Well, i've been working on this for the past couple of days, its a bit long (roughly 2280 words or so), but it should all be correctly spelt (typed up on word, and proofread a few times), and I think i've made all the major points well enough, this is my first review, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated 
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Isn?t it funny how much certain historical groups can be romanticised by the media? Take ninjas; historically regarded as a group first written about in 15th century feudal Japan; said group?s function would basically consist of espionage, infiltration, sabotage, hell, even a fair bit of assassination thrown in as part of the package if that?s what you needed doing. Now, such tactics were regarded as dishonourable by the big old book of ?how to be a Samurai? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido], so the ninjas would basically be hired to do the dirty work that was beneath the typical samurai warrior. So, we?re dealing with a group of sneaky mercenaries, hardly the kind of folks you picture riding forth on mighty steeds to rescue the world from some ancient evil. Depending on who?s viewpoint you?ll listen to, things get worse; when one of the main parts of your job consists of walking up to someone in the street and stabbing them for a few coins, you?re hardly doing the sort of profession kids aspire to at young ages.
Teacher: So Jim, what do you want to be when you?re older?
Child: I want to be a fireman!
Teacher: And you Frank?
Other Child: I want to slit people?s throats for minimum wage!
One can almost smell the media shitstorm and years of psychotherapy from here...
Given all of this, one can only marvel at the pure tenacity the higher-ups in the media world have shown in turning such an undesirable archetype of character into some sort of Superman garbed in black leather and pure awesome; who needs to commit quick assassinations when they can defy physics for kicks and break mountains with their teeth, who needs to kill for money or food when you fight for CLAN HONOUR and need nowt but the tears of their fallen rivals (who will invariably be other ninjas, ones who have resorted to DISHONOURABLE tactics, and are clearly the bad guys as a result) for sustenance, who needs to fight alongside samurai when you can have holy temples on top of mountains where you?re can?t swing a cat without hitting some ancient artefact of unimaginable might. In short, the practitioners of ninjutsu have received the kind of massive PR boost that makes Nelson Mandela look like Skeletor by comparison. Predictably, such a move has resulted in an assortment of games focussing on the Ninjas=Awesome ethos, one of which is the Ninja Gaiden series.
So, with just over 400 words of build up out of the way, let?s say hello to Ryu Hayabusa.
As you can see, Ryu is a ninja, of course, he doesn?t stab people in alleyways, oh no; how could they market him to the animephilles that way? Clearly, he fights for his clan honour, and to retrieve some highly important artefact from the clutches of evil throughout his adventures*, and all that?s standing between him and this simple objective in this particular game is your standard generic rival clan leader who refuses to accept defeat and his numberless legion of evil ninjas, who as the game progresses, seem to take it as a challenge to completely undermine the entire concept of bushido, and to do it with as much heavy weaponry as they can carry. You also have the standard assortment of daemons and bigger daemons thrown in, alongside some slightly more unconventional choices, such as the wolf people you fight in the Venice-style level, or the ninja-snake robot hybrids that look as though they came from the tortured mind of H.R.Geiger himself.
Oh, and the ninja dogs. Who could forget them?
Now, I think it?s fair to say that the plot is a complete load of bollocks; the cutscenes do little to assuage this viewpoint, existing solely to have Ryu helicoptered from one location to the other by the CIA agent/Stripogram you rescue in the tutorial level, so the game can show off its fancy gothic castles and waterway levels at the same time as point out just how much effort was put into making sure the female sidekick?s anatomical structure was as unrealistic and jiggly as humanly possible (in fact, it?s probably that she spends most of her time either in a seat or lying on the floor that?s saved her back from breaking under the enormous pressure its under). In the defence of the game, the levels, with the exception of some decidedly mediocre sections, are fairly pretty to look at, and serve as a nice backdrop for when you?re slicing and dicing anything that breathes, and a few things that don?t for good measure. However, for those who heard this level?s particular boss give his big dramatic speech prior and had to turn off the game before getting to the next checkpoint, sitting through it again is hardly the most interesting thing in the world, and will often leave you begging for a skip button so you can just get on with tearing this particular preacher of ?humans are worms? [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NietzscheWannabe] a new back end.
The enemies in Ninja Gaiden 2 make up a pretty solid mix for the most part; initially you?ll find yourself fighting against Ninjas of the Black Spider Clan, your typical silver medallists whose leader decided making pacts with the daemonic was the quickest and easiest route to outclassing their rivals, the clan that Ryu hails from, but as time goes on you start to fight the minions of the Greater fiends, who pit their own mini armies against you, and various other assorted foes who seem to have been thrown in by the makers of the game to ensure a nice mix of fighting styles required (or failing that, judicious use of flying swallow it would seem). You?ll also get an assortment of mini-bosses and bosses as the game goes on, ranging from those which require a fair amount of skill at the game (those times you fight the Black Spider Clan leader, Genshin, are pretty solid examples of this, as most of the moves one could easily dispatch standard enemies and keep you away from harm don?t work on him, instead forcing you to know how to block and dodge to have any hope at victory) to those that loosen up on you a bit, and give you a marginally easier ride. Don?t get me wrong, it?s still a pretty difficult game, even on the lower settings (It is Ninja Gaiden after all), but it?s safe to say if you?ve played through the first of the Xbox games, you?ll find this one a fair bit easier (although there are a couple of big problems with the game, which I?ll go onto a bit later).
The combat this time around has taken a noticeable turn for the bloody; enemy limbs go flying through the air, and the aforementioned red liquid spurts out like a fountain, going on Ryu?s sword, the floor, and on occasion, over invisible barriers in the level, leaving a splodge of red hanging in mid-air, although to be fair to the makers, with the amount of the stuff flying around in the middle of one of Ryu?s little dances of death, it seems fairly unavoidable. The combat is, in my opinion, the best thing about Ninja Gaiden 2; you get a varied assortment of different weapons for different styles, and although the game offers achievements for going through the entire thing using just one of the weapons each time, you?ll find that the best way to survive in this game is to keep an assortment of different weapons handy (you?ll also find, on the lower difficulties at least, that going through the game only upgrading one of the weapons to its higher stages leaves you with a massive surplus of the currency of choice for this game, which given there?s a limit of 3 maximum for the healing items, and that you tend to find refills for the projectile weaponry conveniently placed just before the room with the big flying gribblies from that little corner of hell Dante forgot to write about decide to make their big appearance, means you?ll get no real use out of it unless you decide to go through the whole game again, keeping all your upgrades and abilities and generally just using this run through as an opportunity to dick around with the freshly unlocked old movie filter on, acting as though you?re the main star in your own Ninja movie, (which is actually pretty fun, it must be said)). This leads me neatly onto what I believe to be Ninja Gaiden 2?s biggest strength; the style with which its presented. Everything the modern ninja can do, Ryu can do better; he?ll run across water, jump from wall to wall, fire projectiles on the go with surprising accuracy, and more. The new obliteration moves allow you to commit a speed kill on a heavily damaged enemy, by which, I mean an enemy whose arm or leg you?ve just chopped off. Said speed kills involve a few second animation in which Ryu chops off any other limbs still attached to his unfortunate foe before beheading them (there are a few different animations that?ll be shown, although there is one that seems to show up somewhat more often than the others), before resuming combat with anyone else. It?s a nice touch in my opinion, as is the effect having a limb cut off does to the opponent; ninjas with one leg will crawl towards you, seemingly shrugging off the wound as if they were the black knight himself, projectile firing foes with one arm have to drop their ranged weapon and go at you with a sword, and a wolf man with one arm is a very pissed off fellow indeed, it all works together really well, and you may find yourself on occasion deciding that it?s better that enemy is momentarily incapacitated rather than topped off so his 4-limbed mate can appear in his place (the tests of valour being the main example of this).
Of course, this game is far from perfect, being let down by a couple of major annoyances. Firstly, around about half way through the second third of the game, the enemies, who were a fair challenge up until then, start to seem pretty cheap; the ninja mechs you encounter (you read that right) will often attack in groups of two or three, and the basic ninjas steadily get upgraded, from the guys with a sword and occasionally a bow from the first part of the game, you?re suddenly dealing with ninja?s wielding machineguns, and ninjas with rocket launchers that end up firing something like 9 rockets at you at a time, considering the level prior to this featured the fairly strong, but straightforward enough to beat provided you use speed to your advantage Wolf men, suddenly being faced with enemies who now completely outrank you in terms of projectile firepower and force you to get up close and personal, all the while avoiding weapons fired with the kind of accuracy you?d expect from an end of level boss rather than a faceless minion just ends up feeling like a cheap shot (don?t even get me started on the bosses that blow up after you kill them and need to be blocked so you survive, whose genius idea was that?) . Of course, any ill feeling on difficulty spikes is immediately multiplied by the camera; often you?ll find yourself staring at a corner despite your best intentions, and given the aforementioned increase in accurate and powerful projectile weaponry, you?ll probably find most the damage you take is from enemies you can?t even see, more often than not, forcing you into repeatedly using certain moves simply so you can see whats going on and even the playing field a little bit after you just lost half your health whilst your camera was admiring some stonework. considering the first Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was actually pretty good at making sure any deaths you suffered were justified, the bad camera and uneven curve of difficulty (the game gets easier to deal with at the end incidentally) just feels like shoddiness on Team Ninja?s part, especially when it contrasts with the general good show displayed by the rest of the game as a whole.
There are other parts I?d like to mention, but at over two thousand words, I feel I should probably wrap this review up with the ending ?buy or not??; On the whole, I enjoyed the game, the fun combat and challenging yet for the most part accessible difficulty made up for a lot of the shortcomings (although I do hope they fix the camera if they?re going to make another one, get rid of the exploding bosses as well, nothing says ?fuck you? from the game quite like killing a boss then dying yourself for having the nerve to assume the battle was over when the thing you fought had stopped living...), and I feel there?s a fair bit of replay value in pushing yourself to complete the higher difficulties, or even just messing around on new game+, it?s nice to see such a feature introduced in a game and not completely break it. But yes, if you liked the older games, or simply wish to play a fun yet challenging game and are willing to sacrifice effective storytelling and well rounded characters for good old fashioned ?kill everything, and do it with style? gameplay, then this game is for you.
Buy It
*occasionally he?ll mix things up a bit and give a few large-chested women a slap in a tournament in the middle of his noble search, as you do.
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hmm, for some reason, all the apostrophes show up funny in the preview, anyone know why this is? never mind, all turns out fine on the post by the looks of things .
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Isn?t it funny how much certain historical groups can be romanticised by the media? Take ninjas; historically regarded as a group first written about in 15th century feudal Japan; said group?s function would basically consist of espionage, infiltration, sabotage, hell, even a fair bit of assassination thrown in as part of the package if that?s what you needed doing. Now, such tactics were regarded as dishonourable by the big old book of ?how to be a Samurai? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido], so the ninjas would basically be hired to do the dirty work that was beneath the typical samurai warrior. So, we?re dealing with a group of sneaky mercenaries, hardly the kind of folks you picture riding forth on mighty steeds to rescue the world from some ancient evil. Depending on who?s viewpoint you?ll listen to, things get worse; when one of the main parts of your job consists of walking up to someone in the street and stabbing them for a few coins, you?re hardly doing the sort of profession kids aspire to at young ages.
Teacher: So Jim, what do you want to be when you?re older?
Child: I want to be a fireman!
Teacher: And you Frank?
Other Child: I want to slit people?s throats for minimum wage!
One can almost smell the media shitstorm and years of psychotherapy from here...
Given all of this, one can only marvel at the pure tenacity the higher-ups in the media world have shown in turning such an undesirable archetype of character into some sort of Superman garbed in black leather and pure awesome; who needs to commit quick assassinations when they can defy physics for kicks and break mountains with their teeth, who needs to kill for money or food when you fight for CLAN HONOUR and need nowt but the tears of their fallen rivals (who will invariably be other ninjas, ones who have resorted to DISHONOURABLE tactics, and are clearly the bad guys as a result) for sustenance, who needs to fight alongside samurai when you can have holy temples on top of mountains where you?re can?t swing a cat without hitting some ancient artefact of unimaginable might. In short, the practitioners of ninjutsu have received the kind of massive PR boost that makes Nelson Mandela look like Skeletor by comparison. Predictably, such a move has resulted in an assortment of games focussing on the Ninjas=Awesome ethos, one of which is the Ninja Gaiden series.
So, with just over 400 words of build up out of the way, let?s say hello to Ryu Hayabusa.
As you can see, Ryu is a ninja, of course, he doesn?t stab people in alleyways, oh no; how could they market him to the animephilles that way? Clearly, he fights for his clan honour, and to retrieve some highly important artefact from the clutches of evil throughout his adventures*, and all that?s standing between him and this simple objective in this particular game is your standard generic rival clan leader who refuses to accept defeat and his numberless legion of evil ninjas, who as the game progresses, seem to take it as a challenge to completely undermine the entire concept of bushido, and to do it with as much heavy weaponry as they can carry. You also have the standard assortment of daemons and bigger daemons thrown in, alongside some slightly more unconventional choices, such as the wolf people you fight in the Venice-style level, or the ninja-snake robot hybrids that look as though they came from the tortured mind of H.R.Geiger himself.
Oh, and the ninja dogs. Who could forget them?
Now, I think it?s fair to say that the plot is a complete load of bollocks; the cutscenes do little to assuage this viewpoint, existing solely to have Ryu helicoptered from one location to the other by the CIA agent/Stripogram you rescue in the tutorial level, so the game can show off its fancy gothic castles and waterway levels at the same time as point out just how much effort was put into making sure the female sidekick?s anatomical structure was as unrealistic and jiggly as humanly possible (in fact, it?s probably that she spends most of her time either in a seat or lying on the floor that?s saved her back from breaking under the enormous pressure its under). In the defence of the game, the levels, with the exception of some decidedly mediocre sections, are fairly pretty to look at, and serve as a nice backdrop for when you?re slicing and dicing anything that breathes, and a few things that don?t for good measure. However, for those who heard this level?s particular boss give his big dramatic speech prior and had to turn off the game before getting to the next checkpoint, sitting through it again is hardly the most interesting thing in the world, and will often leave you begging for a skip button so you can just get on with tearing this particular preacher of ?humans are worms? [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NietzscheWannabe] a new back end.
The enemies in Ninja Gaiden 2 make up a pretty solid mix for the most part; initially you?ll find yourself fighting against Ninjas of the Black Spider Clan, your typical silver medallists whose leader decided making pacts with the daemonic was the quickest and easiest route to outclassing their rivals, the clan that Ryu hails from, but as time goes on you start to fight the minions of the Greater fiends, who pit their own mini armies against you, and various other assorted foes who seem to have been thrown in by the makers of the game to ensure a nice mix of fighting styles required (or failing that, judicious use of flying swallow it would seem). You?ll also get an assortment of mini-bosses and bosses as the game goes on, ranging from those which require a fair amount of skill at the game (those times you fight the Black Spider Clan leader, Genshin, are pretty solid examples of this, as most of the moves one could easily dispatch standard enemies and keep you away from harm don?t work on him, instead forcing you to know how to block and dodge to have any hope at victory) to those that loosen up on you a bit, and give you a marginally easier ride. Don?t get me wrong, it?s still a pretty difficult game, even on the lower settings (It is Ninja Gaiden after all), but it?s safe to say if you?ve played through the first of the Xbox games, you?ll find this one a fair bit easier (although there are a couple of big problems with the game, which I?ll go onto a bit later).
The combat this time around has taken a noticeable turn for the bloody; enemy limbs go flying through the air, and the aforementioned red liquid spurts out like a fountain, going on Ryu?s sword, the floor, and on occasion, over invisible barriers in the level, leaving a splodge of red hanging in mid-air, although to be fair to the makers, with the amount of the stuff flying around in the middle of one of Ryu?s little dances of death, it seems fairly unavoidable. The combat is, in my opinion, the best thing about Ninja Gaiden 2; you get a varied assortment of different weapons for different styles, and although the game offers achievements for going through the entire thing using just one of the weapons each time, you?ll find that the best way to survive in this game is to keep an assortment of different weapons handy (you?ll also find, on the lower difficulties at least, that going through the game only upgrading one of the weapons to its higher stages leaves you with a massive surplus of the currency of choice for this game, which given there?s a limit of 3 maximum for the healing items, and that you tend to find refills for the projectile weaponry conveniently placed just before the room with the big flying gribblies from that little corner of hell Dante forgot to write about decide to make their big appearance, means you?ll get no real use out of it unless you decide to go through the whole game again, keeping all your upgrades and abilities and generally just using this run through as an opportunity to dick around with the freshly unlocked old movie filter on, acting as though you?re the main star in your own Ninja movie, (which is actually pretty fun, it must be said)). This leads me neatly onto what I believe to be Ninja Gaiden 2?s biggest strength; the style with which its presented. Everything the modern ninja can do, Ryu can do better; he?ll run across water, jump from wall to wall, fire projectiles on the go with surprising accuracy, and more. The new obliteration moves allow you to commit a speed kill on a heavily damaged enemy, by which, I mean an enemy whose arm or leg you?ve just chopped off. Said speed kills involve a few second animation in which Ryu chops off any other limbs still attached to his unfortunate foe before beheading them (there are a few different animations that?ll be shown, although there is one that seems to show up somewhat more often than the others), before resuming combat with anyone else. It?s a nice touch in my opinion, as is the effect having a limb cut off does to the opponent; ninjas with one leg will crawl towards you, seemingly shrugging off the wound as if they were the black knight himself, projectile firing foes with one arm have to drop their ranged weapon and go at you with a sword, and a wolf man with one arm is a very pissed off fellow indeed, it all works together really well, and you may find yourself on occasion deciding that it?s better that enemy is momentarily incapacitated rather than topped off so his 4-limbed mate can appear in his place (the tests of valour being the main example of this).
Of course, this game is far from perfect, being let down by a couple of major annoyances. Firstly, around about half way through the second third of the game, the enemies, who were a fair challenge up until then, start to seem pretty cheap; the ninja mechs you encounter (you read that right) will often attack in groups of two or three, and the basic ninjas steadily get upgraded, from the guys with a sword and occasionally a bow from the first part of the game, you?re suddenly dealing with ninja?s wielding machineguns, and ninjas with rocket launchers that end up firing something like 9 rockets at you at a time, considering the level prior to this featured the fairly strong, but straightforward enough to beat provided you use speed to your advantage Wolf men, suddenly being faced with enemies who now completely outrank you in terms of projectile firepower and force you to get up close and personal, all the while avoiding weapons fired with the kind of accuracy you?d expect from an end of level boss rather than a faceless minion just ends up feeling like a cheap shot (don?t even get me started on the bosses that blow up after you kill them and need to be blocked so you survive, whose genius idea was that?) . Of course, any ill feeling on difficulty spikes is immediately multiplied by the camera; often you?ll find yourself staring at a corner despite your best intentions, and given the aforementioned increase in accurate and powerful projectile weaponry, you?ll probably find most the damage you take is from enemies you can?t even see, more often than not, forcing you into repeatedly using certain moves simply so you can see whats going on and even the playing field a little bit after you just lost half your health whilst your camera was admiring some stonework. considering the first Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was actually pretty good at making sure any deaths you suffered were justified, the bad camera and uneven curve of difficulty (the game gets easier to deal with at the end incidentally) just feels like shoddiness on Team Ninja?s part, especially when it contrasts with the general good show displayed by the rest of the game as a whole.
There are other parts I?d like to mention, but at over two thousand words, I feel I should probably wrap this review up with the ending ?buy or not??; On the whole, I enjoyed the game, the fun combat and challenging yet for the most part accessible difficulty made up for a lot of the shortcomings (although I do hope they fix the camera if they?re going to make another one, get rid of the exploding bosses as well, nothing says ?fuck you? from the game quite like killing a boss then dying yourself for having the nerve to assume the battle was over when the thing you fought had stopped living...), and I feel there?s a fair bit of replay value in pushing yourself to complete the higher difficulties, or even just messing around on new game+, it?s nice to see such a feature introduced in a game and not completely break it. But yes, if you liked the older games, or simply wish to play a fun yet challenging game and are willing to sacrifice effective storytelling and well rounded characters for good old fashioned ?kill everything, and do it with style? gameplay, then this game is for you.
Buy It
*occasionally he?ll mix things up a bit and give a few large-chested women a slap in a tournament in the middle of his noble search, as you do.
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