Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)

The Hayabusa Village is burning again. Which means no one changed the batteries in their smoke detectors. Damn ninja fools.
6/3/2008 12:00 AM | 1 Comments | Page 2 of 3

For the faint of heart this Grand Guignol of videogames is not. But me? I adored -- yes, adored -- every brutal, unrelenting second of it.

The key, I think, is that the stylized gore isn't merely window dressing; it's not simply gore for gore's sake. Lop off an enemy's arm, and amazingly he'll still fight on with his remaining arm. Lop off his legs, and à la "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," he'll still crawl towards you.

These wounded enemies, in some ways, are potentially more dangerous than their still-whole counterparts. Wounded enemies, though slower, will pounce on Ryu and detonate a 3-2-1 self-destruct grenade that does significant damage to Ryu's health. So figuring out which enemies -- the wounded or the non-wounded? -- to deal with during combat brings a surprising amount of strategy to the proceedings.

On a less tangible level, the gore serves as a dramatic catharsis -- a great, visceral exhalation, if you will -- after the game's tense battles. It may sound crass to say this, but after being surrounded and getting my ass kicked in for five minutes before finally, slowly but surely, gaining the upper hand against a group of enemies, there is no finer way to cap off my comeback victory than having my armless enemies kneel before me, one by one, and then sending their heads soaring into the night sky.

I'm here to tell you: That does not get old.

The sequel is also a more streamlined experience than the 2004 original. Weapons, items and Ninpo (aka magic) can all now be swapped on the fly during gameplay via a few clicks of the directional pad. The game also features an auto-healing health system, not unlike the Master Chief's self-regenerating shields. This system may seem overly generous in the game's opening moments, but trust me, before long you'll quickly need all the self-regenerating health you can get.

The game defaults to auto-save, which means no more fussing around with save slots and disrupting the flow of the game. (I still preferred having a few save slots going, in case I misused items -- side note: You'll want to hang onto that Talisman of Rebirth until you absolutely, positively need it.)

The third-person camera, at times, does seem to wander off like a bored child in a department store, though it's nothing that a right trigger/right analog stick adjustment can't correct. And the series' trademark difficulty, though tempered a bit, is present and accounted for. Even veteran gamers will curse a blue streak during some of the game's less-than-fair boss battles or when surrounded by super-quick bionic dogs wielding knives in their teeth.

But the bigger question remains this: How can I, M.F.A. holder, possibly tolerate bionic, knife-toting dogs? How can I stomach ninjas that change into giant spiders for no logical reason? Beyond that, how can a game with such low-grade writing, no semblance of logic or plot, and cut scenes steeped in the cheapest fromage be acceptable by my fussy writerly standards?

I'll tell you how.

It's only once the cut scenes stop, once the Ed Wood-esque dialogue mercifully ends, once every jackass character/monster/thing finally shuts its f***ing mouth and starts fighting, that the game's true narrative reveals itself: It's not simply the story of a man facing impossible odds, but it's how this scenario is meticulously, painstakingly and even gorgeously articulated via Team Ninja's terrific combat engine. Every moment, every clang of the sword, every last-second counterattack (the fights are, at times, verging on acts of beauty) -- it's somehow all very fantastical and convincing at once. The back-and-forth drama of the battles is so obscenely good that it ultimately no longer mattered to me that the previous cut scene made no sense, or that I was now fighting a giant, blind ape-thing on a bridge, or that yet another pack of those damn bionic dogs was bearing down on me for no particular reason.