The embargo for Ninja Gaiden II information just lifted and so here are Scooter's impressions from the latest build of the game and a massive interview with Itagaki
http://www.gametap.com/home/read/article/3369
Also, this sounds new to me-
You say you want MOAR?
- Shacknews Impressions
- IGN Preview
http://www.gametap.com/home/read/article/3369
It's almost like the difference between the first Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive 4; the key gameplay remains the same, and you can really enjoy fighting and winning, but we're also throwing out a bunch of visual stimulation so that you can look cool and enjoy doing it while playing. So if I were to think about it that way, I would call this game "Ninja Gaiden 4," in terms of how far advanced it is over the first one.
I say that we now have four levels of difficulty. The lowest we have is the path of the acolyte, it's really something I have designed for people who have not played a lot of action games or aren't necessarily very good at action games; they would be able to get going and play well and get really far. In that sense, it's even easier, or more approachable than Ninja Dog difficulty in Ninja Gaiden Black; it's very important to give different difficulties for different skill levels.
GameTap: Halo 3 has a full suite of community features, like video and screenshot functionality. Team Ninja and Bungie are friends, so are any of Halo 3's community features going to make their way to Ninja Gaiden II?
Tomonobu Itagaki: I think the saved films feature of Halo 3 is pretty cool, where you can save replays of your games. You need to remember that we come from the area of fighting games, so we've worked on replay technology for over 10 years. We've heard from fans who've played Halo 3 that they would like to see a similar thing in Ninja Gaiden II, so I'm considering how we might be able to implement that.
Also, this sounds new to me-
Finally, while Ryu is fighting these ninjas, I notice the new health system, where part of Ryu's health bar actually regenerates when he's out of combat à la Halo (though like Halo, excessive damage will go past the "regenerative" portion and affect the more finite part of his health bar).
You say you want MOAR?
- Shacknews Impressions
- IGN Preview