Ninja Gaiden

Genre:	Action/Adventure
Developer:	Team Ninja
Publisher:	Microsoft
Release Date:	2 March 2004
Released On:	Xbox

Amazing Ben Describes the Plot in 10 Words or Less: 

A badass ninja on a mission of vengeance.

Overview: 

Ninja Gaiden is the story of a young ninja named Ryu, even though Andrea seems to think that whenever anyone calls his name it sounds like they're saying "Bill".  Anyways, as Bill The Ninja you are tasked with doing the one thing that ninjas do best, which of course is exacting revenge on those responsible for the destruction of your clan.  That's about it for the story.  You just run around killing people searching for the guy responsible for slaughtering your ninja village.  If that sounds awesome, it is.  Sort of.

Ninja Gaiden represents the ultimate duality of video gaming.  On the one hand it is totally badass and awesome, while on the other it is the biggest pain in the ass video game this side of the original NES version.  Remember how if the Jaquio killed you at the end of the game you had to go all the way back to Stage 5-1?  It's like that ALL THE TIME here.  It's simultaneously utterly kickass and maddeningly frustrating.  I don't recommend it for someone short on patience or perseverance.

Let me emphasize here the fact that Ninja Gaiden is hard as shit.  Seriously.  I know you've probably heard stories about how this is a difficult game or whatever... I had too and just sort of chalked it up to people sucking at games and not being generally as awesome as I am.  However, I can now say that Ninja Gaiden is without a doubt the toughest game I've played on this generation of consoles.  You are continually placed into situations that will kill you eight million times and anger you to the point where you throw the controller and yell, "this fucking game is impossible!", swear off ever playing it again and then of course reload your game about ten seconds later.  From the first level on, every time you face a boss and you're like, "this is the hardest, most impossible battle I've ever encountered.  I cannot imagine any part of a video game being harder than this".  Then you spend two hours beating it only to get to the next room and face an EVEN HARDER battle.  The difficulty of this game starts high and increases exponentially every five minutes until you're so pissed you can break the controller just by squeezing it really really hard.

Sound like fun?  It's not.  It doesn't help that you're supposed to be this total badass ninja with a kickass sword and all these awesome attack moves, but you keep getting beat down by lesser ninjas and soldiers and monsters and pretty much anything that you meet.  The first time through this game I was cursing the name of Bill The Ninja for being such a damn pussy that everything beat the crap out of him.  I mean, he looks cool and has wicked moves, but a backflip slash attack doesn't help you when you're getting gang banged from all sides by giant dinosaurs.  It's frustrating to the point that when I finally beat the game last week I swore I never even wanted to look at it again.

Then I picked it up yesterday, and came to an interesting realization.  Going back to the beginning after having played all the way through, I found that I was kicking the asses of the first levels and taking names.  I beat the first six levels without dying once.  I was like the unstoppable killing machine I was expecting to be the first time through.  It was at this point that I realized that the game didn't suck, but instead I just sucked at playing it.  In order to avoid continually getting my ass beat, I was forced to get so much better at controlling the character and fighting monsters that the second time through it wasn't nearly as frustrating.  I had finally become the ninja I had aspired to be.  So just keep that in mind after the first boss in the game kills you for the seventh time in a row.

X-Tremeness Level: 

Dressing up like a ninja for Halloween and then sprinting face-first into a tree, flying through the air and landing on top of a fire hydrant while a car full of babes laugh at you.

Overall Badassitude Score: 

This game doesn't really start kicking ass until you figure out the delicate intricacies of Bill's moveset.  Once you get the hang of it though, you'll find yourself decapitating anything that's even remotely human-shaped, flipping around like a crazy ninja and beating asses everywhere you can find them with everything from ninja stars to swords to nunchucks.  Shit, you even use anti-tank rounds from a bow and arrow to blow up an Apache helicopter.  Bill doesn't talk much, which is pretty much all you can ask for from a ninja, and there are some pretty badass FMVs throughout the game.  The story is passable, and there's even a scantily-clad super omega hot babe who shows up every once in a while for good measure.

      

SCORE:  4 out of a possible 5 shuriken throwing stars.

Addictiveness: 

RATING:  Trying to ollie a huge set of stairs on a skateboard.

You know you're going to fail painfully and miserably, but the sheer challenge of it combined with the slight chance of looking totally awesome is enough to make you keep trying it.

Multiplayer Component: 

Your friends laugh at you while you die every ten seconds.

Hot Andrea's Take: 

"Are you fucking kidding me?  Your guy's name is Bill?  Bill The Ninja?"

Awesometer Score: 

+3

The graphics and the sound are awesome, the difficulty is VERY high, and the ninja is badass.  However, maybe I'm a pussy or not a hardcore player or something, but I just like games that don't make me their bitch on such a consistent basis.