Ninja Blade
A biological attack on Tokyo has turned some of the population into monsters, and it's up to the Japanese Army's elite ninja unite to eliminate the threat. That sounds like the premise for a pretty good game, right?
Well....
Ninjablade's an over the top hack'n'slash a' la Devil May Cry. You've got a fairly wide variety of moves across three main weapons (katana, great sword and twin swords that have wires inside for long ranged attacks), though most of the enemies in the game seem to be minibosses. That's cool, though; bosses are always the most interesting parts of these kinds of games. Combat's cool, but when you kill an enemy he explodes into blood crystals, which you need to power up your weapons. But the crystals fly all over, so you have to chase them if you want them (and often many are lost just because you killed a monster close to the edge of a drop). But if you chase the crystals, you lose your combo, and the higher your combo, the more crystals you get. What do?
What's not cool are QTEs. People still hate them, guys. Ten years later and we don't like them anymore now than back then. But the ones in NB aren't too bad. At least you can lower the QTE difficulty independently of the main difficulty, and if you mess up, the game just rewinds the sequence and lets you do it again without having to reload. If you're going to have QTEs (which you shouldn't, but if you're going to), this is one of the better ways to do it.
Unfortunately the game's riddled with bugs. Sometimes the music stops, some times your twin swords wobble like they're made of plastic. More dire are bugs like one time I was swatted by the first boss (your average giant spider) into a flame filled corner. Being locked by flinching animations, it was impossible to escape, and there was nothing I could do as I went from nearly full health to dead.
So is Ninja Blade a good game? Well, it's hard to give an opinion seeing as how I couldn't get past mission 3 due to a bug that prevented me from grabbing a wall I needed to grab to cross a pit, but I'm going to have to go with no. Some great ideas, even if it is a DMC-style ripoff, but it's just too buggy to enjoy.
Well....
Ninjablade's an over the top hack'n'slash a' la Devil May Cry. You've got a fairly wide variety of moves across three main weapons (katana, great sword and twin swords that have wires inside for long ranged attacks), though most of the enemies in the game seem to be minibosses. That's cool, though; bosses are always the most interesting parts of these kinds of games. Combat's cool, but when you kill an enemy he explodes into blood crystals, which you need to power up your weapons. But the crystals fly all over, so you have to chase them if you want them (and often many are lost just because you killed a monster close to the edge of a drop). But if you chase the crystals, you lose your combo, and the higher your combo, the more crystals you get. What do?
What's not cool are QTEs. People still hate them, guys. Ten years later and we don't like them anymore now than back then. But the ones in NB aren't too bad. At least you can lower the QTE difficulty independently of the main difficulty, and if you mess up, the game just rewinds the sequence and lets you do it again without having to reload. If you're going to have QTEs (which you shouldn't, but if you're going to), this is one of the better ways to do it.
Unfortunately the game's riddled with bugs. Sometimes the music stops, some times your twin swords wobble like they're made of plastic. More dire are bugs like one time I was swatted by the first boss (your average giant spider) into a flame filled corner. Being locked by flinching animations, it was impossible to escape, and there was nothing I could do as I went from nearly full health to dead.
So is Ninja Blade a good game? Well, it's hard to give an opinion seeing as how I couldn't get past mission 3 due to a bug that prevented me from grabbing a wall I needed to grab to cross a pit, but I'm going to have to go with no. Some great ideas, even if it is a DMC-style ripoff, but it's just too buggy to enjoy.