Not only do bosses fight with amazing variety and intensity but they also seem to adjust to your attack plans. They’re tough and at times they can feel almost invincible. I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t even touch the game’s first boss on my first encounter with him. I came in with a reasonable amount of health and being the cocky self that I was, decided that I could pummel him into submission by mashing all of the buttons. Huge mistake as he countered my attacks before I could even get halfway through the animations. Next I thought I’d block his moves and then wait for an opening. That was mistake number two as he thought it would be pertinent to grab me and crack my skull on the hardwood floor. Eventually I decided that I would be a cheap bastard and resort to aerial tactics. About six tries later I finally defeated the game’s first boss. I felt humbled but damn did I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.
Dispersing of foes will yield you various colored orbs that are helpful in your quest. Yellow orbs are your currency and can exchanged for a number of items and armaments, blue orbs replenish your health by red orbs replenish your magical ability. These are all important as health is often a premium throughout the course of the game. You can always find health vials throughout the game’s levels but you’ll probably find yourself purchasing a great number of them at the game’s few shops. Since the game is so difficult you’ll probably spent the majority of your funds on them as opposed to amassing up a massive amount of money that you get the opportunity to spend.
Most of your enemies are fun to fight but I had a few problems with the enemy design. In the beginning of the game you’re doing combat with fellow ninjas. Sure some of the designs border into the realm of absurd (there are ninjas with pistols and grenades later on in the game) but at least you have a good frame of reference when it comes to who you’re doing combat with. It doesn’t matter where you’re from; you know that a few good slices to the human body will do that person in. That’s not the problem though, it’s when the game decides to go all crazy and throw dinosaurs and the walking dead at you. It’s a strange design decision that doesn’t necessarily cripple the game but seriously detracts from the overall experience. Why tease me by letting me get comfortable with reality only to toss me a heavy dose of the absurd?
Beautiful, gorgeous, masterful. It’s a few of the words that I’d use to describe the gameplay but those words also apply to the game’s visuals. When the game was revealed at the Microsoft pre-E3 press conference a few years back it was praised for two things: its excessive violence and its lush visuals. After the game’s release, both of these aspects have held up their end of the bargain. I haven’t been so taken aback by a game’s visuals since I booted up
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell for the first time last year. With the exception of Ubisoft’s
Far Cry, I’d say that Ninja Gaiden is the best looking game available on the market. Every single model in the game is just gorgeous and is comparable from what we saw from the combatants in Dead or Alive. I especially adore the massive helping of bump mapping on all of the character’s fabrics. It gives all of the garb an appropriate sheen that makes them even more convincing to the eye. Neat lighting and particle effects give fights that extra oomph that many other games seem to be lacking. While all of these aspects are brilliant they can’t hold a candle to the gorgeous animations. Everything moves so perfectly that all of the fights look like a meticulously planned ballet of death. Some of the environments don’t look as amazing when compared to the models but they’re still competent in the entire scheme of things.
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