Ninja Gaiden "Walking While" Black Review
Developed by Team Ninja.
Published by Tecmo.
Xbox 360(Original Xbox Game/Xbox Live).
Released September 20th, 2005.
Purchased copy.
Preface
It should go without saying, but I don’t enjoy playing bad video games: I don’t like finishing them, I don’t like reviewing them, I don’t even like it when they take up space on my shelf, or on my hard drive.
This time I’m making a rare exception, not only did I play Ninja Gaiden Black to completion on its standard difficulty, with a self-imposed challenge, I plan on reviewing it.
I can’t help but write about this game, it’s far too interesting of a discussion about video game difficulty, and whether or not it’s fair to hold video games, old and new to the same standard.
I want the reader to understand, that I’m incredibly biased against this game.
I will not spare an ounce of venom, and I will show no mercy!
Path of The Ninja
Instead of a story about a master of stealth, lurking in the shadows, and changing the course of human history with a single stroke of a sword; Ninjas in this world are legendary warriors that act more like one-man-killing-machines, capable of wielding all-powerful magic, and slaying endless amounts of demons and demi-gods alike.
Ryu Hayabusa is the acting head of his father’s ninja clan, but he nearly dies protecting the Evil Dark Africa-American Dragon Blade, from an unprovoked attack by the Vigor Empire.
It has it twists and turns, but the story just gives context to the action, and motivates the player; most people will see every outcome a mile away.
The Shadow of the Valley
This game’s opening, is one of the most well executed openings I’ve ever experienced in a video game.
It simultaneously gives new players everything they need to understand the basics, and gets the fuck out of the way for returning players
After a brief cutscene, the player takes control in a safe environment where they can teach themselves how to play the game, until they’re comfortable with the game’s controls.
Once they’re confident they can ascend to the TRUE beginning, an NPC (Ayane) throws a hint dagger that the player can easily ignore, if they choose to.
Ayane’s daggers give oral instructions and hints about how to play the game, but since they aren’t mandatory, an experienced player can blaze through the tutorial and enter the Ninja Fortress.
It seems like an obvious approach to an opening level, but one would be incredibly surprised, how often game developers fuck this up (we’re all looking at you Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword).
Nimble Ninja
Ryu Hayabusa is the embodiment of the mythological ninja; capable of superhuman feats that the player actually has control over.
Ryu is capable of running at high-speeds from the get-go, it’s an ability inherent to a ninja; the player doesn’t have to grind for better stats, or hold a run-button down.
Ryu’s an experienced, athletic character, and his default tool-set reflects that: There aren’t any shoe-horned, pseudo-RPG elements giving the player the illusion of character progression.
Ryu can run along walls, both vertically to gain height, or horizontally to gain distance and/or height.
It’s not some contextual button prompt, with only a few designated areas it can be preformed (Such as the Hermes Boots in God of War 3); nope, the player can run on any flat, vertical surface, at any time.
On any liquid surface, Ryu can run on in a straight line across these surfaces with the correct timing, and practice.
Ryu can even rapidly wall-to-wall jump up tight, vertical shafts.
Ryu can avoid damage with a dodge roll, which can also be used to get around even quicker than running, by Roll-Jumping.
All of this movement variety can be incorporated into combat, such as jumping on top of an enemies shoulder/head to briefly stun them in place.
This fluid and dynamic motion through the environment is likely what had Nintendo itching to make a 3rd-person Metroid game with Team Ninja; good 3-dimensional movement is hard to pull off this well!
Fiend Slayer
The real meat of this game, is Ryu’s skill in combat, from the moment the player starts their journey they’re given all the tools they need to make it to the end.
There’s no quick-time events, there’s no execution prompt, there’s no interruptions mid-fight against a boss; it’s just a raw test of the player’s skill against the game’s foes.
The animations are fast and fluid, the controls are responsive, so much so that the player can time every action they take by just observing Ryu’s movements alone!
Animations are so fluid that enemies can grab Ryu without any warnings, or glowy prompts, they just do it.
The game scores the player on their skill in combat with Karma, and the game has a dedicated button for displaying this as well.
Ryu can equip one melee, and one type of projectile weapon at a time; which have to be switched in the menu.
Melee weapons have two dedicated attack buttons (a heavy and light attack), and projectiles have one dedicated button for a quick-fire attack.
Ryu can block just about any oncoming attack, from any direction, otherwise he’s staggered out of his guard, or he reduces the damage.
The player is allowed to make a few mistakes, but they can open up the menu and use a health item; these are found in chests or purchased at a shop.
The challenge of Ninja Gaiden Black’s combat motivates the player to make as little error as possible, in a good way.
It feels exhilarating to finish a fight with no injuries, because the player knows how difficult that is to pull off consistently.
This is some of the best combat I’ve ever experienced in a video game, it the most well-designed aspect of Ninja Gaiden Black!
A Ninja’s Favorite Weapon
The player has access to a variety of different weapons, they might be your typical swords, axes, nunchakus, etc., but they have imaginative designs that set them apart from other games.
Each weapon has its own list of basic combos, and they have their own nuisances in battle.
Every weapon also has its own Essence Attack and Ultimate Technique; these are charge moves at 2 different levels, that can be completely interrupted by enemy attacks.
Both make Ryu invincible when pulled off, during their animations, and they do a huge chunk of damage whenever they land.
Most of this is unlocked from the start, but the player can use the essence from fallen enemies to upgrade their favorite weapons at the shop, which adds a few new combos, and makes the weapon look even cooler.
Essence can also be absorbed in battle to speed up the charge time of Essence Attacks/Ultimate techniques, meaning these devastating attacks can be easily chained by skilled players.
Projectile weapons remain static with the only real difference being the ammo; unlimited ammo, no ammo, or finite ammo.
Projectiles can be incorporated into or extend combos, adding a small layer of depth and strategy to the player’s arsenal.
For the most part, choosing a weapon is a matter of preference, but the weapon system in Ninja Gaiden Black does a great job in making every weapon feels valuable by having a select handful of really awesome ones, instead of over-inundating the player with a bunch of lame ones, that all act and animate the same.
Unlabored Flawlessness
A lot of Japanese video games have this concept, where something appears worthless, until a LOT of time and effort is put into it, then it becomes one of the most powerful/useful/badass thing in the game.
The most famous example in all of video games is the Pokemon, Magikarp; it’s hard to train and goes down easily in battle, but then it evolves in Gyarados, and becomes one of the most powerful and competitively viable Pokemon in the series.
The Wooden Practice Sword requires 7 expensive upgrades to become one of my favorite weapons of all time; The Unlabored Flawlessness!
Its big and powerful, it kills just about anything in 3 hits, and has a satisfying THWACK sound effect when it impacts, and whatever it doesn’t kill, usually face-plants into the ground.
It’s only useful in the air, but the air is the best place to be in Ninja Gaiden Black!
The Vigor Empire
The original Xbox was a graphical powerhouse compared to its console competition.
But Team Ninja went the smart route and went with a more painterly art style, it has visuals that still hold up well today.
The main hub area, Tairon City, is the launching point for the adventure the player goes on.
It has a shop, plenty of collectibles that are hidden about as well as Anne Frank, and enemies the player can use to grind for cash if they need to.
The hub world leads the player to really imaginative settings such as a monastery with elements of both Byzantine and Gothic architecture, South America-style pyramids, and massive skull towers where the player ascends a stairway into the abyss.
All of these places are located near the same city, and it feels like nowhere anyone in the real-world could go.
The Dragons That Record Everything
The game is challenging, but it’s surprisingly lenient with checkpoints, in the form of Dragon Statues.
The dragon statues are the in-game excuse for saving the game, and when the player dies, they start back at the last statue they saved at, losing all progress up to that point.
The player might lose progress, but if they died with all their resources, they respawn without having to grind to gain back their items.
The Ones Who Test Your Resolve
In the opening level the Ninja Fortress, the player learns very quickly that bosses outclass every other enemy in the game.
The player can deal a lot of damage to a boss’ health bar, but the boss is highly unlikely to leave themselves that open, they don’t want to be hit at all.
Other games have bosses that can only be damaged when they expose their “fuck me lights, oh please don’t hit me here, or I will take massive damage” weak points, which are obvious tells for the player.
In Ninja Gaiden Black the player will be unsure of when a boss is vulnerable, it’s not always clear when they can be hit, and that’s where the challenge comes from; observing a bosses offense and defense and locking for gaps to capitalize on.
One of my favorite encounters is with the Greater Fiend Marbus, who has an attack that forces Ryu to fight previous bosses, Marbus never fights the player without help, but it goes to show how far the player has grown, when the bosses are scarred to take on Ryu alone.
Some encounters might be for spectacle, some might provide a true test of the players skill, but I always looked forward to these parts of the game, because I had quite the adrenaline rush when I pulled through to the end
The First of the Greater Fiends
Ninja Gaiden Black builds up the Greater Fiends as the game’s ultimate antagonists, the player’s first taste of a TRUE boss fight, is when they go up against, Alma.
Alma has a repertoire of moves she can use at any time, in any combination she chooses, the joy of fighting her, is learn to avoid anything she can throw at the player; she doesn’t have a set pattern, if she chooses, she can spam the same move nine times in a row.
Like other bosses, the challenge derives from looking for that tiny opening to land a hit, instead of waiting for its glowing weak spot to finally show up.
I died 23 times in a row before I finally won, but every time I fell on my ass, I was eager to get right back up and try again; this has to be one of the best boss fights in a video game, it’s easily my favorite.
Unfortunately, this is where my enjoyment for the game peaked, after this boss fight it got progressively worse and worse, and the game’s flaws started becoming more apparent, and the game’s weaknesses became front and center.
The few parts I did enjoy in the second half, were the honey-roasted peanuts in the turd sandwich that was Ninja Gaiden Black.
The Real Nut-Flicker
I might have given the reader the impression that this is a great game, everything I have described up to this point sounds great on paper, but as Ninja Gaiden Black goes on, its flaws start to outweigh its strengths.
The reason I opened with its positives, is because I wanted to give the game credit for what it did right.
A game’s challenge should come from a player’s mastery of the mechanics, not in fighting with poorly designed aspects the game.
Ninja Obscura
I cannot emphasize enough how important a 3d camera system is, a 3-dimensional video game.
Camera problems have plagued 3d video games for decades, and still cause problems for players in the current year.
The TV screen one plays their games on is a flat 2d surface, it goes for films, animation, and video games, that in order to create the illusion of a 3d image on a 2d surface, one must convincingly render an image with believable enough depth.
Most of the time, especially in a cramped level in the game, the camera is far to close to the action, and since it likes to default right behind Ryu, it causes Ryu to obscure what the enemies are doing.
Certain boss fights have the camera set low to the ground pointing up, meaning what the player sees is mostly the ground.
As Ryu uses his acrobatics to move quickly about the battlefield, the camera angle can drastically shift mid-jump/mid-combo, which is incredibly disorienting and drastically changes the action the player is doing on screen.
The player does have limited control of the camera, they can position it directly behind Ryu with a tap of the right shoulder button, or move it with the right thumb stick.
The player’s right hand is used to dodge, and perform attacks, and in the heat of battle, it’s a little silly to ask the player to manually adjust it, when they have to dodge oncoming fireball spam.
The most important thing about a camera is that it stays out the player’s way, the player shouldn’t even have to think about the camera, it’s a part of a game that just has to work, or it creates problems that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Omitting vital information from the player is a failure of game design, it doesn’t provide a legitimate challenge, it’s just an additional hassle.
Firing Blind
The Bow (later upgraded to the Storngbow) is the most baffling projectile weapon to use.
On paper it sounds great, because the player can aim it in first-person for better accuracy, and even fire it at a target automatically in third-person.
The best way to get around quickly and avoid damage, is to stay mobile, and stay airborne; the Bow, no matter how it’s fired, forces Ryu to stand still, halting all momentum and setting up the player for a cheap hit.
In third-person, Ryu has terrible accuracy with the bow, on top of having to come to a complete stop to fire (even though he can throw a torso-sized shuriken in mid-air).
There’s a noticeable delay when entering the first-person aiming mode, there’s no aiming reticle, and it’s not really clear where the shot will end up.
When in first-person mode, a strong enough attack will knock Ryu back into third-person, and begin a hit-stun cycle of trying to get off a shot, while being awkwardly knocked back-and-forth between two radically different camera angles.
The Bow doesn’t give the player adequate enough information and completely halts all of Ryu’s movement in the heat of battle.
It’s just too poorly implemented and clashes with the fast-paced, kinetic gameplay Team Ninja was going for, and that’s a shame.
Phasing In-and-Out
Since Ryu can only hold and use two items at a time, the player has to constantly switch in-and-out of the menu.
This game uses every part of the controller, except the d-pad, but most of the control-scheme is dedicated to the movement and action of the on-screen character.
It’s a small issue, but the need to do it repeatedly compounds the annoyance, especially when the player panics to find what they need in the menu, and panics as they hope the action they need to take, can be preformed right after the delay of exiting the menu wears off!
Low-Budget Resident Zelda
Ninja Gaiden Black deviates from the core gameplay, by placing Ryu in dungeon settings that are brief, and not very remarkable.
Most of the puzzles can be solved as soon as the player sets eyes on them, but they’re still time consuming to actually solve.
Every time the player activates a switch or places an object on a pedestal, a cutscene has to play where the players has to sit through an animation until its finished.
There is one good area like this though, and it’s surprisingly relaxing; The Aqueducts actually require the player to understand the layout of the area, and that spatial reasoning they gain from doing so, helps them solve every puzzle without the need for a walkthrough.
For the most part these segments are not well implemented, require almost no thought, and don’t focus on the game’s strengths.
Sweating Bullets
Chapter 9 is a perfect encapsulation as to way the Bow is a poorly implemented feature.
Every enemy fires some kind of projectile from automatic gunfire, lasers, tank shells, and missiles.
Ryu can easily dodge all this, but in order to fire back, the player has to contend with the displeasure of the uncomfortable aiming controls
Once again a major weakness of this game is front and center, completely overshadowing Ninja Gaiden Black’s strengths.
Sleeping with the Fishes, The Dead Ones
An obligatory “water level” has to be suffered through in Chapter 11, and of course it involves a lot of swimming.
The only real gripe here is the slow swimming/diving speed of Ryu, but he gets a handful of items that trivialize this segment, not by fixing the issues with water levels, but to assuage them instead.
So, Ryu can’t see well underwater, here’s an item that fixes that: He can’t breath for very long, here’s an oxygen tank: he can’t defend himself, here’s a spear gun.
This level just kind of comes and goes, but the best part is that Ryu never needs the items he gets here ever again.
Haunting Nonsense
Towards the end of the game, a new enemy type is introduced, called the Ghost Fish.
These are the most annoying enemies in the game; they all swarm at Ryu, their bites lock and stun him into place, and they ignore oncoming attacks, phasing through them.
I did eventually get the hang of killing them without taking too much damage, but that’s not the issue.
The most optimal strategy is to use the Vigoorian Flail weapons to send out a massive flurry of attacks, and if one’s favorite weapon is the Vigoorian Flail, then they have no reason to ever switch it out, and that’s great!
My problem is that every time I see them, I have to scramble into the menu to switch weapons, when up to this point the game hadn’t punished me for doing so.
Every second in Ninja Gaiden Black counts, and I hated getting bogged down in the menu even more when confronted with this disaster of an enemy.
This is the only instance where the player is forced into a weapon choice, and I just can’t abide by that decision.
Eternal Torture
The first phase of the fight against the Holy Vigoor Emperor, is the absolute WORST part of the game, due to bad conveyance.
The player controls Ryu as he floats on a hunk of the ground, and hovers around the boss in a 2-dimensional plane, now normal video game logic dictates that the player should control Ryu in all directions in a manner similar to Galaga.
Instead, left-and-right move Ryu left and right on the thumb stick, but up-and-down move Ryu forward and backward towards the boss.
It’s bad conveyance because the player will be unsure of whether or not they can land a hit, even when they hold up and are as close to the boss as possible.
The bosses laser attacks are nigh impossible to avoid with this movement set up, on top of having Ryu obscure most of what the motherfucker is doing, because the camera needs to be zoomed in as much as possible.
This whole segment is so abysmal to play through, because there isn’t any previous segment in the game where Ryu had to do this, and it’s far to unclear as to when the boss can be damage.
All of these factors are bad enough, but there’s another boss right after, with no check points; I’m ashamed to admit this, but I broke my self-imposed “no Ninpo challenge”, where I refused to use any magic because of how broken it is in this game.
I didn’t want to ever have to replay this part of the game, so I robbed myself of what might have been an interesting penultimate boss fight, just to end the game quicker.
By this point I had, had enough, and I didn’t care anymore, it just needed to be over.
My over powering blood rage had blinded me to text that flashed on the screen when this boss fight started, it stated(though I’m paraphrasing here); “holding block and pushing up or down on the left joy-stick would change Ryu’s elevation.” .
This would’ve helped me avoid The Holy Vigoor Emperor’s laser attacks, but I maintain that this boss fight was bullshit, because as I stated before; no other part of the game controls like this, and this segment doesn’t adhere to 2D-segment-in-a-3D-video-game logic.
There’s no point in going back and forth during this fight, as backing away wouldn’t help the player avoid attacks, so the up-and-down directions, still should have controlled the elevation of the floating platform.
Though my opinion of this segment didn’t really change, I still think it’s fair to point out that I accidentally glossed over important information, I will avoid making mistakes like these in the future!
Conclusion
Ninja Gaiden Black tore me in two completely different directions emotionally; it has some of the best 3d combat I’ve ever experienced in a video game, and the surge of Adrenalin I got when I pulled through a tough combat scenario, cannot be understated.
I couldn’t stand how terribly designed most of the game was, and how all the non-combat sections of the game completely detract from the experience.
I beat this game out of spite, because normally I don’t like to waste my time playing games I don’t enjoy, and neither should the reader!
I also beat it on the standard difficulty so I can say that I beat it, I FUCKING DID IT, and to add a preemptive fuck you, to anyone who will obfuscate my perfectly valid criticisms of this game, by saying, “you only hate this game because you couldn’t finish it.”.
The worst thought a player can have when playing a video game is, “I never want to do that part ever again!”, as the game went on in the second half, that thought kept popping into my head far too often.
The combat in Ninja Gaiden Black deserves a better game than this one, unfortunately it’s too poorly designed in major areas to recommend; this causes considerable conflict in me because there’s nothing quite like it on the market these days.
It’s a diamond covered in raw, unfiltered butt-sludge!
RATING;