Ninja Gaiden 2
I'm a pretty big fan of the Ninja Gaiden series as a whole.; dating all the way back to the NES version that took me a Game Genie and long time to beat the first time. Eventually, back in 2003 I believe, A new beautiful version of Ninja Gaiden graced our consoles on the Xbox. Holy Cow! this game was awesome! It was fairly ridiculously hard, but still a lot of fun. There have been few games that I've been as mad at as this game though. I even broke a controller playing it.
Well now in 2008 Ninja Gaiden 2 has been released. In was released in June the day before my birthday, but as I was saving for a PS3, I didn't play it until now. Sadly, I am currently away from my 61" HDTV so I was not able to really take in some of the beautiful graphics that Team Ninja always does. However, even on my 32"ish SDTV the game looked great.
I had already played the demo which was also most of the first level, thus I had learned some of the new game elements such as the Obliteration technique; the technique that allow Ryu (the main character) to perform an instant kill if an enemy has already lost a limb. Pressing Y while next to an enemy who is missing an arm or leg sudden makes your character perform a variety of animations like kicking a guy in the face to raise him up and then cut off his head. It's quite satisfying. The gameplay itself didn't seem to change that much from NG1; which is a good thing. It's fast, the camera is always facing the wrong way, but pressing a butoin will put it behind you, everything that made the first game great... Okay, the camera sucks, but you get used to it on these games.
There were a lot of weapons in this game, but I found myself using just a few of them. There are weapons for every situation you need. Pure brutality, crowd control, quickness, and vulgar displays of power; a plethora of style. Each player will probably pick a weapon they enjoy most. I myself alway enjoy The Dragon Sword. It's the best well rounded weapon in the game. The projectiles weapons are also pretty sweet. With the ability to charge them, which I believe started in earlier editions of the NG1 expansion packs i.e. NG Black and Sigma. There are only one type of arrow this time, and an upgraded spear gun helps with the inevitable water sections.
One thing that I felt that NG1 had that NG2 didn't was a streaming story. By that I mean in NG1 it felt like you were going through an adventure and had reasons for being where you were and most of the areas where very intertwined. In NG2, as nice as it was to go to different places around the world, it felt just shoved in. The only explanation of why you were anywhere was a quick one line about someone's trail leading here. It just seemed odd.
As far as enemies and bosses, everything seems to be the same from NG1, just with a different skin on it. There's the standard ninjas, the ninjas with incendiary shurikens, some big monsters, and some bosses are that are cheap and annoying until you find the pattern or weakness; and even then they can be annoying.
I played on wuss the first time through as I didn't want to become so irritated that I didn't want to play. I'm a little older than I was when NG1 came out and have less patience with games. Overall NG2 is enjoyable if you like NG1. The Crystal Skulls seem to be a waste of time unless you want the achievement, but there are a lot of things to pick up and do as Ryu.
