Video Game
Five levels of difficulty for all kinds of gamers including "Ninja Dog" to "Very Difficult Master Ninja", Play in Story mode or Mission Mode with a massive number of missions to complete, Never-before-seen content includes new cinematic cut scenes that reveal secrets from the world of Ninja Gaiden, ESRB Rating: Rated M for Mature, 3/5Hx5-2/5Wx7-1/2L"; 0.39 lb.
Reviewer's Comments: Summary:Hard? Try poorly made! Pros:
+Rachel's breasts. Yes, those are the only two good things about the entire game, sad but true, Team Ninja's speciality is the only thing they can do well enough to make it passable; big bouncy boobies.
But if that's all you want then just get Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball instead, pretty much all the breasts in that game are better than Rachel's anyway.
Cons:
-How you have to dodge attacks that break through your guard, but you have to guard first to dodge because the dodge and guard are mapped to the same button.
-How the graphics don't even have reflections of objects, just the background.
-How the graphical effects of clouds flying by when you're in the airship are less technically advanced, and as result uglier than, the effects used when aboard the Gude Airship in The GranStream Saga back on PlayStation many years and an entire generation before this game was released.
-How the graphical effect of water is just a smooth version of the transparent texture effect used in the original Tomb Raider from 1996.
-How the enemies shadows are oddly shaped blobs that look like they're taken directly from a Dreamcast game.
-How shadows are only drawn on the ground and not also on the objects casting the shadows, something even Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 games (and other Xbox games too, of course) had the ability to do (see games like Red Dog on Dreamcast and Nanobreaker on PlayStation 2 for good examples of games where shadows were drawn on both casting objects and the ground repectively, and let's not forget games like Silent Hill 2 and 3 on PlayStation 2 that also has far more impressive shadows than this supposed "Xbox 360"-looking game).
-How the supposed master ninja moves like an unresponsive, overloaded tank with severe engine problems.
-How the game constantly comes up with new ways of killing you with cheap tricks forcing you to restart from your last save.
-The most horrid camera control in any game ever. It will literally always line itself up so it's facing away from the enemies, requardless of where the enemies or you are.
If you ever come across someone who complains about the camera control in the 3D Sonic games, it's fair to assume that they've never played a game with actually bad camera control, like this one.
There really aren't that many more things to say after covering the cons. The game simply doesn't have anything but failed attempts at doing things that far better games have done infinitely better countless times before.
The graphics that I have read about as "being on the verge of Xbox 360 quality" are to me nothing better than low quality beta versions of old 32-bit era games, and are missing some of the most fundemental effects to actually qualify as a 128-bit era game.
It doesn't even have basic Xbox quality reflection, cloud or water effects, but it's on Xbox! Old PlayStation and Saturn games had these effects and had them better made for crying out loud.
The controls, like I mentioned in the cons part of the review, are idiotic and clumsy at best. It really feels like I'm moving a tank with a broken engine around trying to take out the same generic and boring looking dime-a-dussin ninjas that keep spawning again and again to take me out.
The game for me was a complete disappointment in every possible way. After reading countless reviews about it online only to find out they were all lies was not in the game's favor. Instead it only added to the disappointment.
Promising word like "graphics that are borderline Xbox 360 quality" and "it's hard but fair, a challenge only the best can take on" were ringing in my head as I tried to manuever this slow-pased obviously drunk generic nobody of a ninja around these painfully bland and unimpressive environments taking out the same generic and uninspired ninjas again and again, until I said to myself "Enough. I don't need this." and returned the game to the store I bought it from. Thankfully I bought it preowned so I could return it without any hassle.
Now you may think "Hey, he got it pre-owned, that must mean he got it cheap. Yet he didn't keep it? What an IDIOT! Even if it's not to his liking he could've still kept it as a part of his collection seeing as it's somewhat concidered a relatively important part of videogame history!" and yeah, you'd be half-right, I did get it for barely nothing, that part is true, but I still felt I'd rather want that barely nothing back than actually keeping this failure of a game in my collection, that's simply put how bad this game was. Nobody should keep this peice of garbage in their collection unless they genuinly actually like something about it (whatever that something might be though is a mystery to me).
If this is suppose to be an upgraded and better version of the original Ninja Gaiden then I can only imagine how bad Ninja Gaiden truly was, because this game fails at every single thing it attempts to pull off.
Do yourself a favor and buy games like Shinobi (or it's sequel, Nightshade aka Kunoichi) or Devil May Cry (or any of it's sequels) instead of this game, they're both perfect examples on how to do a game like this right.
Both Shinobi and Devil May Cry have the action, challenge, style, graphics and everything else this game lacks.
The only person I could kind of recommend this game too would be the poor sap who bought an Xbox when he clearly wanted games that pretty much only exist on PlayStation 2.
But I'd rather recommend buying a PlayStation 2 and any of the forementioned games instead of limiting yourself to this heavily flawed experience.
It's not challenging, just stupid.
It's not visually impressive, just ugly.
Simply avoid this game at all costs, and the same goes for the original Ninja Gaiden.
