remember this being crazy but hella fun all the weapons were so damn cool
NG2 sits squarely between grindhouse shlock and yukio mishima's erotic fascination with guido reni's perfectly penetrated saint sebastian; framing death as hypermasculine poetic climax, finding perverse beauty in carnage, and reveling in how cool it looks when a head goes gusher mode
for something best known for involuntary amputations, torrents of blood, and forward motion, it's surprisingly graceful and delicate. almost everything comes undone with a few swings and the aestheticization of violence is so heightened it verges on romanticism. much like its predecessor it revolves around deceptively simple movement and positioning over dazzling combo sequences, but the adventure bits have been hacked off to make room for a more laterally complex combat gauntlet where all inhabitance exists to maim and disfigure for the good of the greater limb economy
going in I thought the loss of black's circuitous world design would be a knock against it, but it wasn't. turns out you can make more linear, directed stages that aren't boring as fuck, who knew? 😲😲😲 the ghost lake with those dreamy overlaid effects, the castlevania clocktower, the coliseum, the airship; there're so many neat ideas and memorable flourishes in even the most straightforward bits. any time someone tells me 10 hours of homogeneous slop corridors is Good, Actually I'm gonna roll my eyes just a little bit harder from now on cos this shit has a werewolf kitchen
how much you enjoy it's gonna depend on your tolerance and appreciation for at least some amount of bullshit. there's no denying it's one of the all time messy bitch games that strains and grates against good taste, better judgement, and hardware itself. the infamous staircase sequence grinding and sputtering to an underwater crawl exemplifies its attitude better than any amount of polish ever could: they knew they shouldn't do it, did it anyway, and it ended up the best use of slowdown outside of STGs
on the other hand, there are some pretty big misses in the boss department, and the way it ramps up higher difficulties (mentor, master ninja) isn't gonna work for everyone. you'll know pretty fast if stuff like Incendiary Shurikens makes your hairline recede to some heretofore unknown ass norwood or inspires you to learn the tricks to deal with them, and honestly I don't think there's a wrong answer. but when you manage to chain the iframes just right to avoid the IS explosion, hit the On Landing Ultimate Technique, sequester a bunch of armless fucks on the other side of the arena, and toss their buddies into the wall so their legs blow off, it reaches a level of perfect survivalism other games haven't even considered
like, yeah, no one was sitting up all night dreaming of "the resident evil dogs but way worse", or gigadeath, or the bloom armadillos, but when it all comes together it's so good I wanna hoot and holler Team Ninja #1 with a big foam hand. I am in love with the eclipse scythe, I am starting to see humans as limb holsters. no amount of shit ass centaurs can sway me. I'm gonna bring back ratings and 5.0 is the NG2 rating. fuck itsuno's butthole tree
early on as I was running thru venetian canals, izuna dropping fiends headfirst onto the water's surface like it was concrete, I thought about how lucky everyone else was that this released hurried and unfinished. the genre dodged a real End Of History moment by the narrowest margins; another six months and this would've been untouchable. sigma could've finished the job, but Team Ninja Dog used the opportunity to backtrack on NG2's entire identity instead and then lose the source code for good measure. a fuck up so big it's still the best reason to buy an xbox in 2024
anyway, between the big gay mishima energy here and the awooga hello nurse stuff in NGB I'm claiming the ninja gaiden duology as official Bi Dude Canon, even if ryu's ass looks a lot like hank hill's sometimes
I ain't claiming the third one
for something best known for involuntary amputations, torrents of blood, and forward motion, it's surprisingly graceful and delicate. almost everything comes undone with a few swings and the aestheticization of violence is so heightened it verges on romanticism. much like its predecessor it revolves around deceptively simple movement and positioning over dazzling combo sequences, but the adventure bits have been hacked off to make room for a more laterally complex combat gauntlet where all inhabitance exists to maim and disfigure for the good of the greater limb economy
going in I thought the loss of black's circuitous world design would be a knock against it, but it wasn't. turns out you can make more linear, directed stages that aren't boring as fuck, who knew? 😲😲😲 the ghost lake with those dreamy overlaid effects, the castlevania clocktower, the coliseum, the airship; there're so many neat ideas and memorable flourishes in even the most straightforward bits. any time someone tells me 10 hours of homogeneous slop corridors is Good, Actually I'm gonna roll my eyes just a little bit harder from now on cos this shit has a werewolf kitchen
how much you enjoy it's gonna depend on your tolerance and appreciation for at least some amount of bullshit. there's no denying it's one of the all time messy bitch games that strains and grates against good taste, better judgement, and hardware itself. the infamous staircase sequence grinding and sputtering to an underwater crawl exemplifies its attitude better than any amount of polish ever could: they knew they shouldn't do it, did it anyway, and it ended up the best use of slowdown outside of STGs
on the other hand, there are some pretty big misses in the boss department, and the way it ramps up higher difficulties (mentor, master ninja) isn't gonna work for everyone. you'll know pretty fast if stuff like Incendiary Shurikens makes your hairline recede to some heretofore unknown ass norwood or inspires you to learn the tricks to deal with them, and honestly I don't think there's a wrong answer. but when you manage to chain the iframes just right to avoid the IS explosion, hit the On Landing Ultimate Technique, sequester a bunch of armless fucks on the other side of the arena, and toss their buddies into the wall so their legs blow off, it reaches a level of perfect survivalism other games haven't even considered
like, yeah, no one was sitting up all night dreaming of "the resident evil dogs but way worse", or gigadeath, or the bloom armadillos, but when it all comes together it's so good I wanna hoot and holler Team Ninja #1 with a big foam hand. I am in love with the eclipse scythe, I am starting to see humans as limb holsters. no amount of shit ass centaurs can sway me. I'm gonna bring back ratings and 5.0 is the NG2 rating. fuck itsuno's butthole tree
early on as I was running thru venetian canals, izuna dropping fiends headfirst onto the water's surface like it was concrete, I thought about how lucky everyone else was that this released hurried and unfinished. the genre dodged a real End Of History moment by the narrowest margins; another six months and this would've been untouchable. sigma could've finished the job, but Team Ninja Dog used the opportunity to backtrack on NG2's entire identity instead and then lose the source code for good measure. a fuck up so big it's still the best reason to buy an xbox in 2024
anyway, between the big gay mishima energy here and the awooga hello nurse stuff in NGB I'm claiming the ninja gaiden duology as official Bi Dude Canon, even if ryu's ass looks a lot like hank hill's sometimes
I ain't claiming the third one
Maximum Carnage Incarnate is the name of Ninja Gaiden II's plan. How do you make one of the hardest games ever even harder... bullshit of course. For some reason, for some REALLY fucked up reason, I can't hate this game. I think I love it more than the first game. There is something really earnest and heartfelt to me about a guy wanting to direct a game so blatantly evil that I'm scared that my Xbox 360 would shatter playing it. Thank you Itagaki-san, very cool.