Ninja Gaiden is widely recognized as one of the most difficult games in the history of gaming. The original may be decades old, but it still causes some of the older gamers to remember the endless hours spent trying to pass one single level.

Of course, when its remake and sequels came out more recently, the difficulty was toned down to make the game more appealing to the casual market – but every Ninja Gaiden game has been noticeably more challenging to beat than the majority of other games on the market at the time. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is a remastered version of the original NG2, this time for the PS3.

Gameplay

The game is a lot more different from Ninja Gaiden 2 than you might expect – for one thing, you now have the option of playing “Team Mission Mode”, where you’ll have a partner helping you throughout the game – he/she can either be controlled by a friend of yours, or the computer if you don’t have anyone available. The story has been slightly expanded, with three new chapters revealing more of what happened. You also get to fight against an all-new group of five bosses, and each of the selectable characters actually has their own boss to go up against.

There are new weapons as well, but sadly the upgrade system used to improve their stats has been returned to its limited state we knew from Ninja Gaiden: Black – you can no longer perform unlimited upgrades at each shop, forcing you to more wisely pick what way you want to develop your weapons in. Some of you may be extremely disappointed to find out that they can no longer use the flaming shurikens, as some of the changes in the game’s balance would’ve made them unfair. They do make a cameo appearance in the hands of Ayane, though.

Graphics and System Requirements

One of the most notable aspects of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 are its graphics. The engine has been retooled to fully and properly support 720p HD, which opens up a lot more screenspace for eye candy and special effects. You’ll probably notice the greatly improved lighting system as well, which now creates much more realistic-looking reflections and bumpmaps on the walls.

It’s understandable that the developers would want to improve the game’s looks, considering the capabilities of the PS3′s hardware as opposed to the Xbox 360. They’ve really done their best to push the console as far as possible, and the game looks on par with everything else you can play on the PS3 nowadays.

Other

One of the controversial aspects of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 among fans has been the removal of gore. It’s kind of ironic, seeing as how the presence of gore is normally what sparks controversy these days, but for many fans, NG has always been partly about the stylized violence it offered – and now all of this is pretty much gone, with some pink-ish clouds replacing the blood splatter, and there’s no more permanent dismemberment.

Conclusion

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is an obvious departure from what the previous games offered – and whether it’s for the better or worse is entirely subjective and up to you to decide. Our opinion? Bring on the sword action!

When you hear “ninja” or “zombie” in relation to a video game, you probably immediately make a subconscious association with cliched plots and overused scenarios. And while it’s true that ninjas and zombies as a plot device have been pretty much exhausted nowadays, Ninja Blade combines the two in a rather original mix, showing gamers that there’s still a lot of potential in those ideas, if done right.

Gameplay

The game’s story takes place in the modern world, with an outbreak of a strange, unknown virus causing mutations in those affected by it. Researchers have made attempts to isolate the outbreak and contain the infected ones, but their attempts have failed as it became clear that the virus slowly takes over the body of its host, and drives them into an aggressive fit of rage, killing everyone in their path. Governments all around the world have been doing their best to hide the incident from the public, but as the game’s events begin to unfold, it becomes clear that it’s gone way out of their reach.

You play the role of a modern-day ninja named Ken Ogawa, who’s been tasked with eliminating the threat by terminating all of the infected and putting an end to the source of the virus. The game is played a bit differently than your traditional action, as the fighting is based more on scripted scenes than freeform movement – the result is that while you don’t have such a fine degree of control over your character’s moves, the fights look spectacular and flow very well. There’s also a wide variety of ways for you to approach every situation, so you won’t feel limited by the combat style in the slightest.

Graphics and System Requirements

The combat has been animated very extensively – various famous game designers “donated” some of their ideas for the fight choreography. The main character himself has undergone a long process of creation, according to the game developers – they’ve been working close with Microsoft (who’ve got access to an impressive database of user impressions and desires) to create a character as likable as possible by the mass public; he not only looks lifelike (despite the theme of the game), but also feels like a real human being in his behavior and reactions.

You won’t need that good of a computer to play Ninja Blade though – you’ll be fine with a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB of RAM and at least a GeForce 8300 GS (or its ATi equivalent, the Radeon 9250). The game comes with lots of detail customization options that can make it accessible on even lower-end hardware, though we really advise you to play it on the maximum detail levels – only that way you can truly enjoy the amount of artistic effort thrown in.

Other

One thing we didn’t enjoy very much were the long loading times – or rather, not so much their length but frequency. The game kept stopping to load new data all the time, and this really chopped up the gameplay badly.

Conclusion

If you’ve been craving for a game with a zombie theme but couldn’t find any due to all of the developers’ striving for “originality” nowadays, Ninja Blade will make a refreshing addition to your collection.