Led Slingers

Okay, let’s get this straight here and now, so I don’t have to repeat myself. Itagaki-san did not make this game for you, he made it for me. I like it… and that’s all that matters.

Still, I find it hard to keep my thoughts to myself on such a rare gem of a gaming challenge, so I humbly offer a review you won’t read anywhere else, rest assured. Most of the reviews I’ve read seem to lead the reader to believe that NG2 isn’t really all that great. Unimpressive cinematics, obscure plot, impossible-to-control camera, more of the same in terms of gameplay, et cetera et cetera ecetera. I’d like to debunk these myths as incisively as possible, as I’m not a pansy-ass milktoast American game reviewer who’ll just play a game for a week and talk like he knows what’s up. Well, I am American. I’ve been playing this game for two months now, and I’ve had the Mission Mode content for the past week, so I hope to offer a more informed outlook on a game that really demands that kind of time from you.

I’ll start with the camera. Most people have forgotten the griping over the camera when the first game came out, looking back on Ninja Gaiden with rose colored goggles, but the complaints were the same. One of the most important things you need to develop when playing this game is the understanding that you only need to look at specific enemies at specific times. Just like in the first game, during my first playthrough of NG2, I wasn’t fighting the enemies, I was fighting the camera. Now, all my camera complaints vanished by my second playthrough, as I had learned not only the layout of the game levels, but more importantly, the behavior of the enemies. I know when they’ll attack and from where. Once you get used to the movement of the enemies, you can string together half a dozen different attacks without ever needing to use the right analog stick for looking. Looking at the enemy is largely a waste of time; you need to get right down to killing them. What you look for is essence, so you can chain together Ultimate Attacks like the day is long. In all seriousness, the camera in NG2 is far better than NG or NG:Black, but the players who only play those games once or twice won’t have the experience to appreciate the difference between versions, as there have been massive improvements each time. Now,in NG2, you have a camera that gets in really close to you for the instant kill Obliteration Techniques, so you get a moment to stop and appreciate all that beautiful carnage before Wind Running to your next target of opportunity and slicing whomever it is to ribbons.

One thing I’ll agree with the haters about is the lack of serious star power in the cinematics. For some reason, they fail to jump out and grab you like in the first game. Perhaps I’m just too fond of Kureha, Alma, Doku and Murai, but these new Greater Fiends and the High Priest Dagra Dai just don’t stirke me as interesting as the last group of sumbitches we had to take down. The exception to this rule, for me, are the Black Spider Clan Ninjas- Rasetsu and Genshin are pretty dope by even the highest standards and they bring some seriously tough fighting to the table when you get into Mentor difficulty. Still, by and large, the enemies don’t seem to go well together thematically… and Sonia’s a poor replacement for Rachel, who needs to be incorporated into the DOA franchise if it ever gets to #5. Still, NG2 brings in characters and themes form the original Ninja Gaiden series on the NES (Sonia, Joe Hyabusa’s wounded ass and the Demon Statue) that add a sense of history to an otherwise stand-alone game. If you watch the “Way of the Warrior” documentary in the LIve Marektplace, you’ll notice that Team Ninja had the bosses and enemies together before they had a plot for the game.  Also, NG2 wasn’t overseen by Itagaki as much as the first game; Itagaki spent a lot of his time over the past year and a half personally working on Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the DS. I think this explains why the plot and the enemies are a bit loose.

There’s a word that you can use for the people that tell you the gameplay or challenge hasn’t evolved since NG:Black. I know, I know, you think I’m going to say something vulgar, like pussy or ass or douchebag, but I wouldn’t never do that to you. No, the word that comes to mind is… voyeur. Why? Because these pussy-ass douchebags obviously didn’t play the game, they just watched it and made some lame judgement without ever really feeling it!  You now have weapons that are so well balanced, you can play through the entire game with only one of them and have fun the whole way through- and it grants you an achievement each time you do so. Furthermore, each weapon has analogs to some of the essential Dragon Sword moves, like the Flying Swallow attack and the Izuna Drop. Furthermore, the Obliteration Techniques are not only the bomb to watch, but Ryu is invincible when performing them, so they make great transitions from one kind of attack strategy to another. The gameplay is better balanced, but it’s also a lot harder in many respects. The enemies will lose limbs and heads and just become more savage in their attack, often blowing themselves up when they get to you. Tricks in the old game that could clear rooms quick are now only softening moves- you need to be mindful of the condition the enemy’s in as well as where they are and what they’re doing. Also, the Ninpo attacks are cooler and allow you to specifically target who you want to vaporize while Ryu does his little chant. This game is a NG player’s wet dream in terms of gameplay and it’s got no prospects of drying up anytime soon. My only gripe is that all the humanoid boss fights are essentially defeated using the same technique; wait for the enemy to launch an attack that misses and be close enough to punish the enemy afterward. However, each boss fight also has an Obliteration Techniqe that adds yet another layer of dopeness to the experience. Furthermore, each level of difficulty adds new layouts of smarter and tougher enemies, so you feel like you’re playing a different game on each difficulty.

An entirely new feature that will add a lot to the replayability to the game is the Ninja Cinema. Like Halo 3, you can record your gameplay antics for your friends to ogle over. You can now help a friend with a boss fight by literally showing them how it’s done by a true ninja master. The leaderboards are set up so you can view the pwnage of top players for yourself. This leads to whole “recording” play sessions, where you fight not only for truth and justice and humankind and whatnot, but also for the glory of being able to demonstrate your 1337 badassery to the whole world. With enough time, we’ll have an ocean of killer ninja videos to view on our consoles to keep us motivated and humbled at the same time.

Now, a quick caveat about the downloadable content. Don’t blame Team Ninja for a 10 dollar Mission Mode. Remember, Epic wanted the Gears maps to be free, but Microsoft wouldn’t let them.  To say that NG2 as a 70 dollar game has the same content as NG:Black (a 30 dollar game) doesn’t take into consideration the market that this new game exists in. Okay, now I’ll review the content.

The first DLC item to come out were a series of three costume packs for Ryu.  Like the Horse Armor that came before it, you have a somewhat expensive option for dressing up Ryu and keeping the gamplay fresh. You have actually one costume in each “pack,” with five different color palettes to choose from. The Fiend costume makes you look a lot like a Black Spider Ninja, which can cause you some confusion when you mix it up with a group of those thugs, let me tell you. The Shadow Walker costume is also a dark take on a traditional ninja outfit, but Ryu’s helmet is pretty cool. My favorite, though, is the Biometal outfit, which makes Ryu look like that Terminator that wasn’t Arnold from that Terminator movie that sucked and had Guns N Roses. So now, you can have Ryu run around chopping fools into little pieces while you listen to your custom soundtracks and sing along, “Yooooooooou could be miiiiyiiiiiine!”  All in all, the costume packs are not worth the 200 M$ points apiece… that is, unless you’re going to spend hundreds of hours playing this game until the end of civilization.  If that’s the case, you’ll welcome the variety. Me, I’m okay with getting them and I’d get them again, but I won’t recommend them to anyone else. Because they were made for me and nobody else.

The Mission Mode, at first glance, seems smaller and more basic than the Mission Mode in NG:Black. In Black, you had something like 35 challenges that successively unlocked, requiring you to clear rooms full of bosses and enemies with a very strange assortment of weapons and items to choose from. Now, in Black, you had access to oddball weapons like the Wooden Sword or the Plasma Saber (unlocked by playing successively through the original NG), so it seems like you have some real variety to work with. In the NG2 Mission Mode, you have 24 missions of two different varieties. You have the Karma missions, where you have to kill a set number of enemies/bosses and you’re given all weapons fully leveled up and a particular assortment of items, if any. The other kind of mission is a “Survival” mission; where you have to repel a never-ending series of progressively tougher waves of enemies while using just one weapon in a relatively small battlezone. The survival missions are extremely straighforward- you have eight of them, one for each weapon in the game. The karma missions, however, range from being very short and simple to being long and drawn-out, with multiple landmarks and transitions to them. While the missions from NG:Black seemed to sport more variety, they ultimately had one particular move that you had to use to overcome the challenge. The NG2 missions require a more sophisticated sense of gameplay and rely on transitioning from one technique to the other without being butchered unmerciful. For a 10 dollar download, this is totally worth it. They give you practice for tough boss fights, allow you to hone your skills with particular weapons and give you more to record and brag about online and on the leaderboards. Each mission, once completed, unlocks another difficulty for you to try again on, and once you reach the Mentor difficulty, you’re contemplating ritual suidice to erase your shame. These new missions are a serious conceptual leap from the Black missions and they’re easier to digest than the Hurrcaine Packs from the original Ninja Gaiden.

In closing, I have to say that I wouldn’t recommend this game to most players out there. If you’ve never played the original NG or NG:Black, don’t pick up NG2. You’ll just get your ass handed to you and you won’t have any fun. My recommendation is to go out and get NG:Black or download it from the marketplace. After you’ve played that for like a year, you’ll be ready to move on to NG2. If you just want to buy a sweet looking 3rd person action game and play it casually once or twice, pick op Devil May Cry or Conan.  NG2 really demands a serious commitment to successive play and mastery of each weapon, so you have to find your joy and fun in doing that, otherwise, you’ll be disappointed. And you’ll whine.