Reviews// Ninja Gaiden II

Would this piss me off if I'd had to actually (a) wait for (b) pay for the game that many Xbots have been snarling about for what seems like an eternity? Why, yes it would. But I didn't, so it doesn't so much.

Let's pretend that I did though. Jebus Deity! Ninja Gaiden II (not the NES version either) seems buggy and annoying. Every so often you're just sitting front of screen, controller in hand (all sweaty and possibly cracked from frustration at your own incompetence) when it stutters. That's annoying.

But I'm not bitter. My incompetence at the combat system was indeed my own fault. I mistook its speed and relative simplicity for the ability to pile in with all shurikens blazing. Don't make that mistake. Learn what you're being taught early on. Don't be a putz like old man Smith readers. The combat system does build as you, unlike me, elegantly make your way from one environment to the next.

Unlike back in the good old days of reviewing video games on, for example the Amiga, I can't now use several paragraphs telling you all about those game environments. This is mainly because all those details are available on the official website. Nope, this review has to be about whether I'd recommend this game to you. Should you buy it, play and then exchange it?

But I'm not going to go all the way there until the end – when the extremists can whine about the score.

Right now, it's time to talk about 'that camera'. Accuse me all you will of not understanding that the right stick controls 'that camera' and I will respond: “No it doesn't. It enables you to half-control 'that camera'”. 'That camera' is a weakness - there is just no escaping that fact.

When using ranged weapons it can really annoy because targeting becomes a frustrating chore. When in hand-to-hand combat with suicidal enemies, however, the pace of action is so swift that you're working on instinct anyway.

As I've already mentioned those enemies spawn in a way that demons should – all over the place when they bloody well want to; demons by definition don't like rules. As you probably already know, you can also dismember them in a Monty Python Black Knight sort of a way, and that simply makes them more dangerous.

Certainly this can be gory and offensive but so can sitting through a rugby union game or a night in which the Young Conservatives meet the Young Farmers in a Yates's – that's life. Given all that, the camera inadequacies are a necessary evil. Everything else in combat just moves so fast that you've got to rely on your instinct to survive.

It's a video game about fighting, dummy. As my esteemed SPOnG colleague, Doctor Dee, would certainly state: “Learn to deal”.

I'd concur. This is not a film. This is not about camera work. This is about achieving fast, fluid combat and being adaptable as the game progresses. The purist in me – the one who wants video games to attain the status of 'art' so I can look all impressive to my brother's lawyer mates at cocktail parties – says “Ooooh, the camera is awful”.

The video gamer in me who has been playing games for what seems like eons says, “Shut up, get out, go and watch some ballet or rugby union, I am trying to flail three foes to pieces while jumping off this wall!”.