Ninja Gaiden 2 Review

BY Soheil Sadeghi | POSTED: 01 August 2008

Weapon of Mass destruction.



Ryu Hayabusa and his adventures bring one meaning to the mind: fast and brutal yet difficult action. Ninja Gaiden games were born on the NES (8 bit Nintendo Entertainment Systems). They introduced cinematic cut-scenes for the first time in that era combined with great music and god-like difficulty. The two-dimensional action game made its debut in a 3D form by appearing on Microsoft's original Xbox console. Everything was true to the roots again: the game was almost difficult to beat for the casual gamers and had great sounds and visuals on the released system. Team Ninja the developer of Ninja Gaiden made two adaptations of the Xbox game, a "Black" and a "Sigma".

The Black was the remake of the Xbox's Ninja Gaiden with some new features with much easier difficulty level serving as the most important one. This new difficulty called "Ninja Dogs" showed the way the developers were considering their game toward the masses that had the wish to play and finish it but had no success due to the frustration they experienced during difficult brutal fights especially facing the bosses. Ninja Gaiden Sigma was the reworked compilation of the original game for the shiny new Playstation 3 and used the power of the new console to give the taste of the original Xbox exclusive for the PS's fans. Sigma ranked as one of the best PS3 titles of the time, but sweetness turned utterly sour by the release of Ninja Gaiden II as an Xbox360 exclusive again.

Ninja Gaiden II is the true sequel to the blockbuster original Xbox hit. Ryu Hayabusa is back once again to fill your screen with blood and this time you will get a lot more of it. The game mechanism is still intact. You wander around the game world killing hordes of monsters and ninjas coming at you. The path of each level is a linear one and you have to follow it from start to end but the variety of hidden items through levels leading you to various upgrades and weapons make you check every little corner of the maps. There are some new weapons available to Ryu this time making his killings gorier. The game is clearly based on the PS3 version of the game. High-definition graphics and great sound effects with fluid character animations come from the engine of the previous game.

The game starts in the United States when a very attractive CIA agent named Sonia is looking for Ryu to inform him of a sinister plot in the works to bring the great demon back to earth once again. Ryu has to fight yet again from that moment on. The story has a little bit more depth than the previous ones but do not expect an Oscar worthy script, it is at best considered as a cheesy B-Movie story, and in this rating, a pinch of fanboyism is also present. Although Ryu is a ninja, he does not use the most important factor of the ninja clans: the stealth action. Ryu likes to smash through doors and get the job done by killing every single moving creature in the scene and put his trademark on each place he visits. You wonder about his trademark? It is body parts and blood all over the place.

Character modeling, enemy variety and level design are top-notch and these surprisingly come from a game built on an old engine. The music is also great and it is much better than before. Graphically NG2 cannot completely go head-to-head with biggest names around, but it is still nonetheless an eye candy. I talked about the level of difficulty in the previous games. Here the game is still difficult but fortunately you will have many levels of difficulty to choose from and you should be advised that the easiest level is still hard but not impossible to beat and this is a good thing which makes more players approach the game.

The famous boss fights are also present in the game; I myself am not so satisfied with the bosses. Some of them can be beaten in thirty seconds while others make you watch the game over screen and bear the burden of waiting for a lengthy load time to try your luck a second or third or …  over and over again. The most notable additions to the game are the finishing moves and the weapon interface. Finishing moves as the name implies allow you to put an end to the enemy's lifeline by a single movement of your weapon. These moves will remind you of the fatalities from Mortal Kombat games but you don't have to push a combination of buttons to perform them. It's just as easy as pressing the Y button on the controller and sitting back to watch how Ryu gracefully kills the opponent in a very interesting fashion (it means body parts splitting, heads flying. Yes! That sort of fashion). A little correction is needed here, you cannot ever sit back in this game, cause killing one enemy means there are tens more on the screen waiting for a bite out of your sweet ninja flesh.

The weapon interface is also one of the new additions. Say goodbye to all those pausing and going to the game menus to use that life-saving potion or equipping your trusty sword; now you can easily use any of your items by pressing the directional buttons on the controller. This way the action becomes crazier than before and you will stay in the non-stop mayhem you are creating. This is indeed a very good improvement over the previous games, because in Ninja Gaiden 2 you have a vast amount of weapons available to you and by correctly using them against enemies, your success rate will improve dramatically.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is easily one of the best action games available only to Xbox owners and it should not be missed by fans of the previous games. Also the more approachable difficulty of this game has made it accessible to a bigger number of players who were not patient enough to play the game after getting killed for the 10th time in 1 minute!