When Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden finally released, it was mind-altering. No three-dimensional action game played as well, looked as good, or had its raw scope, and no one in the world was expecting it to deliver as it did. After all, the game had been vaporware for half a decade. Remember when Tecmo announced it as a game for Sega’s Project Katana (the development codename for Dreamcast)? How about when it was supposed to be a Playstation 2 launch title? By the time Team Ninja announced that they’d be releasing it as an Xbox title, I was starting to wonder if the game existed at all. When no screens or video of the game materialized for another three years, it was fair to assume that Gaiden was destined to be little more than trivia fodder. But then February 2004 rolled around and there it was. That month will, in my mind, always be a benchmark in the history of action games. Ninja Gaiden has aged well in four years, its multiple revisions and expansions right through the Playstation 3 remake Ninja Gaiden Sigma proving its foundation to be sturdy and engaging. 3D action games broadly, however, have surpassed it. God of War brought bigger, more exciting environments and enemy confrontations while improving accessibility and even Ninja Gaiden’s immediate forebear Devil May Cry added more depth in its third and fourth entries. Even the lackluster Heavenly Sword took away Ninja Gaiden’s crown as the genre’s most visceral visual spectacle.
I’ve been lukewarm on Ninja Gaiden II since it was announced last year. I couldn’t tell what was wrong. Something about it just seemed so sterile, so rote in comparison to everything else hitting the new wave of consoles. Dynamic limb removal is the big innovation? Really? This is Ninja Gaiden II! Time to redefine 3D action a second time! I realize that’s an unfair expectation to put on a game but it isn’t unfair to expect a modicum of refinement, some change to the established formula that utilizes both hindsight and the power of new technology.
That’s why Ninja Gaiden II is, initially, so disappointing. Everything seems far too familiar. The environments are little more than pretty, simplistic window dressing, corridors to run down but never to interact with. The combat and opponent AI is as fine as ever but outside of having to contend with legless suicide bombers, little has changed. Even the camera that follows the character, too low on the screen and obscuring the action right when a hoard of enemies attack, is seemingly identical to the one in Ninja Gaiden 1. Where have you gone Ninja Gaiden? Is the king dead? I’ve played one-fifth of the full game, leaving eleven full levels of punishing difficulty to work through and a plethora of weapons to discover. But I’m wondering if more combat is all I have to expect. More importantly, should I even expect more than that?