Category: high school

My last and final post about Ninja Gaiden. Seriously. I won’t bother you any more about it. Definately.

I beat the game, cming in at under 50 hours. Ending boss was easy, thankfully. My impressions of the game from beginning to end have changed, though. The fighting with normal enemies is always awesome, never changes during the game, just gets cooler and harder with the more weapons and combos you get.

-The game starts off weak, the first 2 levels are fun, but really repetitive, because you have next to no combos, and just one weapon. The game doesn’t truly become fun until level 7, so it takes a while to really begin enjoying the game.

-The linearity issues are also solved in once you pass chapter 3 – you eventually come to complex cities and dungeons, and you move past the simplicity.

-However, certain things do not come out in enough quantity. The most prominent of these being puzzles. There was only one true puzzle. And it really didn’t last too long. It is, after all, and adventure game, and needs to make use of the logistic abilities the XBox gives it.

-Another thing – certain enemies have attacks which are overused and unblockable. This eventually becomes an extreme frustration, dealing with infinitely regenerating enemies which you can’t stop. These don’t really show up till late in the game, but they end up making the game annoying, not hard. Once you figure out which weapon to deal them off with, it’s not so bad, but it still has its issues.

-Yet another problem I faced was with the bosses. Some of them were too easy, and yet some were too hard. Few of them really made sense in the chain of bosses, from easy to hard, though few bosses are truly easy. The easy bosses were ones they forgot to make a defense for one of two things – a charge attack dealing massive damage, and shurikans. Shurikans come in infinite supply, and if you get the boomerang shurikan, you can just throw infinitely, even against some bosses. This makes for a really lame way to get past, and usually is the only real way to get past without taking too much damage.

-The final and last grievance I had was with the ranged weapons. That category came to be the least used and pretty much, a bore. Shurikans are cool, and stay that way throughout the entire game. Their only real use comes in delaying enemies, but they are cool. Then you have the windmill shurikan, basically a boomerang. This would be cool if it had any range. But it doesn’t, so you rarely end up using it. Only time I ever truly used it was to lame a few bosses. Then you have the bow. This is my true problem. It comes out to be very little use, and doesn’t really do much for you. To aim first person, you risk killing yourself, but otherwise, you may not hit the target, and considering you can only carry 15 arrows of each type, you gotta save arrows. They have two other types – AFPDS Cores, and Explosve arrows. The Cores are just uber arrows, dealing huge damage, not really that great, because any enemy you might wanna use it on will get you before you can fire. Just kind of annoying.

These were my negative impressions ONLY, and I listed all of them. The game was awesome, it’s in the top 10 in my list. I’m playing it through once more to get more weapons and stuff.

On to stuff other than Ninja Gaiden. I’ve been having a pretty calm week so far. Nothing much has really rocked my world or anything, but the Snow Day on Wednesday was a pleasant surprise. I wish I had gotten it today, being tired and all, oh well. And somehow, I feel as if I’ve written this before….odd…off to go read comics…

Well, nothing of any huge importance has happened….except….I BOUGHT NINJA GAIDEN!

*cough*

It’s an awesome game, it really is. It’s really fast paced, and you really only stop when you die, which I only do on bosses. It’s a really hard game to play, because you’re quickly forced to use ALL the controls before you even fight the second boss. Basically, there’s a bunch of different ways to attack. Single pressing-wise, you’ve got one normal attack button, and one ‘essence’ or strong attack button. You also have a button for an auto-aimed ranged attack, and a buton for jumping a button for camera control (two, actually) and one for blocking. It seems really simple, no? But you have to utilize all of them simultaneously, because you’re usually fighting groups of three guys. One thing they mastered really well is having fun just KILLING people. There’s so many ways to do it! If I actually knew how to do it, there’s a way to kill 3 guys at once, and they all die simultaneously, it’s really cool. The ranged attacks are a bit weird to use, though. With the shuriken you don’t have to stop to throw them, but they do like no damage, and the only real purpose is to stop a guy for 1 second, which helps. At the moment, the only other ranged weapon I have is the bow. Problem is, you have to stop and shoot, and it really makes it useless for real combat.

Another thing they did well was the wall effects. In a lot of other games (JK2, JKA, Splinter Cell), tricks off walls were really pretty useless, and you only used them once or twice in the game. But not here. Walls are an invaluable tool for dodging and getting around. It’s just awesome to run into a room, jump off a wall, jump on a guy, land behind him, and own the noob. The game is a lot harder than that though. The bosses are all REALLY hard, and money isn’t a plentiful source for getting potions. At the moment, I’m only on the fourth stage because the first two days I had it, I was stuck on one boss.

As for the bad parts: it’s kinda linear. You basically go into a room, kill people, and go into the next, with maybe some side rooms with more dudes or items or something like that. There’s not a lot of options for where you can go. Another thing is the possibility of not actually being able to prevent your own death. Most games have a thing where for about .2 seconds, you can’t be hit after being attacked. Not this. Ninja Gaiden is completely real-time, and while this makes for an awesome but hard fighting experience, it can be kind of lame. If I just get knocked into the air by an explosion, all my enemies have free reign on me till I roll back up. The blocking mechanism is good, but it only covers, maybe a 100-120 degree range, so if you roll the wrong way, and happen to face the wrong way, there’s not a thing you can do.

Whoops. I accidentally wrote a little game review there. Hehe. 😀

Anyways, that’s been a lot of fun. My dad brought the TV back, so I was playing in my room last night, not upstairs in the den. Tonight comes the ski-o-ree, which should be interesting, considering theres no snow outside. Hopefully it will be good.