So, if you asked me what my favorite games of all time were, Devil May Cry 3 would be at the top and Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox would come right after. They are truly the two best action games I've ever played. If you asked me 3 days before I played Ninja Gaiden Sigma though, I wouldn't have been able to tell you why. This is because Ninja Gaiden 2 on the 360 mired the reasons I loved the game to begin with since they basically changed the entire play of the game, and not for the better. Then I played Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and it's probably what I'd state as being the current action-game masterpiece of the current generation (We'll see if I still feel that way after I play it for review which I'm doing right now). It was so good that I really thought I should pick up Sigma just to see what they added to the old game I'd played so many times over. Ninja Gaiden 3 is looking marvelous to me at the moment so I thought, screw it, let's do a review for Ninja Gaiden,
Gameplay
+ A Gentleman's Challenge - While this unfortunately doesn't stick around through Sigma in the later chapters, the following is essentially why the original was so incredible and original. Ninja Gaiden asks the player to give their best, not give up, and to find the ninja inside of themselves. I know that sounds REALLY cheesy but stay with me. First, why is it a "Gentleman's Challenge?" When I think of God of War, the enemies just seems like orange cones I just need to run over in my car. They're not specifcally put there to be styled on like Devil May Cry, your goal is just to remove them from your path asap, mash those buttons and destroy them, don't think about it, just do it. Well, that tells me to play as sloppily as I want because it doesn't matter. You don't remember the enemy types for how they fought against you, the cinematic QTE that let you kill them instantly is probably what you remember most. Well, while you can treat Ninja Gaiden like that, you'll probably make a really hard time out of it for yourself. The game starts off placing one enemy in front of you, you kill him no problem. You may have thought it was cool that he blocked your attack a couple times but that didn't stop you. Then you get two at once directly after. It's a bit more hectic but you're thinking that this fast paced battle between the two is what it's all about, still manageable and pretty cool. The game attacks you in pair a few more times and you realize you're getting awfully low on health and you only have a limited way to recover that health. Then they toss three ninjas at you and you're getting your butt handed to you because you're just trying to kill as fast as you can. It's at this point you need to realize you don't play Ninja Gaiden like some meager beat-'em-up. These enemies don't want to die, they want to live and they're not afraid of standing up to you at all. They don't want to give you breathing room and time to think because they'll die if they do.
Now, don't get me wrong, they're are programmed with some form of restraint, you never truly get mobbed and they usually focus on only tossing a max of three enemies at a time your way. What Ninja Gaiden does is it puts you in a place where you need to think defensively first and how you can turn those conditions you're up against back at your challengers. You need to block and look for openings. You can't get greedy with your attacks because they'll get you from behind. Knowing your combos allows you to put vulnerability at a minimum while you maximize the efficiency of the damage you deal. Now crank up the speed on that thought process and you're playing a "Gentleman's Challenge." Dirty tricks are frowned upon and clean precise play is rewarded. It's essentially going at the same pace as Devil May Cry but it's more about defense and survival over creative aggression and reflexes.
So then you make it to the boss, and you die, and die, and die. It's only the first level and you just can't do it! Well FUCK that! Ninja's don't give up and they don't fail. They look inside, gather themselves and the beat the shit out of what stands in the way of their success. This happens often in NG. I guarantee you will get pounded to death a lot of times on your first play through the game. You need to pick yourself up, find the ninja in you and succeed. To give up is a shame but to succeed is to feel unbeatable, invincible, empowered, and beyond whoever steps in your path. THAT is Ninja Gaiden. After you get through that, you're ready to play what the game has to offer. I also have to add that because of this challenge and empowerment of the player, as well as Ryu's lack of dialogue and emotion, the barrier of stepping into the shoes of a ninja disappears. You feel like beating this game is a task only someone as determined and skilled as you can hope to attain. To me, this is the ultimate motivation you can give to a player. And that's probably why I beat this game 10-15 times in a row without touching another game way back when. There's nothing like the challenge this game provides and there still isn't. Ninja Gaiden is a truly unique game and it should not be ignored by anyone truly invested in what games have to offer.
+ Exploration - Another aspect of Ninja Gaiden that helps it stand apart from other games in the genre is how much exploration there really is to do. It's a nice fifty-fifty split between combat and running around discovering things and climbing about. It gives you the time to become a little more intimate with the game in front of you and ties you to the experience.
= Weapon Diversity - There are eight weapons or so available for use ranging from small to large, quick to slow, they pretty much have their own uses. It's probably not the most fleshed out system simply because they wanted you to be able to use a weapon that fits your style, but they also want certain weapons utilized for specific sections of the game although it isn't clear most of the time. Overall, it's not a very large problem but it could've been fleshed out a bit in this updated version more than it was. But the weapons themselves are very cool with very unique designs. It'd be hard not to find one or even a couple that fit you and your style of play.
I don't know what the hell they were really trying to do with the water sections of the game, they probably should've left them alone. Originally, you could skillfully tap the jump button in a rhythm to run on water, it wasn't difficult by any means. You also had a breath gauge when you dove under water to add some pressure to certain sections of the game that had puzzles or mazes under water. Well, now if you want to walk on water you can just hold any direction on the stick when you hit the surface and Ryu will automatically run and do whatever you want, easy as can be. They also give you an oxygen tank so now you can breathe indefinitely under water. Well, we got automatic water running because in chapter thirteen there are these flying sentry bots that shoot missiles at you so now you can just run at them and kill 'em without frustration (as if they were in the first place). There's also one more way they utilize the running but I'll talk about that in a sec. And then, they removed a lot of the water puzzles/mazes that relied on the breath gauge so now they made the addition of an oxygen tank almost without reason... Very confusing.
They also rearranged levels to flow in a more straightforward fashion so that the player doesn't get lost or end up not knowing what to do. It backfires if you have played the original before. There's a point where you're gaining entry to a military base and you have to get a bow that shoots stronger and farther than the one you have now. Originally, you'd go to where you think you're supposed to be at, find out you need an item, someone shoots you from up in a building, you aim the bow to shoot them back, and then you see a bow on the wall in room the enemy shot at you from. You also happened to a new key that you haven't used yet so you're supposed to find your way to that room and switch out your bow for the upgraded one. Then you look out the window there and you see a switch in a tower across the way, above the gate you need to open. You shoot an arrow to hit the switch, you proceed. In Sigma, you just fight some guys and a boss that's an exact copy of Chapter 3's, which is insanely out of place by the way, and you get the bow. Then the gate opens for you and you have no idea what you have this new key for... I did it in the original order and became extremely confused why the upgraded bow wasn't there and then I wondered what the point of coming to this location was. I mean, you really don't have to use it for anything anymore and it added to the exploration aspect beforehand so they swapped exploration for a ham-fisted battle against one of the worst bosses in the game...
The original game had superb challenge which really lied with their collection of enemy types. It slowly introduced you to enemies with varying behaviors and modified them into newer, more challenging types as the game when on. When it wanted to impose a challenge to the player late in the game, it'd see how you could deal with four enemies at once of an advanced type. Bosses were fine before too. You were able to take a few hits and still be alright. Sometimes they'd get you with a very damaging attack but it wouldn't necessarily be the end. Well they must've wanted to inject their game with a little juice from Ninja Gaiden 2 because new enemy types were introduced in the oddest of places and they were kick-you-in-the-teeth hard. I mean, it's hard to deal with a spike in difficulty so large, so fast. The majority of the new enemies were just terrible designs in the first place. Maybe they thought they needed a new enemy for the water sections now that you can run more easily on water. BAD IDEA! Those new mermen enemies were garbage. They wanted to be under water, but on top of the water, and if you hit them once, they'd fall under water but if you tried to go into the water, they do an ultra damaging attack to you that you can barely dodge because you still aren't extremely mobile on water - it was a cluster****. They showed up the one time and then never again. WHY WERE THEY THERE? The good new enemy type however, the purple cat-ladies that you also fight only once, were pretty good. They'd toss about five to six of them at you and they were designed with mob mentality so they just charged you but they didn't really block. They provided a good change of pace to the usual enemy types where it was more about offensive juggling as opposed to staying defensive.
the bosses were made to deal more damage this time around, some even got new attacks designed to take more health from you. I essentially couldn't beat the game. Yeah, that's me, the action game extroadinaire, couldn't beat the game on Normal.I got to the very final chapter and I couldn't beat it because I had no items and the final boss could clear my entire health bar in a few hits... If I recall correctly, on the chapter before, there was a shop that existed where you could buy items and upgrade weapons before you fought the final boss. At least it would make sense that it would be there since you should have gotten a TON of souls to use at the shop by the time you get to it. Well, it's not there in Sigma. I had to beat the game without items and my currency was useless to me. So I had to take advantage of their last flaw to speak of -
Every third death you incur, the game asks if you'd like to give up the path of the ninja. That's code for, "So we noticed you died another three times. Would you like to step down to easy mode?" First off, this is annoying as hell when you just want to continue and there's no way to disable it. Second, it makes you feel TERRIBLE if you select yes (of which it asks you to confirm this decision three times before you go through with it). Ayane shows up over your body and basically talks about how she thought you could do this mission but she was wrong. Then she reluctantly claims that she'll be there to support you the rest of the way. I didn't stay in "ninja dog" mode long enough to find out specifically what happens in length but the final boss seemed to be balanced the same way as he was in the original xbox version. You know, beatable with tactics and no items.
Yeah, so at about the halfway mark, Ninja Gaiden Sigma loses the luster of the original game and just becomes an infuriating and inane experience.
- Rachel's Playable - I hate this woman. I hate the reasons for her existence, I hate the style of her weapon, I can't stand her design, she doesn't have a strong personality, and none of her sections add to the game in any meaningful way. It's cool that they fleshed out her move-set with some really spectacular attacks and combos but she was a total waste of time and even on occasion interrupted some very good exploration you accomplish with Ryu originally. She also put a lot of length into the game that absolutely wasn't needed. Without her, the first playthrough of the game might take you like 15-20 hours. With her, you kinda hope that the game's going to end sometime sooner rather than later.
+ Mission Mode - Anytime you get an action game with a mode like this, it's a plus. Sigma's Mission Mode has a huge set of challenges for you to accomplish where they toss different enemy types and quantities at you in varying locations. There are fifty-one missions with every five missions belonging to a themed set. There are also leaderboards where you can compare your score to others for specific missions (there's also a leaderboard for your scores in story mode).
- Now Loading Critique..... - I installed the game to the hard drive and I still have my game interrupted by last second loads. Anytime you're playing a game and your game freezes to load in the middle of what you're doing, that's unacceptable. This never occurred in other versions of the game.
- Needs Autosave - Let's say you made it to chapter 6 and the last you saved was in chapter 3. You die and go to the game over screen. It asks if you'd like to continue and you say yes. It won't restart where you died or even at the beginning of the chapter you're currently on, it just reloads your last save. Pretty big problem for a game such as this. I also find it ridiculous that it'll save how many times you died so that it's able to offer you a lower difficulty though. It just won't put you back at a reasonable point to try again because it doesn't save that particular data. SILLY!
- Glitches - Chapter thirteen was a nightmare for me. The camera got stuck at one point and prevented my progress in a level (I also hadn't run into a save point for the entire level and I had just got done with the mermen jerks. I REALLY didn't want to do all that over again and I was placed out of the map as I was swimming through a tunnel. I got lucky though because it put me in the animation for running on water and I was able to bypass the entire tunnel as well as regain oxygen. Then it put me back in the game. Still, glitches, man...
Story & Presentation
- Don't Play Sigma For Story - There almost isn't one here. I mean, if someone wanted me to explain to them what was going on in any given moment in the game, I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you much. Sigma's even worse as it excludes the intro cinematic for starting a new game which essentially serves the entire purpose of setting the stage for the game so they REALLY dropped the ball there. To sum up, you're Ryu Hayabusa, someone stole a sword you're clan was keeping out of evil hands, Ayane from Dead or Alive pops up from a neighboring clan and wants to aid you, you run into Rachel whose sister has become a powerful fiend-monster, and then anymore is a spoiler. You're literally like 2-3 plot points away from the end after my summary. Don't play for story, play for the overall mood and experience.
= Everything Else Looks Slap-dashed - It's nothing terrible but it just seems that all the menus and text weren't given much thought and were kind of tossed together as fast as they could so that they could get on with the game. Kind of made me feel like I was playing a rip-off at times.
Audio & Visuals
= Reminds Me of Mortal Kombat - Did you ever buy the soundtrack to the 90's movie? If you did, you'll feel like you're going through a time-warp when you hear the soundtrack here. Except it just lacks anything special to make it stand out at any given time. It's kind of sad when a game can't utilize its soundtrack to highlight sections of the game to really stick the game's special moments to the inside of a gamer's mind. That's why I recommend using your own music. Then you'll always remember your time with Ninja Gaiden, assuming they're times you'll want to remember... If not though, no worries. It's never so bad that you just want it to stop. At its worst, it just fades into the background and you never notice it had a soundtrack in the first place.
= Now With More Ayane! - Well the voicing was never a selling point for Ninja Gaiden, probably because story was never focused on to begin with, but it's decent enough to get the job done without turning off the player from the characters. And for whatever reason they came up with, Ayane's voice is now everywhere, from tutorial menus to narration. I guess they wanted to give her more involvement in the game, which is perfectly fine. If anything, it's a good thing! But I'm not sure that it really added all that much, so...
+ Improved Visuals - While it may not stand up to modern era games, it really does bring the original's visuals to today's standards and some of it stands out in a beautiful way. Like in the tutorial level, cherry blossoms are falling from the trees while you're outside. It was such a nice feeling! We're also looking at improved textures, models have been redone with more polygons, and lastly, cutscenes have at least been reformatted to fit a widescreen television. It is a very attractive game in its own right.
- Jiggle Physics - They're everywhere now. They weren't before. Before, we had realistic bounce given what the characters with breasts were wearing. Now, breasts jiggle almost about as crazily as they do in Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. It REALLY takes you out of the experience and it felt out of place.
Should You Buy?
Rent it. You should go through at least half the game to understand what Ninja Gaiden was eight years ago and how it's still relevant even today. I don't blame you for wanting to stop part way through though. Sigma doesn't do the original much justice and I'm happy that I still own the original game. Ninja Gaiden Sigma is convenient though and now people who never had Xbox's can play through a bit of what was such a great game.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma was developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo for the PS3. Played slightly over 10 hours to completion with a switch from normal difficulty to ninja dog on the final chapter due to terrible level re/design.
