Ninja Gaiden II

Ninja Gaiden II is in most ways a skilful refinement of the previous game, which is what we had every right to expect. Mind-blowingly new features are all well and good, but to be perfectly honest, they have their place and I suspect it isn’t here. I was impressed with the way Metal Gear Solid 4, for example, stuck to its core gameplay but took it in engaging new directions, making new demands of the player. But the Ninja Gaiden games are not thinkytime games. When I sit down to a game of Ninja Gaiden, I expect to slip blissfully into a warm bath of ninja limbs and backflips. Occasionally my higher-order brain functions will rouse themselves to solve a dead-simple puzzle or suggest a charge-up attack instead of my default “flying decapitation technique no matter what” strategy, but overall I’m not looking for an intellectually challenging experience. Ninja Gaiden is a workout for the twitch reflexes, and most of the time it’s a well-crafted one.

The most noticeable improvement on the previous game is solving a number of control issues that hampered freedom of movement. In creating Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox, the developers boldly – BOLDLY - envisioned a game that let you move like a ninja, but they only took it halfway.

Okay, more like nine-tenths of the way. But there was still room for improvement. For example: that “flying decapitation technique” I mentioned got its start in the previous game, and it got my love for being a fun and practical way to move around in combat. Jump, slash, and you’re fifteen feet forward, usually behind a headless opponent. Kickass. The problem was, it only worked when an opponent was within range, as if his cooperation was somehow required. So I’d misjudge the distance between myself and my opponent, and instead of diving forward like a hawk, I’d slash in midair and fall straight back down into a cluster of enemies. Ninja Gaiden takes away the arbitrary restriction on the technique, and they make other tweaks to combat that generally make the player feel more like a ninja, free to leap about and cleave apart lesser martial artists.

And the other martial artists you encounter are very lesser, which is as it should be. No single enemy grunt is going to present a challenge, which is why they attack in at least threes and sometimes in waves. The game has an auto-heal system after encounters, as well, which is another trend in gaming that I’m really fond of. Nobody likes limping to the next encounter with three hit points and no healing items, knowing that a single enemy bitchslap will kill you. Regenerating health, or in this case a checkpoint-based health refill, is a great way to keep the player from having to ever, ever do that.

Enemy mooks are, as I mentioned, pushovers. The bosses, though... look, I don’t object to hard bosses. I also don’t object, at least in principle, to you-have-to-die-a-hundred-times-and-memorize-his-pattern-flawlessly bosses. I don’t object to them, I just reserve the right not to play their games. So when I say the bosses in Ninja Gaiden II are too hard, it’s not just because I suck. It’s because the game doesn’t prepare you for them. There are no grunts who interrupt my combos, or whose combos I can’t interrupt. There are no grunts who dodge my decapitation attack without explanation, or who pull off several combos in a row with minimal indication of when it’s going to be safe to attack them. At least not in Novice mode. You want to throw a tough boss at me, fine. But get me ready for it.

I’ll admit that games tend to be favoring playability over difficulty these days, and a game that demands as much from the player as Ninja Gaiden II – even in easy mode – is rare. But the reason for that is that game design is being refined. Like phones and computers and all manner of interactive devices, games are now made with an educated understanding of the player’s needs. Needs like “having at least a glimmer of an idea of how I might approach the next challenge.” And that decreases difficulty, in the same way that eyesight decreases the difficulty of birdwatching.

Ninja Gaiden, along with games in general, is in a tough spot, challenge-wise. A predictable, Mega Man-style combo wouldn’t be nearly challenging enough for a Ninja Gaiden boss, but when the developers take it in the other direction and – so it seems – try to mimic the experience of facing a strong, unfamiliar opponent, it just becomes unpredictable, which makes the player die a lot in the process of figuring everything out.

Ooh! Ooh! I know! What if you were fighting an opponent with unfamiliar moves and patterns, but in a game where failing to react properly generally resulted in a clash of swords rather than damage to your flesh? That way, you could carefully parry and read the opponent’s moves until you were ready to strike back! Yeah, I like that. It may sound less challenging, but since Ninja Gaiden forces you to spend about the same amount of time figuring out your opponent, why not cut out the constant dying and reloading?

Well, I’m sure that game has its time and place. For now, Ninja Gaiden II is more or less what the fans expected, and it does right by its predecessors. But I have my differences with it – differences that I will take to my grave, once I am hacked apart. Again.