ryu hayabusa |

Publisher: Tecmo Koei

Developer: Team Ninja/Spark Unlimited

Release Date: 2/28/2014

Available On

The Ninja Gaiden series is very beloved by longtime fans. The reboot for Xbox was considered one of the hardest games ever made at the time and required extremely precise skill. Yaiba is a spin-off of the series and takes a kind of comical take on it. This isn’t exactly good. Taking the helm is a studio notorious for terrible games like Legendary. That game was considered the worst game made that year. Spark Unlimited has a lot to live up to, and I’ll cut this short: they don’t live up to it.

The Z stands for zombies. Yes, and you don’t even play as Ryu Hayabusa. In fact, you play as someone he’s killed who gets a robotic arm and wants to seek revenge. He’s accompanied by a busty, intelligent woman who relays your objectives to you. The story is pretty throwaway, but Ninja Gaiden is known for fantastic combat. Yaiba has a good combat system, but the game relies on fighting way too much and doesn’t break up the monotony.

A weak, powerful, and flail attack are all available. The fighting is lightning fast, but sometimes way too fast. Zombies are represented by comedic puns and act just as stupid. Life is acquired by performing a finishing move on a stunned zombie. The gore and finishing moves are cool, but only the first five times. The rest of the game is made up of overly easy parkour that is performed with quick-time events. The boss fights are slightly more interesting, but not by much.

The combat gets hard in the sense that it feels unbalanced. Some enemies can disable your flail arm; sometimes too many are thrown at you, and there’s a really irritating knockback animation that can’t be interrupted. Occasionally, the environment can be interacted with, but I honestly saw the same patterns on the second level. This game could have been so much more, but it turns out to be a frustrating, unbalanced joke.

The graphics also take on a comic book style, which is way different from the traditional Japanese art style seen in the other games in the series. They also look technically unimpressive, with ugly low-res textures. Most fans will be highly disappointed in a game bearing the Ninja Gaiden name and not take it seriously. Maybe a more talented developer could have done better, but what’s here is something that never should have been.

Reviewed On

Xbox 360 Controller for Windows

Publisher: Microsoft

Developer: Tecmo, Team Ninja

Release Date: 6/3/2008

Available Exclusively On

I never beat the first Ninja Gaiden due to its insane difficulty. I wanted to very badly, but no matter how much I tried, I failed in the end. Thankfully, NG2 is a bit more forgiving in the easy setting, but newcomers will never make it past the first level. The game’s story is nothing special and feels like a rehash at best. You have to save the world from the arch fiends taking over and destroying it, so you have to hunt them down one by one. The gameplay is essentially the same as in NG1. You have light and heavy attacks, along with projectile weapons that you can charge. The game has many more weapons and Ninpo scrolls to use. Weapons range from scythes to tonfas, flails, and even staffs. All the weapons are great, and you can upgrade them for up to three levels. After the enemies get too strong for that weapon, you’ll never use it again.

Ninpo magic is useful for enemies but useless for bosses since it doesn’t do any damage. They can be used to cripple enemies and finish them off with a finishing move. There are a lot of new moves in the game, yet they are repeated far too often. You can hack enemies apart into a bunch of pieces and continue to hack them up for overkill bonuses. While you rack up your karma score, you can also buy items from the Masamusa shops, which are generously spread throughout the levels, and the same goes for saving points. I never found the game unfair with checkpoints or saves. Once you die at a boss, you start right there in front of the boss again, so this makes things less frustrating. Another cool element is being able to run on top of the water. You can fight enemies this way as well, which just adds to the awesome ninja feel of the game. I also found the controls less responsive than in the first game and a bit sluggish. You’ll try to hit an enemy, but they’ll back away and hit you, but you’re stuck in an animation that you can’t back out of. This isn’t a huge issue, but it’s still there. Another problem is the camera, which is terrible. Instead of following Ryu, it’ll always stay in one spot, so enemies are coming at you blindly. While this also isn’t a huge issue, it doesn’t make things better.

Throughout each level is a Test of Valor portal, which has you killing as many enemies in the room as you can and rewarding you. These get extremely hard, then super easy. The game also looks amazing. While it’s not Assassin’s Creed or Gears of War amazing, it looks astounding with awesome lighting, high-res textures, realistic physics, and what have you. Another problem is that the game is insanely linear, with literally only one straight path to go on. This makes fighting a bit cramped sometimes, but overall, it isn’t a huge issue. A lot of people will have the biggest problem with the difficulty. While it’s tolerable on easy, you’ll never beat normal or, god forbid, hard.

What makes the game so hard are the limited healing items, some cheap enemies, and the sluggish controls. You never really feel powerful enough, no matter what weapons you get. I really hated this, and it was the most disappointing part of the game. There are also times when the frame rate will chug when there are tons of enemies on screen. This makes those sections even more annoying.

The game has lots of gore, sexy women, cool weapons and magic, a long campaign, leaderboards, and amazing visuals, but it falls down some with sluggish controls, a bad camera, and insane difficulty. If you loved NG1, you’re going to have a blast here, but if the first game made you feel standoffish, then pick NG2 up because you’ll be able to at least beat the game.