Well let me get this out of the way by saying will Tomonobu Itagaki please crank out the sequel to Ninja Gaiden already. I mean when is enough enough? This is the second remake of a three year old game. I mean it seems like Tecmo asks for a remake every time they foresee themselves in a fiscal crisis. Now that that\'s out of the way lets get to the game.
Story:
Ninja Gaiden Sigma is what you would call a revenge quest. At the start of the game professional ninja Ryu Hayabusa is more or less just doing a training exercise by raiding the stronghold of Murai, when before he gets a chance to finish up his conversation with Murai the nunchaku-wielding wall of muscle his hometown is being burned to the ground. The assailants are part of the Vigoor Empire who is in search of the Dark Dragon Blade, which is being guarded by the Hayabusa clan.
In his attempt to protect the divine blade he comes across Doku. In a fight to the death Ryu loses...quickly, but luckily Ryu is revived (by a hawk). After this Ryu dons a leather S&M ninja outfit and straps on his instrument of head removal known as the Dragon Sword. He sets out to reclaim his property and truly dismember anybody that gets in his way.
In the original Ninja Gaiden, the story made little sense and in Sigma it still doesn\'t but some holes get filled in when you play as Rachel. You tag along as her during her search for her sister Alma and you also see how she gets captured by Doku and along this process you open up a couple of new boss battles.
Gameplay:
The core appeal of Ninja Gaiden is it\'s hardcore, tough as nails, better be on your toes always precision combat. In this game if you\'re picking it up for the first time you will get your butt skinned, marinated, cooked and served to you with a side of French fries if you don\'t know what you\'re doing, and that\'s on Normal. When it first came out I heard stories about people not making it past the first boss and then some people not even getting past the third stage. If you button mash and don\'t get a sense for the combos this will be your fate. Once you start getting a good grasp of the game you\'ll relish in the combat.
Ryu is a rather athletic and powerful ninja with the ability to run up and across walls like the Prince from the Prince Of Persia games, but he\'s a lot more deadly. Just imagine yourself hearing the spawning of demons right before you turn a corner, you run across the wall and you see them in a rather appropriate line and right before you leave the wall run you jump off with your sword in hand and in that leap you take off their heads, with their heads spiraling in mid-air your feet touch the ground right before the heads. It\'s really adrenaline filled, but this does not mean that your enemies are limp wristed pansies.
Until you get a good grasp of the multiple weapons, what they\'re effective against and the attack patterns of the enemies nothing should be taken lightly. For the most part I can skewer anything in the game minus those blasted cats, giant red lizards and ghost fish. There\'s a lot of stuff on Hard and up that I haven\'t seen yet so I know that I\'ll get whooped when I run into them. And just when you learn how to dispense ownage on the regular enemies you then have to worry about the bosses.
My god the bosses, for those of you that got stuck on Murai are in for a very rude awakening. Until you learn the patterns and figure out how to exploit them you\'ll be hung up on them for a while. The one\'s that are really responsible for this are Alma, Doku, Alma\'s second form and Spirit Doku. The rest before these aren\'t cakewalks, but they\'re easier than these. The ones after and the final bosses are pushovers by comparison.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma isn\'t just a graphical update either. In Sigma you also get to fight the green trench coat wearing detective Gamov. He\'s speedy and hard to hit with a straight blow. He\'s armed with two guns for distance and knives for close range and he even lifts a move from Dante from the Devil May Cry games. You also get to play as Rachel, which to be honest isn\'t as fun as playing with Ryu. Rachel is a lot slower and not as acrobatic as Ryu (I guess it\'s because of the rack) and the only weapon she has is the War Hammer and some wrist whip, which isn\'t that effective unless you catch an enemy while he\'s standing still or stunned.
Rachel is really powerful, but to balance it she\'s slow so you\'ll spend some time blocking and hoping to find an opening. I mostly just block, roll, counter or just jump off a wall and smash them overhead. She also has a cool decapitation move where she rolls over his shoulder and catches his head in between the blade part of the hammer and pulls off his head. She also has a cool move where she hits the enemy twice with the hammer kicks him up, jumps up and throws him to the ground with the hammer. Rachel isn\'t terrible, but she\'s really a limited character that upsets the speedy flow of the game.
Sigma also adds an additional weapon or should I say "weapons." Now Ryu can use Tigers Claw and Dragons Fang, which is a set of twin katanas that are almost as big as Ryu himself. These things are fast and really powerful. For the most part after I got them I used them almost exclusively unless the situation and enemies didn\'t require them. If you\'re good with the Dragon Sword these two swords will work pretty well for you. The combos are different and do a lot of damage and are pretty effective when getting attacked from multiple sides. It\'s also highly effective against bosses. When I came at Doku with it he didn\'t know what happened to him; I came in and left his broken dark armored corpse stuttering on the floor.
Aside from those additions they also changed around item placement making those that memorized everything a little lost at times. For starters if you know where the Lunar staff is, which is normally on stage two. In Sigma you\'re not going to find it until stage four, which I didn\'t know. I didn\'t stumble upon it until like stage 15 or 16 when you finally revisit that area again.
Now it\'s time to air out what they should\'ve changed. For a second remake you would think that they would\'ve finally gotten the camera right, but they didn\'t. It\'ll still leave you with blind angles of doom and for a game where the action is constant it don\'t help. You won\'t see the enemy or even see where an attack is coming from. Sometimes you won\'t even see yourself and this is just unforgivable. The game is still just an unpolished game platforming wise. Yes the wall running is cool, but the jumping is just frustrating when you don\'t have to do it for combat purposes. You have to be spot on with your jumps and you\'re still prone to over jumping if you\'re not careful. It even landed me into hot water after a boss battle. It was the one right after the fire dragon and you have to jump on him to use him as a bridge. I guess I under jumped and landed in lava, I jumped out onto a wing and tried to jump on the body, I kept landing in the lava and it almost killed me, and my health bar was full beforehand. And I think it\'s funny that a ninja that can take out a tank and a giant flame dragon can\'t grab onto a ledge while jumping, Wanderer from Shadow of the Colossus could grab a ledge while jumping. For the most part Ninja Gaiden Sigma is an excellent, but challenging...very challenging game with some flaws that should\'ve been addressed.
Graphics:
Oh my god this game is nice looking. For anybody that still believes that it looks identical to the Xbox version needs to lie off of the psychotropic drugs. The level of detail really just pops off of the characters. The characters aren\'t human in their textures because of that Team Ninja plastic sheen they seem to give to their characters, but the game is great looking. From the lacing of Ryu\'s arm guards to the spikes on Rachel\'s shoulder armor. The creatures and enemies look better. One character that looks drastically different are the incendiary shuriken hurling black ninjas that you come against. They\'re bigger and a lot more foreboding looking then they originally did.
For some odd reason there seems to have more breast physics (that\'s what the Cell is there for). You even notice that Rachel\'s boobs bounce when nothings really happening to her, even Alma\'s boobs bounce. The blood seems to splatter on the floor in a weird way. Sometimes you\'ll notice the blood splotching upward when it\'s on the floor, but it\'s being really nit-picky. My only real complaint seems to come from the recycling of the original FMV\'s. It seems to be a really cheap move especially because the new in game models are really vibrant looking and are filled with a lot of color so seeing them redone would\'ve been a treat. For the most part the game runs at 60 frames per second, I think it only dipped below that three times so for the most part it\'s pretty solid. It\'ll only go below if there is an insane amount of action happening on screen.
Sound:
I\'ve never complained about the music in Ninja Gaiden and I\'m not going to start now. It may not be traditional Asian orchestra music, but it really fits. The music is mostly techno infused and it\'s pulsating beats seem to accentuate everything from flipping up a well to fighting a boss. For Sigma some of the music is redone and it has some entirely new tracks.
The sounds of combat can almost be described as an aural orgasm. The amount of grunting is insane in this game. You have Ryu screaming as he does his Flying Swallow charge all the screeches from creatures and clashing of metal is rather realistic. Every enemy sounds different; the sword ripping through the flesh of a demon is great. Not to mention the booming sound as you charge your ultimate technique is great. And all of this can go on within one battle.
Replay:
There\'s a lot of replayability in this game. Maybe it\'s because you love the game or maybe it\'s because you\'re a completist, but you\'ll find a reason to pick the game up again. After you beat the game you unlock numerous missions for you to complete not to mention trying to beat the game on various difficulty levels. From what I\'ve read Tecmo is developing a survival mode for the PSN as well, so there\'s going to be some stuff to do afterwards.
Overall:
Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the most part is a remake of a three-year-old game and it\'s still highly addictive and fun. Sadly they never decided to fix the problems that were inherent three years ago. If you\'ve never played the original then this is pretty much a must have. I don\'t know if it\'s because I\'ve gotten better over the years, but it seems a little easier than the original, but this will be remedied when you hit the harder difficulty levels. If you ever get past the steep difficulty curve you\'ll find a highly enjoyable game. And for some odd reason I still find myself doing a victory dance after I defeat a difficult boss, and you will too.
"Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3)" is on sale July 3, 2007 and is rated M. Action.
