds. The bosses in particular possess some very damaging attacks, some of which may prove impossible to avoid altogether.
Ultimately, while a relentless challenge can prove very entertaining for oldschool gamers and action-heavy players, there comes a fine line between delightfully challenging and unfairly annoying; In an effort to outdo the competition with its heart stopping action, Team Ninja and Itagaki may have gone overboard more than once, one example being a boss that will detonate with a huge explosion upon its defeat, giving no prior warning to the player, and is simply a cheap death regardless.
To add to the frustration, players will have to do battle with the imprecise camera, which centers too closely on Ryu and will leave more than a few enemies out of sight, resulting in cheap blows. Finally, while the graphics are generally stable, there are a few occasions of slowdown and in-battle load times when things get hectic, although this may prove understandable when the area is literally filled with hundreds of ninjas at once.
Despite the strong difficulty, Ninja Gaiden II still remains one of the most satisfying action titles in the last few years, and avid players will no doubt continue as often as needed until the enemy patterns are memorized and their combos are perfected. With online leaderboards and replay videos, along with unlockable difficulties and achievements for completing the hidden “Tests of Valor”, the action proves as addicting as it is frustrating.
Fans of ultraviolence and tongue-in-cheek aesthetics should also take note, whether they are a fan of Quentin Tarantino or Takashi Miike. Combine the two, and Ninja Gaiden II proves to be a guilty pleasure that no one should feel guilty about.