A rare shot of Ryu without his mask, and the new girl
Since I'm all but useless today after a night without sleep (chalk it up to my usual
semesterly bout of insomnia), I decided to hit up my local EB and see if the new DS demos
were out. Sure enough, they were, and Ninja Gaiden DS is one of them. I didn't check out
what else was there--see, when something new regarding Ninja Gaiden
comes out, I get tunnel vision and shut out the rest of the world. In any case, check your
local Nintendo Wi-fi hotspot place, they may have it.
Long story short, I've played it a bunch of times today and I'm extremely happy with what
I've experienced. Just a little background for those who may not have seen anything about
it yet-- it's a full 3D Ninja Gaiden game, played entirely with the stylus (besides blocking,
which is done with any button on the DS), and with the DS held book style.
The second of the two areas in the demo
Now, this demo is tiny, maybe not even 5 minutes long, but a lot is accomplished in that
time. Some quick house cleaning: the graphics are excellent and surprisingly detailed for
the DS. the game plays fast and the frame rate is perfect. the sound and music are
practically cut and pasted from the other games in the series. the production of
the sound is particularly good. I played with my Sennheiser HD-555s and besides being
quieter, it sounds like any other 3D Ninja Gaiden game. Clangs, ryu's grunts and yells,
enemy grunts, slashes, kicks, and all.
The million dollar question-- how are the controls? Like most people who have read about
the all stylus control, my initial reaction was to cringe, but I eventually put my faith in
Itagaki, and rightfully so-- the controls are damn near perfect. Zelda certainly proved it
could be done, but Ninja Gaiden's input is more varied, due to Ryu having a much fuller
move set than Link. In fact, all of Ryu's basic dragon sword move set is here, which fans
of NG will notice. The game doesn't tell you how to do much more than block, jump, slash,
and Izuna drop, but within minutes, all the extra moves came to me as if I already knew
how to do them: rolling is done by holding block and tapping where you want to go, the
flying swallow is done by jumping then swiftly crossing the stylus over the enemy you want
to hit, that 2 hit lunge that's normally done by running towards an enemy, hitting X, then
pulling back + X again for another hit is done by drawing a long line over the enemy, then
immediately pulling back. Basically, it's all very intuitive.
I was surprised by how many moves were in there and I suspect they didn't explain how to
do them so that the player could discover them on his/her own. They're not a secret
though-- anyone who gives the demo more than one go will find new moves. Only thing I
couldn't figure out was how to wall run, but I suspect it's not in this game. The
responsiveness of the game to the input is amazing as well-- in fact, it's almost too good.
Instead of wrestling with the game to get it to do what you want, you'll need to control your
taps so you don't have Ryu attacking and running all over the screen. It's loose, but
precise if you get control over it, just the like the console games.
A random stage not found in the demo
The only downside to the demo, besides being very short, is that the enemies are
incredibly easy and Ryu has a ton of energy, so you're never in danger. There's a boss
fight at the end, but the thing goes down with no effort. To it's credit, it does have three
different "modes" of attack. Still, it's a laughable mini-boss at best. I fully expect this game
to be easier to appeal to teens and kids, but I do hope it's not this easy on release (or at
least have a hard mode of some sort.) The enemies showed signs of intelligence here or
there, but in general, the demo plays like a proof of concept for the control style. Which is
fine by me. I wasn't expecting the full experience in the demo, and I'm in on day one even
if the game is a tin foil-wrapped turd with the words "Ninja Gaiden DS" written with a
sharpie marker on the front of it. Okay, maybe not that far.
those are my impressions. I think it'll be a legit entry to the series, not just a portable
afterthought like most console to handheld translations of popular games. To sum it up:
I'm floored by how little is lost in the process--it still felt like Ninja Gaiden, albeit easy as
hell. Like a lot of delayed Team Ninja games, it'll be worth the wait.
post script: oh yeah, there's ninpo. You trace the sanskrit letter, which is really easy, and
it kills every thing in sight. It's a big fireball you can move around with your stylus.
current release date: 2/4/08
This is the guy who is the head of the team that makes this game.
They're called Team Ninja. He's so controversial that a bunch of posters will come into this
thread with the purpose of saying they hate him. He's like the Cool Hand Luke of
Japan.
