What we have here is an incredible action game with a high skill ceiling. Would be a shame if someone added worms to it...
First things first: Ninja Gaiden Black looks incredible running on a Series X. There is a level of clarity and sharpness here that you just won't see in most other backwards compatible Xbox games - not unless it's also developed by Team Ninja - and even some 360 games upscaled to 4k don't look nearly as good. You can see every pixel on Rachel, and I know because I've spent hours in the lab analyzing her model. I have access to high-end Digital Foundry tools, and you will not believe the frame graph I've generated for Ryu's crotch-- this technology was NOT intended for these purposes!
Now this is where I out myself as a hack, because I did not beat this game on Ultra Lord-God Ninja mode or whatever the hell Ninja Gaiden Black's most powerful warriors insist is the one true way to enjoy the game. I'm a Centrist Ninja, I think any way you enjoy a game is the best way to enjoy it, even if you're a dog. A ninja dog, as some might be.
Even though I lack the requisite amount of skill to play Black on its highest difficulty, I'm more than capable of seeing what the game is going for and respect how technical it is. Look up any boss tutorial and you'll get a sense for how layered and complex Ninja Gaiden's combat can be. It's worth noting that none of the strategies therein actually helped me overcome some of Black's nastiest bosses when applied directly, but they did give me insight into the game's underlying mechanics which allowed me to develop tactics that worked for me. Brute force is seldom the answer, and Black rewards experimentation and thoughtful play, which is appreciable on any level of difficulty.
Unfortunately, I don't think I can jump onboard with the sentiment that this is the best action game ever. The rote reuse of certain bosses on normal difficulties and below can get tiresome, and though you can mitigate this by playing at higher levels, the trade comes at the cost of adding more mobs to boss battles. The few tastes I had of this during my playthrough didn't leave a positive impression, as the increased number of enemies didn't pay nice with the camera. An egregious case of this comes early with the second boss fight, where you have to manage an enemy on horseback running between the two edges of the arena while contending with wizards sniping at you and vanishing.
As the game crept on and abandoned interesting traversal for intense combat challenges in its last two levels, I found my investment waning. In a way, this is true to Ninja Gaiden's NES lineage, because like those games I found myself nearing the end and thinking "yeah I've had enough, I'm good." I understand clawing your way through several small rooms of meaty and tenacious enemies and rolling right into a boss rush is meant to be a true test of your skills, but I personally didn't find the attrition nearly as enjoyable as others. This shouldn't be taken as a full-throated dismissal of the game's combat, which I do like overall, but I did find myself waxing between disengagement and frustration towards the end.
Maybe some of my issues stem from a real bad case of Resident Evil brain for which I'm entering the terminal stages, because I found the parts of Black where you're roaming around and solving puzzles to be the most enjoyable. Yeah, I know, I'm a freak for thinking the combat is secondary to platforming and picking up weird totems to trek back to locked doors a level-and-a-half away. I have to live with myself every day of my life.
It's easy to get lost in the minutia of Ninja Gaiden Black's combat and difficulties, and if you really want to trip headfirst down the rabbit hole, you should check out all the subtle and big differences in Ninja Gaiden's many releases. I actually own a copy of 2004's Ninja Gaiden, which I mistakenly bought thinking it was a totally different game. It was only when I was a breath away from grabbing Sigma under the same assumption that I realized what I'd done, so I just have a spare lying around if anyone wants it. Just post your full address in the comments (DO NOT DO THIS, I WILL DELETE YOUR COMMENT AND SEND YOU A COPY OF AMERICA'S AMY INSTEAD AND IT WILL BE ON YOU FOR TRUSTING ME.)
Some problems inherent to the game and more still that amount to personal taste keep Ninja Gaiden Black from leaving the same impression on me that it does others, but I certainly see why people feel so passionately about it. I eagerly await them telling me how I played the game wrong and am a bastard for it, which is always the best way to get people to enjoy things the same way you do.
First things first: Ninja Gaiden Black looks incredible running on a Series X. There is a level of clarity and sharpness here that you just won't see in most other backwards compatible Xbox games - not unless it's also developed by Team Ninja - and even some 360 games upscaled to 4k don't look nearly as good. You can see every pixel on Rachel, and I know because I've spent hours in the lab analyzing her model. I have access to high-end Digital Foundry tools, and you will not believe the frame graph I've generated for Ryu's crotch-- this technology was NOT intended for these purposes!
Now this is where I out myself as a hack, because I did not beat this game on Ultra Lord-God Ninja mode or whatever the hell Ninja Gaiden Black's most powerful warriors insist is the one true way to enjoy the game. I'm a Centrist Ninja, I think any way you enjoy a game is the best way to enjoy it, even if you're a dog. A ninja dog, as some might be.
Even though I lack the requisite amount of skill to play Black on its highest difficulty, I'm more than capable of seeing what the game is going for and respect how technical it is. Look up any boss tutorial and you'll get a sense for how layered and complex Ninja Gaiden's combat can be. It's worth noting that none of the strategies therein actually helped me overcome some of Black's nastiest bosses when applied directly, but they did give me insight into the game's underlying mechanics which allowed me to develop tactics that worked for me. Brute force is seldom the answer, and Black rewards experimentation and thoughtful play, which is appreciable on any level of difficulty.
Unfortunately, I don't think I can jump onboard with the sentiment that this is the best action game ever. The rote reuse of certain bosses on normal difficulties and below can get tiresome, and though you can mitigate this by playing at higher levels, the trade comes at the cost of adding more mobs to boss battles. The few tastes I had of this during my playthrough didn't leave a positive impression, as the increased number of enemies didn't pay nice with the camera. An egregious case of this comes early with the second boss fight, where you have to manage an enemy on horseback running between the two edges of the arena while contending with wizards sniping at you and vanishing.
As the game crept on and abandoned interesting traversal for intense combat challenges in its last two levels, I found my investment waning. In a way, this is true to Ninja Gaiden's NES lineage, because like those games I found myself nearing the end and thinking "yeah I've had enough, I'm good." I understand clawing your way through several small rooms of meaty and tenacious enemies and rolling right into a boss rush is meant to be a true test of your skills, but I personally didn't find the attrition nearly as enjoyable as others. This shouldn't be taken as a full-throated dismissal of the game's combat, which I do like overall, but I did find myself waxing between disengagement and frustration towards the end.
Maybe some of my issues stem from a real bad case of Resident Evil brain for which I'm entering the terminal stages, because I found the parts of Black where you're roaming around and solving puzzles to be the most enjoyable. Yeah, I know, I'm a freak for thinking the combat is secondary to platforming and picking up weird totems to trek back to locked doors a level-and-a-half away. I have to live with myself every day of my life.
It's easy to get lost in the minutia of Ninja Gaiden Black's combat and difficulties, and if you really want to trip headfirst down the rabbit hole, you should check out all the subtle and big differences in Ninja Gaiden's many releases. I actually own a copy of 2004's Ninja Gaiden, which I mistakenly bought thinking it was a totally different game. It was only when I was a breath away from grabbing Sigma under the same assumption that I realized what I'd done, so I just have a spare lying around if anyone wants it. Just post your full address in the comments (DO NOT DO THIS, I WILL DELETE YOUR COMMENT AND SEND YOU A COPY OF AMERICA'S AMY INSTEAD AND IT WILL BE ON YOU FOR TRUSTING ME.)
Some problems inherent to the game and more still that amount to personal taste keep Ninja Gaiden Black from leaving the same impression on me that it does others, but I certainly see why people feel so passionately about it. I eagerly await them telling me how I played the game wrong and am a bastard for it, which is always the best way to get people to enjoy things the same way you do.
16 Comments
This "I really enjoy the adventure aspects" is very much a thing for me. The rest of the trilogy gets by because the combat itself is a fantastic power fantasy, but they scale back on the adventure portion, and as a result the games just get progressively worse. There are other questionable design choices on both 2 and 3 though.
I've played Sigma 1 and 2 fwiw, don't know how they differ from Black and the original 2.
I've played Sigma 1 and 2 fwiw, don't know how they differ from Black and the original 2.
@gruel I'm not falling for this twice, you already got me to dress up as Gex and I did NOT like Gex 3 any better!
@Artur From what I understand, Sigma is a lot more combat heavy with larger waves of enemies and guts the game of the puzzles present in Black (along with a full level which gets replaced.) I've not played it myself so it's a little hard to say what I'd think of it, but from what I've gleaned, it's probably not the version for me.
@Artur From what I understand, Sigma is a lot more combat heavy with larger waves of enemies and guts the game of the puzzles present in Black (along with a full level which gets replaced.) I've not played it myself so it's a little hard to say what I'd think of it, but from what I've gleaned, it's probably not the version for me.
@Artur yeah, Sigma adds a ton of changes that NGB fans really hate. I would include myself in that camp, as I find the mermen enemies and the motorcycle guys stupid-ass additions, and Ryu's backflip is prone to get you clipped. The Sigma games are mostly defined by changes that make some sense (water level has less swimming, more muramasa shops before hard fights) but other changes that are total head-scratchers.
Yeah I mean I'm not actually a big fan of the 900 year load times whenever I died to Count Dooku or whatever his name was but the bad guys heads explode so like, it's a good game
@gruel and @weatherby fwiw, if you've never played Black, which is my case, you'd absolutely never notice anything different or "wrong". It still felt plenty adventure-esque to me. Sigma 2 however, I could tell something was off, the way they handled weapon upgrades is bizarre.
I do plan on one day playing Black myself
I do plan on one day playing Black myself
@Bocchi_Tard Your copy of America's Amy is on its way!
@MeowPewterMeow I think it's Doku? But my brain kept auto-correcting to Count Dooku, too. The load times weren't too bad for me, not sure if the Series X is speeding that up, but the initial load takes a while and then everything after is fairly snappy. I was more irritated with the whole swim, ninja battle, and safe cracking I had to do every time I ran back up to Alma just to get my ass handed to me.
Yeah I was playing on 360 so it was like, die in 2 seconds, load, pick load save, load, pick my save, load, title screen for the chapter, load, walk through the one room to the boss door, load, skip cutscene.
You played the game wrong and are a bastard for it
@HylianBran I know. I didn't even play it with that new version of the Duke controller. I'm a fake Gamer and I will never recover from this...
@Weatherby what are you talking about?
@Weatherby oh christ. By the way hyperkin sucks ass every hyperkin product I've used is kind of crap. Also people always make fun of the duke but I've never even used one. I've seen a duke at a game store once like a decade ago but I've never touched one. I have three Xbox S controllers but not a single duke. From my experience they are FAR less common and more expensive than the S controllers. Also outside of like launch games like Halo the S controller is pretty much always used in in-game control demonstrations so clearly it was the intended controller for most of the Xbox's life. Just saying, in all my thrifting adventures the S controller comes up every once and a while but never a single Duke.
Kind of a shame that everyone brings up the Duke too because the S controller is pretty damn good. I don't care for the Black and White buttons but otherwise it's got a nice meaty form factor without being unwieldy, pretty good triggers and decent face buttons, great quality sticks and the best dpad of any console after the Saturn. It isn't quite as good as the original circular Sega dpad but its really good in its own right and feels great with arcade games on emulators. Also it is the last controller with an actually good rumble implementation, before rumble became all tinny and weak. The rumble handly beats the gamecube and ps2 in my professional opinion.
Kind of a shame that everyone brings up the Duke too because the S controller is pretty damn good. I don't care for the Black and White buttons but otherwise it's got a nice meaty form factor without being unwieldy, pretty good triggers and decent face buttons, great quality sticks and the best dpad of any console after the Saturn. It isn't quite as good as the original circular Sega dpad but its really good in its own right and feels great with arcade games on emulators. Also it is the last controller with an actually good rumble implementation, before rumble became all tinny and weak. The rumble handly beats the gamecube and ps2 in my professional opinion.
@Artur sigma 2 totally ruins the game. It's really a different game entirely to be honest. Some changes are like understandable quality of life improvements but it's missing most of what makes the game great. The mechanics of ninja Gaiden 2 weren't designed to work in a game like that and, well, it doesn't work. It really is night and day
@HylianBran It's been so long since I've held either a Duke or an S controller, and I only vaguely remember the transition since most of my original Xbox playtime was at a friend's house back in the day. I think there's something very novel about the Duke given its history and I wouldn't mind picking up a "new" Duke for that reason alone, but the brand plus the cost... don't see myself actually going in on it.
gruel
1 month ago