Because the game is out tomorrow and it will take too long to finish it, I'm just doing an impressions thingy for those of you that are still on hold on deciding if you want Ninja Gaiden 2. I played it till mission 6, which should be around the 30-40% mark. There are some vids I made with my shitty cameraphone, they don't resemble the actual framerate :)

First of all, the GT review:


Ninja Gaiden 2 (NG2) is basically just what you'd expect from it: a sequel to NG1/Black. The graphics are supposedly as good as Sigma's, but it doesn't look all that fantastic detail-wise. The textures can be a bit bland and there is a lot of aliasing. Locations like Manhattan are empty and look more like a random created game level than a part of New York, except for some key locations. Then again, everything moves without any hiccups 99% of the time.

A couple of things changed: cutting off limbs allows you to do oblitaration techniques. You press Y when need a limbless enemy, and take him out with some AoE damage in a scripted animation. The good thing about this, is that the enemy dies instantly (duuuuuuurrr). But since you also do some damage to the area or whatever you end up slicing into, it's a great way of dealing with mobs/being surrounded. Since you can't be hurt during this animation, you can use this to your advantage to deal with the painful difficulty.

Yes, NG2 is just as hard as NG1 was. If you only play the first level, it's easy to see why people have complained about the reduced difficulty and all that. If you play it on Path of the Warrior (hard) instead of Path of the Acolyte (normal) and move past the first mission though, you'll notice some of the hardcore difficult NG action you either loved or hated in part one. There are a lot more save points this time around, which allow you to just screw around in the early levels. You can afford to lose 90% health and then heal+save at the savepoint anyway, so you might as well fiddle with the moves and gain some mastery. By the time you reach Mission 5, you will get raped time after time by section after section of fiends, don't worry.

Now, some reviews mention a broken camera and last gen gameplay and whine a little about cheap enemies who attack you from behind corners. A lot of the reviews have done this, and I disagree. You don't rush around corners in COD4 (or any other 3rd person shooter/FPS) either, unless you feel capable enough to deal with anything that lurks around it. It's true that there isn't really any innovation or revolution of Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is an evolution. You'll still die plenty of times before you pass most of the bosses. You'll still die plenty, period.

I don't really see the big deal about this for the fans: we loved NG and we get more of the same. It's not like we wanted an NG racing game or something :P


There is no escape for you, buggy foot!

There are some downsides to the game. Sometimes you can't find a key, only to notice it's behind some door which looked like it was just scenery. The platforming isn't bad at all, but it can take some getting used to. The camera does get stuck once in a while, but you're supposed to use the attacks/blocks regardless of seeing your enemy anyway. Actual Ninja dogs taunt you and destroy you whenever you come across them: fuck you Ninja Dogs! Seriously... if you thought dogs in any other game were bad, these are the worst,

If you never cared for NG, you'll hate this one. If you like DMC better than NG, then gtfo! If you loved the first one, well... then you'll love the sequel too.

The new-ness of NG is gone by now, so it's not the same experience anymore. Bosses can feel a bit too easy at times, or just as hard at other times. It's not like all bosses in NG were as impossible as Alma.. To say that they are just pushovers this time around is just silly: if you do it wrong, you can get killed within 5-10 seconds by any of the bosses past mission 2.

In a way, it's like Ikaruga in that it takes persistence to get ahead in the game. I don't have the persistence to remember everything in Ikaruga, but I can do any section in NG2 time and again just to get to the next save point. It's more about learning to play and gaining skill than that it's about remembering what is going to happen.


Fighting, using ninpo to survive, exploring and dying... a regular 2,5 minutes of Ninja Gaiden 2

So if you loved Ninja Gaiden on the xbox, get this game! There is no other game that is as hard as this right now. You get a lot more, cooler weapons and moves. You get easy dismemberment and so much blood that you don't even notice it after 10 minutes. Don't play it on normal, that is the Wii setting. Just bitch and shout at your television/console just as much as you did before, then retry, then die again, then retry until you pass. For me, this is one of the best games on the 360 this year and one that will leave a much bigger impression than GTA IV. If you like testing your skill, you can't go wrong with this game. If you don't like having your pride stripped away from every part of your body and soul, then just go play DMC4 or something.

For the fans, Ninja Gaiden 2 is fantastic: not free of faults or perfect in any way, kinda dated in this day & age (but you won't care), still ridiculously hard, rewarding, more streamlined than its predecessor and just epic ninja win. It is also free of pirates, so far!

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11/10 Ninjas for the fans

6/10 XBL-lawl-ur-gay remarks for the regular next-gen kids/naggers who think GTA is a 10/10 and who like to play things on normal. Or if you don't like NG :P
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