Features// Pocket and the Ninja Gaiden Hate

So, I hopped in the car to the SPOnG office to try out Ninja Gaiden 2, a game which seems to have had everyone raving about it and which, as it transpired, I completely lacked any joy in.

On the biggest TV I’ve ever seen, in a swively chair, I started it up with a fair amount of excitement. The trailer looked pretty good, if slightly bloodthirsty, and I’m feeling the need to lop off some limbs after a rather annoying couple of days at work. Within seconds I’m picking it apart and making scathing remarks and giggling like a schoolgirl at vaguely suggestive, typically Ninja-y action names.

Out of boredom, I start coming up with my own moves: Backwards Pearl Diver, Thundering Wind of Pain, Ring of Ow, Spoodge Chuck. No. No, I’m just wishing that last one was in there. My complaints were almost too numerous to list, spilling off my notebook and dripping carcinogenically off my tongue.

If you like Ninja Gaiden 2 then it’s probably not worth reading the rest of this article. I, myself, quite like Devil May Cry, but I know that really it isn’t the greatest game and I found myself drifting away from DMC4 only a few hours in. I imagine that the field is very much divided into NG lovers and DMC lovers as they share so many of the badly implemented features (awkward camera movements, affected and arrogant heroes) and clichés of Japanese hack-and-slash games (smashing barrels and collecting orbs) that you only need one or the other in your life.

Ninja Gaiden 2 seems to have mistaken killing for entertainment, meaning that after every few steps I end up surrounded by the least subtle Ninjas imaginable, spewing blood from hacked arms, struggling with Zombie-like perseverance to attack me. Button mashing is condoned, nay expected, and combos are exceptionally easy to pull off. This left me feeling like Homer Simpson in terms of intelligence and ability.

A monkey could play this game without effort. There were more testing combo moves fifteen years ago, without the pretty graphics, but for me that’s not nearly enough to justify it. Maybe Team Ninja should have just released the moves as gifs and be done with it if all they wanted was to show off a couple of seconds’ worth of pretty colours. Much quicker and cheaper: “OMG look he shakes the blood off his sword after lol!”

We’re better than this as a games community, are we not?

Even the dedicated and overwhelmingly positive reviewers of NG2 have mentioned that the camera movement is atrocious and I quickly find out why. In one sequence I played with a metal handrail in the way for five minutes and trying to distinguish my black-and-silver-armour-wearing Ninja from the other black-and-silver-armour-wearing Ninjas. Their discerning feature being their rather cheap looking spider web knees and lack of fetching pashmina. This was difficult enough without the camera sticking or spinning giddyingly into the most frustrating positions. I’m still struggling to see how people have been so fulfilled by this game.

Looking back over the slathering anticipation for NG2 I was surprised by the number of times gamers would declare their desperation for destructible scenery and then completely forget about it on release. The theatre mode is utterly pointless too - stuck in one position, but with the option for a faux film noir flavour by switching to black and white. In a game which completely lacks skill it’s beyond me what you’d want to show people, or re-live yourself.
Occasionally I found myself looking at the backgrounds with mild appreciation, but the glossy, lubey effect on everything looks unrealistic and seems equally illogical – at odds with the gritty, violent subject matter.

I resolve to stick with it until the end of the level, just to be fair and also because I reasoned that there must be more to the plot than this rehashed Super Mario Bros affair. The end of level boss was a relief when it came – at last! An end to cringe-worthy graphics where layers, like early stop-motion animation in live action films, look cut and pasted onto the background with a sparking white outline like a flickering neon light warning you away from a cheap brothel in a bad part of town. To be fair to it, the boss was the first time anything was required of me in terms of skill or tactics, so I was grateful for it, even after forty minutes of playing without getting near to a victory.

Beating him? Well, I said some strategy and skill, but simply -something clicked and, three quarters of the way down his health, he just lay down and waited for me to finish him off, which I did whilst screaming with joy.

Amazing how the things we put so much store by – physics, graphics, weaponry and gore – mean so little when it comes to playability and creating an enjoyable challenge in a game. Ninja Gaiden 2 is one of the worst games I can remember: boring, over-hyped, unoriginal and weakly realised. For now, I’ll stick with Assault Heroes, Street Fighter and Texas Hold ‘em – the games we’ll all be playing in our retirement homes – the ones that actually last the test of time.

Though, if this article has anything to go by, my grumpiness levels are hitting the ‘Cantankerous’ scores and I’m reminiscing at a ‘Golden’ level, which I believe means I’ll be needing HRT (Humour Replacement Therapy, geddit?!?) any time now.