One man’s profanity-laden, bloody quest for revenge
How many anonymous baddies has Ryu Hayabusa killed over the years? How many identikit thugs have been cut down by his Dragon Blade? While we await your answers on a postcard, we’ll speculate that the answer is a lot.
But now, one of those victims is back from the dead, and it seems that the cybernetic resurrection process may have knocked a couple of screws loose. Enter new player character Yaiba, a foul-mouthed cyber-ninja with a score to settle.
Your quest for revenge against Ryu forms the basis of Ninja Gaiden Z’s campaign, but anyone eagerly anticipating the precision brawling of Gaiden games past is in for an obnoxiously rude awakening.
Yaiba is a radically different game from its forebears in terms of tone, aesthetics, and gameplay fundamentals. A case in point: Ryu Hayabusa never referred to any of his support staff as ‘sugartits’.
Straight and narrow
» Ryu’s agility enabled you to perform tricky yet satisfying acrobatics in previous Ninja Gaiden games. Here it’s largely QTE-based.
Identity crisis
The Gaiden series has always rewarded considered swordplay, while brutally punishing sloppy play. So, the fact that Yaiba favours gory spectacle over fighting finesse represents another break with tradition. In fact, basic enemies prove little more than katana-fodder.
Series stalwarts might be feeling a little faint at this point, so it’s worth noting that the basic brawling in Ninja Gaiden Z is characteristically quick and pleasingly responsive, while the franchise’s fascination with dismemberment is once again in evidence here.
Unfortunately, it can be hard to keep track of combos in the midst of an undead horde, so button-bashing quickly establishes itself as the path of least resistance.
These pounding bloodbaths suit the game’s maniac tone more than the measured melee of previous Gaiden games. However, we left Yaiba wondering what place puerile gags and a calculatedly crass character had in Ninja Gaiden to begin with.
