Ryu Hayabusa, my lord and savior, has yet to let me down. Indeed, my fanboyish love for the most badass of badasses knows few, if any, bounds. With the US release of Ninja Gaiden II just under two weeks away, I'm sitting with my legs clenched so tight I might induce a coma.
Writing this, my very first blog post, is a challenge. Not because I have yet to figure out how the buttons work, but because Ninja Gaiden is my favorite game ever. I love it, I find no fault with it, and I lament hearing from my customers at GameStop that it's "too hard" or something. Perfectly reasonable complaints, but I simply cannot allow my ears to hear them. Sure, I'm waiting for MGS4 as well, and Fallout 3, but Ninja Gaiden is unrivaled.
So how then do you edit perfection? When I first opened my copy on March 4th, 2004, I didn't think it could happen. Then the Hurricane Packs hit (ironically right as a series of hurricanes battered my home state of Florida), then a year later, Ninja Gaiden Black was released, and on July 3rd, 2007, Ninja Gaiden Sigma prompted me to buy a PS3. I fell in love with it every time all over again. It never mattered that I memorized the scarab locations, or that I had to be such a perfectionist that I refused to save my progress if I died while fighting a boss and wasted a Talisman of Rebirth- I love this damn game.
This is also challenging because while Ninja Gaiden isn't the most original game out there, it's a high-class first attempt. Yes, it's been through several iterations, but they've always been the same game, and I have little to ride on as far as genuinely new suggestions for the genre. Many games inspire other games, and I'm sure Ninja Gaiden is no exception, but if I'm changing this, I'm not going to lower this down the Devil May Cry's mash-happy mayhem or God of War's button-press events (Not that I don't enjoy both of those games as well, but come on- they're not Ryu).

(What really kills me about taking on the project of writing this is that I'm taking my favorite game that I refuse to admit is anything but flawless and analyzing, correcting, and fixing the flaws that I see. By the end of this I'll hate myself because I won't be able to look at the game the same way again, knowing no longer of its perfection, but of the possibilities that never happened. I'll regret my new point of view, but hopefully Ninja Gaiden II will make me forget about it.)

So to improve it, I'm going to do 3 things:
1. I will take Tomonobu Itagaki's (and Yosuke Hayashi's) approach of doing fine-tweaking, the stuff the hardcore players will love or hate and the everyday ninja gamer will wonder what the hell difference it makes (largely leaving out anything already changed for Ninja Gaiden II),
2. I will recount the various suggestions left by gamers since its inception that have been neither implemented nor heard (the really obvious big changes),
and
3. I will posit my ideas for actual change, the likes of which will change the very gameplay itself, and the likes of which will cause me to banish myself to a dark corner and brood over my heresy.

Let's get started!

SECTION I: Tweaks, Adjustments, Edits, and Modifications.

-Speed. When Ninja Gaiden Black was released, Itagaki had mentioned in some interview somewhere that he had tweaked the speed to 133% of normal. The game felt faster, and it was already quite the racehorse. Was it fast enough? For reasons I'll cover in section 3, no- no it was not. I'd suggest at least another 30% speedhike.

-Moves. Why remove the Hurricane Pack's Intercept move? By blocking as soon as you were struck, you regained balance and knocked the enemy off-balance and out-of-combo. This was removed from Ninja Gaiden Black. Did it make it too easy? Arguably yes- the solution would be to limit the moves it actually works on. What about other techniques? The Guillotine Throw and the fabled Flying Swallow both shared the same command, and this was corrected. But what about the Nunchaku-class moves Wide Heavens and Runaway Lightning? One command is "XY" and the other is "X Y." Can you tell the difference? Most players don't even realize the move exists. Change the command- add a "forward" in between the X and Y for Runaway Lightning.
To their credit, the team has changed the "Interact" button from the X button (used for attacking) to the Right Bumper. Accidentally walking through a door mid-fight was infuriating. And don't make us play as Rachel, either. Yes, she has Roman Bellic's favorite nouns attached to her chest, but that doesn't mean I need to stop being a ninja to make her run around like a constipated stripper.
Oh, and make the Izuna Drop go higher. It's his signature move- let's make it look more awesome.

-Enemies. We have a hell of a lot of variety, but why are they so basic? Generic Ninja & variants, Generic Soldier & variants, Generic Fiend & variants, Generic Large Fiend & variants... I loved what Team Ninja did for the Hurricane Packs and Ninja Gaiden Black. They modified and created new enemies out of the existing ones. We had soldiers, then we had robot soldiers with cool new moves to kill Ryu. They saw that Ryu's Flying Swallow technique was very powerful and cool, so they made enemies with that move. Or how about that speech about Halo 2 being "Halo 1 being chased by ninjas on fire," which gave rise to flaming ninjas? The best changes came in Sigma.



...



I would have loved to have seen this board meeting. "You know what the problem with Masakado is?" "He's not too difficult, is he? His only default backup is a limited collection of Ninja Magi..." "No it's just that... well... He's not on fire." "...My GOD. You're right! LET'S FIX THIS!"
Now seriously, why the hell did they do this? It didn't change his character in the slightest. It just made the fight that much more intense. On top of this, Masakado began regularly popping up as a standard enemy off of his horse, which is something more of the bosses should do, like Murai (or Murai-styled Ninjas) or Gamov or Dynamo.

SECTION II: Suggestions, Ideas, and Wishlist.

-Destructible environments. The back of the Ninja Gaiden Sigma box boasts, "Vengeance. Carnage. Destruction. Like Never Before." Despite the little nerdgasm that goes off when I think about it, that's not entirely true. This is the third iteration of the game. In NG2, we're getting destructible enemies who will be utterly decimated in the wake of Ryu's awesome new moves, but the environments are largely untouched, save for blood and limbs. Picture this: You flip toward an enemy, you do a Guillotine Throw, and he flies into a fruit stand and crumbles it. Or he flies through a window. Or through a weak wall. Why the hell not? Let us carve our names into walls a la Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Let us toss giants into towers and watch a newly-designed physics engine go at it. Let us do that sweet-as-all-hell sideways Izuna Drop from DOA4.

-Multiplayer. This is a no-brainer. The Doppelganger fiend from Ninja Gaiden Black proved that Ryu-vs.-Ryu combat would be AWESOME. But why stop there? Why not a multiplayer mode where one player is Ryu and the other 9 players are MSAT soldiers trying to take him out? What about co-op? Guillotine Throw some poor SOB into a buddy's flying swallow, maybe? People want it. In a recent issue of Game Informer, Itagaki stated in an interview that he and his team put together a 4-player test run, but felt it needed a lot of work, but it would be something he'd "look into." Come on, dude. It's a better idea than a freaking WWII game (unless this game is about Ninjas).

-Story, Depth, and Customizability. The story is lacking. The plot in 2 looks interesting at this stage, but nobody's playing this for the plot. One of the reasons the plot didn't matter was because Ryu had less than 20 lines of dialogue in the entirety of Ninja Gaiden 1. Now he's a talker in all of the trailers, but everything he says is something about him killing whomever he's talking to, which I have no problem with, but dude- shut up. Not to put Voice Actor Justin Gross out of a job, but Ryu doesn't really need to say anything. Just a simple stare-down followed by a severe beating is more than enough.
The plot, and thus the non-combat elements of the game, were pretty thin. Yes, you could collect scarabs and keys, but everything was practically given to you. Not that it shouldn't be- nobody wants to dwell on the bullcrap in an action game. The 3 best levels of Ninja Gaiden 1 are the first 3- they're all original, self-contained, linear-but-not-limiting, focused-without-being-constricting, entertaining levels. Yeah there's a bit of backtracking, but that's better than having a hub city that you won't actually use all that much. This isn't GTA; we don't need a home base.
Customizability isn't a large factor without multiplayer, but it would be nice for players to differentiate their Ninjas a little more. The new costumes are always welcome, but why not more colors and more quirks, such as a removable facemask so we can stare at Ryu's fine features? In all sincerity, I simply want to look cool in the game, and though Ryu does, this sort of mechanic has become too common to the point where we take it for granted. Do we need customization in GTA? Rainbow Six? Halo? Not really, but we have it and we love it. So keep it coming, yeah?



SECTION III: The Heresy of Change, Evolution, and Unity.

There are two main components to this section: Identifying and playing on the game's largest untapped strengths, and then identifying what key features and ideas can be stolen or adapted from other games to make this experience as good as it can be. This is where the game evolves from what it is to what I want it to be.

-Immersion. If you've ever watched the cutscenes in Ninja Gaiden versus the cutscenes in rival action titles like Devil May Cry, God of War, etc., you might notice something- Ninja Gaiden's cutscenes, while beautiful, are pretty damn boring. Ryu never actually does a whole lot. Sure, a few slashes here and there, and at one point he crashes a train, but Dante and Kratos are regular mo-cap masters (I blame Reuben Langdon), or at least representatives of doing cool things. So why is this? Well, the combat in Ninja Gaiden is so intense and movement-filled that any fight can look like a serious, well-planned movie-style clash. But Ryu never does anything in the cutscenes, because all of the action is in the player's hands. So this begs the question, "Why have cutscenes?" Poof. Gone. Now we have a game that lets the player have total control 100% of the time, like Half-Life, Assassin's Creed, and other games with this narrative style. He doesn't need to be perfectly still- he can still draw his sword menacingly, or like Lost Planet, he can have exclusive animations for when things get awesome. I apologize for the lack of a screenshot, but the first level in Lost Planet has you walking into a warehouse. Rather than jump to a cutscene to let you know sh*t's going to hit the fan, a giant-ass Akrid crashes through the ceiling and rains glass shards and debris over Wayne, who braces against the impact- in real time. The whole experience is stunning- you never let go of the damn controller, and because of that, you almost feel yourself bracing, too.
So Ryu occasionally needs to fling himself off of a crashing blimp and ride powerlines into a city- don't make the player watch, let us leap off the blimp (with some debris and explosions to "persuade" our direction), and let us jump at those powerlines and slide high-speed into town.
To build on this a little further, don't necessarily remove the shop system, but remove the money-based weapon-smithing. Let the weapons improve by use rather than by funds. Granted, I do appreciate how quick it is to improve weapons when you get them as not all of them are so much fun to use until higher levels, but if everything is real-time, smithing becomes unrealistic, unless we're dealing with magic weapon improvements (like the item from Ninja Gaiden Black/Sigma, "Jewel of the Spirit Smith," that instantly boosted a weapon's level by 1).
The only thing that should cut the player's control would be pausing, and changing levels. In Ninja Gaiden II, Ryu jets all over the world, apparently. Naturally we don't want Ninja Gaiden to turn into Oblivion; we need focus and linearity, so make Ayane or that new blonde CIA Agent chick pick him up in a helicopter and fly away, fading to black and re-emerging right into the hot zone of a new level.

-Influence. There is only one other action game that I believe truly deserves to stand next to Ninja Gaiden, but due to its discontinuation, it has resigned to the forgotten halls where games in desperate need of follow-ups go. That game is Zone of the Enders, specifically ZOE: The 2nd Runner (it broke my heart when I read that Itagaki had turned down an offer by Hideo Kojima to develop ZOE3). The first one was a good start, but the sequel threw the formula into the upper echelons of mind-blowing. How did it do this?

Euphoria.


Can you tell what's going on here? Neither can I, but it's damn beautiful.

No other action game really gets you so far into the zone that you actually forget you're playing a game. Between the movement, targeting, and general flow of the game, you could essentially play with your eyes closed. This is not to say the game is easy (when the game launched in March of 2003, people lamented the Medium difficulty setting), but rather that the player can easily fall into such a well-developed groove that you have total control over everything going on at once. This is why my very first point, speed, was so crucial. ZOE2 was lightning-fast, but by learning the controls, you could literally outpace the game itself- the player controlled everything. It didn't matter how fast the enemies were, how many there were, what they were shooting, what direction, or anything- the player had total control.
For Ninja Gaiden to achieve this, it needs several things:
1. An improved targeting and movement system that can effectively eliminate off-screen hits and wonky camera functionality. ZOE2 has a move called the Zero Shift, wherein the player would instantly teleport to the targeted enemy. Moreover, direction was of negligible importance in ZOE, so it didn't really matter that the camera couldn't keep up and jumped around like nuts. Ninja Gaiden has the Wind Run move, which is an auto-lockon jump that either heads toward the nearest enemy or wall.
Here's how I make this work: The right trigger resets the camera behind Ryu, and his attacks auto-target. Since now the second analog stick controls the orbiting camera (increase the speed of this while we're at it, just to be safe), change the right trigger to a dedicated enemy/camera lock-on. This way, the camera won't jump unless the player tells it to, and when they do, all actions will be focused on that enemy. This won't be Devil May Cry's lockon system, but rather just a camera-focus on the most dangerous, closest, last-attacked, or closest to the direction Ryu is facing enemy.

2. Wider and farther movement. Ryu's roll technique, Reverse Wind, moves him about 5 feet. Ninja Gaiden II replaces this with a dash, but it still moves just a short distance. We don't want this technique to replace running or standard movement, but increase its range, or give us the ability to change its direction so that we can not only roll away from an enemy, but we can roll around to their backside. With the current setup, a lot of players roll in a V-shape to surprise their foe. Combine this with the Right Trigger lockon for a farther dash to close distance. Make Ryu run faster. Make him stay on walls longer.
On the subject of walls- Prior to the game's initial release, wall--running was originally mapped so that simply running into a wall would cause you to run up it, or along it. This was changed so that you must now jump into the wall. When Ninja Gaiden Sigma came out, the under-utilized water-running was made much easier (for badass water-surface fights), but if you ran into a wall while water-running, you would run up it or along it. It caused no problems and never accidentally got in the way. It's hard to imagine that a player would die or take damage because they accidentally ran up or along a wall- perhaps just limit it so that you can't block-dash up a wall? This idea, as much as I love it, is still the subject of debate, but I say it goes in. Have an option to turn it back to jumping at a wall if it becomes too much of a nuisance.

-Inspiration. This last one, while not a new feature to many gamers, is something people haven't really asked for with regards to Ninja Gaiden. Prior to my writing this, I hardly gave it a second thought, but with all the changes I want to bring about, this needs to happen.
I'm talking about a Level Editor.
Not a puny Halo 3 Forge knockoff, and nothing as ridiculous as Unreal Ed. (which I'm slowly, slowly learning), but something a little more in line with Far Cry: Instincts' editor. Give us an area, let us adjust the height and depth and composition of the terrain, then let us add obstacles and lock them together so they fit properly, then let us add enemies and starting points, etc.
I'm imagining everything from a full-on single-player adrenaline-fueled fight level complete with scripted events like explosions to a giant boss arena to multiplayer deathmatch levels (with NPC enemies tossed in for good measure). Combine this with the new destructible environments and we'll have some of the most action-packed battles since ZOE2.

***

Sadly, Itagaki's recent decree that Ninja Gaiden II would be the last in the series broke my freaking heart. Then again, he did say that about Dead Or Alive 4 before announcing his intention to make DOA5, but it still felt like an APFSDS core through my head.
I just wish that someday I see a game that realizes my dreams of perfect action, but for now I'll just hope that he was lying.

And I'll pray that Kojima will finally get to making ZOE3.

-Jynx