Review : Ninja Gaiden II
By andrew • Jun 7th, 2008 • Category: Entertainment
Review: Ninja Gaiden II (XBox 360)
We’ve been pretty excited about this game – it’s been a long time coming. The original Ninja Gaiden games were a trailblazer for this genre and were fantastic fun.
So Ninja Gaiden II is not much different from the original games, which is both good and bad. The bad is that the game doesn’t appear to have taken advantage of the capabilities of the new generation gaming consoles. Graphics, environments and interactions haven’t move along at all and you’d be forgiving for thinking you were playing an extension of the original game.
We got the game just before it was released and it was still pretty buggy, with no updates available yet. Our hero, Ryu Hayabusa, routinely carries on walking when he should have stopped. A number of times I’ve been in the middle of a battle when the next level begins loading, depicting my fallen enemies dead around me. I assume this is being triggered by Ryu moving into a particular area in the game.
And there is unfortunately one more criticism – the camera handling is not the best. In the middle of a frantic fight, it can be really hard to keep your eye on your character. This is a really basic error that should never have been allowed to happen.
But despite all this, the game is immensely playable and great fun. The new weapons are a treat and the fight animations and sounds are better than ever. The early levels are incredibly easy – I don’t think I was killed even once within the first 4 levels. It does get tougher though. There are many more boss battles than in previous incarnations and they vary in difficulty. Some are a real challenge and will really put your skills to the test. Beating a bad boss is incredibly satisfying. Perhaps because we’d all like to beat our bosses in the real world? Or is that just me?
Anyway … if the previous versions of the game hadn’t been so kick-ass, Ninja Gaiden II may have been better rated. The game itself is absolutely one of the best games we’ve seen this year, although it doesn’t have the focus of the earlier versions. With luck, there will be a patch released to fix those annoying bugs.
Go buy the game, you won’t regret it!
The best prices we’ve found for this game are at Amazon. Click to buy Ninja Giaden II (UK)
