Ninja Gaiden 2

Ninja Gaiden 2 : An action adventure game where players control a bondage-clad ninja warrior and get immersed in a world where DD is considered pitiful endowment for a woman and demons and cyborgs work side-by-side to eviscerate you.

Story : Ninja warrior Ryu Hayabusha goes on a revenge/save the world quest against some sort of empire-like evil that attacked his home village and is attempting to revive an ancient lord of hell. Along the way there’s some overly-endowed female character that doesn’t seem to serve much of a purpose in the storyline. I could’ve sworn this was the exact same storyline as the last game. Remember how back in the day, people used to praise Ninja Gaiden games for being trendsetters in video game storytelling? My how times changed.

Someone at Team Ninja has assumed, perhaps safely so, that certain concepts in action/adventure games, such as puzzle-solving and platform jumping and anything that doesn’t involve something dying tend to keep the gamer away from doing more productive things, things like killing and watching things die, and thus we have Ninja Gaiden 2, a game that features very little of the former concepts and an excess of the latter. For the most part, each level is a linear path from point A to point B, and along the way, you will either kill many enemies or be killed many times over. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, the game surprisingly doesn’t get old in the death-dealing field until perhaps near the end, but a little variety wouldn’t hurt either.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is also a very masochistic game, perhaps one of the most masochistic games of all time. The game doesn’t pit you against generic demons that look handicapped like in Devil May Cry games, taking turns to attack you but politely waiting for you to finish your current air combo on their brethren before swinging their arm back to motion that they plan to attack you sometime in the future. No, right off the bat you’re battling skilled ninjas with exploding shurikens. Later the ninjas start sporting machine guns and rocket launchers. Dogs wielding katanas swarm you. Tanks and mechs try to halt your progress. Demons will spawn from hell to attack you. Later the demons get cybernetic implants. It’s like the enemies were designed by a group of college kids trying to prove that ninjas are superior to pirates by conjuring up the most inane enemy concepts to pit against our hero, regardless of how inappropriate they may be to the game’s theme. It also helps that your weapon selection is very diverse, giving players the choice of a hearty variety of ways to impale and dismember your adversaries. Granted, most of them aren’t as useful in the end as say, the dual swords or the claws, but there’s something rather satisfying about pounding armored machines to death with a staff.

That said, how much you enjoy the game will depend on your patience. Enemies have no qualms about attacking you off-camera, and if you’re playing on normal, you are going to die a lot because some enemy learned of the cameras sacred ninja-secret blind spots and will pick you off from a distance. If you’re sadistic, by all means play on normal, but if you’re a little more human as far as your gameplay skills are, then you’re better off playing on the easier difficulty.

Ninja Gaiden 2 is not a great game by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a fun game, and it can be a satisfying experience, watching your ninja warrior topple a legion of mechademons, but your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance of certain aspects, like the enemies being really, really, really cheap. Oh, and your tolerance of graphic imperfections (ironic considering Team Ninja’s pedigree) and uninspired plot.

Pros : It’s currently inspiring a lawsuit between the game’s head designer and Tecmo. If you hate life, you’ll get plenty of chances to kill and be killed.

Cons : For all of the aforementioned cheesiness, it still takes itself far too seriously. Main characters still look like Barbie dolls.

3 1/2 stars