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 Ninja Gaiden II

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god of destiny
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PostSubject: Ninja Gaiden II   Ninja Gaiden II Icon_minitimeWed Jun 04, 2008 5:00 am

Metachronos overall score = 8.5 / 10

Positive Ninja Gaiden II Good_brutal_s Ninja Gaiden II Good_terrific-animation_s Ninja Gaiden II Good_outstanding_gameplay_s Ninja Gaiden II Good_sharp_control_s
- Still one of the best brutal games ever madewith plenty of superb action
- Finishing moves are fun to perform and awesome to behold
- Cutscenes are awesome
- Same with the weapons

Negative Ninja Gaiden II Bad_pun_difficult_s Ninja Gaiden II Bad_camera_s
- Everything looks great, except for the environments
- Frustrating camera
- Inconsistent level of difficulty sometimes crosses the line into cheap territory
- It's kinda disappointing

Ninja Gaiden II is a great game and a maddening one. In some respects, it improves upon the core Ninja Gaiden gameplay to exhilarating effect. It's flashier and it's bloodier, and when those enhancements are in full force, the game offers the best action available on the platform. You de-limb werewolves and slice up legions of rival ninjas and demons, and pulling off these moves produces a gory, showy explosion of particles and body parts. And, as any fan of its Xbox and PlayStation 3 predecessors should expect, it's incredibly difficult, which makes a successful confrontation still one of the most rewarding moments in all of action gaming.

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Team Ninja also went back and fixed a few of the frustrating issues from the previous entry. For example, should you lose a boss battle (and you'll do it frequently), you can restart most of them at the beginning of the encounter, rather than having to revisit 10 minutes of lead-in gameplay. There are more save points, which also replenish your health, and your health will replenish on its own after action sequences. But for every step forward, the game takes an infuriating step back. It isn't as slickly paced as its precursors, and it isn't the visual leap forward that Ninja Gaiden was. Most noticeably, the camera has taken a turn for the worse, seemingly more interested in flaunting the game's flamboyant flurries of steel and black spandex than in being functional. Ninja Gaiden was hard, but it was rarely cheap; when you died, you knew it was because you needed to perform better. In Ninja Gaiden II, the badly implemented camera and other factors (more on this later) can lead to trial-and-error repetition that relies more on dumb luck than on your controller-wielding prowess. Sure, this sequel is a fantastic game, but it isn't as good as the game that reintroduced the franchise. The core action is both familiar and remarkably intense. As returning hero Ryu Hyabusa, you hack, slash, and decapitate your way through hordes of nasty-looking foes, many of which are returning enemies from the Xbox original. What makes it so satisfying is how fast and fierce these encounters are. Using just two attack buttons and a jump button, and pulling a trigger to block, you can execute a flurry of slashes, ground-pounds, and high-flying feats with ease. And it looks fantastic in motion. The particle-heavy, blood-spattering special effects and silky animations will make your jaw drop, thanks to the exciting spectacle they create. Each battle keeps you focused and engaged, and the speedier your thumb waggles, the more satisfying and explosive the resulting acrobatics are.

Ninja Gaiden II Ninja-gaiden-2-20070911100222820_640w

In fact, the standard combat is even better than before, thanks to a few violent touches that take the series to new levels of adrenaline-pumping ferocity. Humanoid combatants routinely lose limbs at the mercy of your steely weapons, but rather than collapsing in a pool of spurting blood, they just get angrier. Amazingly, a werewolf with one arm is more dangerous than one with both limbs intact, but this fact is nicely offset by the possibility of a finishing move. If you get close to a de-limbed demon and hit Y, the camera will move in close and showcase a fantastically over-the-top fatality, complete with flying viscera and the ghastly sounds of spurting blood and squashed tissue. Bosses are more frequent now and vary in terms of quality and challenge. Some of them are maddeningly difficult, such as dual armadillos that spew fiery rocks toward you. Others, like a blood-dripping, sword-yielding she-fiend, hit all the right notes. And one of them, a giant worm that speeds through subterranean caverns, will get stuck in walls due to a glitch and is easily defeated by slashing at its head while it tries to extricate itself. You can slash and bash using some of the old weapons, including the dragon sword and the lunar staff, but you may want to go into these battles with some of the newer additions such as the blade tonfas, which deliver some excellent combo moves and are fun to wield.

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It's disappointing that the same amount of attention wasn't given to other levels, or to environmental design in general. Devil May Cry 4, Ninja Gaiden II's closest competitor, showcases sumptuous backgrounds that stand in beautiful relief to its furious action. By contrast, Ninja Gaiden II's environments are generally bland and utilitarian, such as the ugly and repetitive green caves that one of the previously mentioned bosses calls home. Some trips back to Hyabusa Village provide some needed narrative connections to the previous game, but it looks barely better than it did before. As far as its environments are concerned, Ninja Gaiden II does not feature the technical prowess you would expect from a game in 2008. It also suffers from some occasional hits to its normally smooth frame rate, which was simply never an issue in the past. Another familiar visual glitch is a returning one: Splotches of blood and goo still stick to the invisible walls, and because there's so much gore, this flaw sticks out all the more. By now, this sort of thing should have been addressed. By contrast, the vivid special effects, excellent enemy design, and fluid animations are fantastic, and they make it easy to notice that the rest of the visual design is decidedly behind the curve.

Ninja Gaiden II Ng2_6289_screen

The cutscenes are great as well, if a bit cheesy, and they give some flair to Ninja Gaiden II's throwaway story. Not that it's bad, but the tale's just an excuse to pit you against a series of greater fiends, and to introduce you to the game's femme fatale, Sonia. She's exactly what a Ninja Gaiden fan would expect: blond, beautiful, and buxom. So buxom, in fact, that you will marvel at how she manages to move at all without suffering from back pain, and at how much breast physics have evolved over the years. Ryu's archenemy Elizebet is just as curvy, and a scene that features blood dripping from her bare bosom is wild, intense, and disturbing. You probably won't get invested in any of these characters, but the cutscenes are good enough to look forward to, and the finale may very well knock your socks off. Leaderboards and unlockable, masochistic difficulty levels provide some replay value. You can also record sections of gameplay and upload them for other players to watch, but though this feature is neat, it isn't implemented very well. You're stuck recording entire swaths of gameplay, and the frame rate takes a bit of a hit when you turn the option on. But it's a feature that, like its amped-up combat, will please the game's core audience. If you're one of those folks, you'll enjoy what this sequel offers. Its various inconsistencies and visual deficits are obvious, but the fluid, heady action makes Ninja Gaiden II a great game.

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PostSubject: Re: Ninja Gaiden II   Ninja Gaiden II Icon_minitimeFri Jun 06, 2008 12:22 am

awsome just awsome Wink
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god of destiny
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PostSubject: Re: Ninja Gaiden II   Ninja Gaiden II Icon_minitimeFri Jun 06, 2008 11:19 am

ninja gaiden games are very hard though
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PostSubject: Re: Ninja Gaiden II   Ninja Gaiden II Icon_minitimeWed Jun 11, 2008 5:09 am

indeed
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