As a former writing instructor and holder of an M.F.A. in Poetry (most useless degree ever, kids), I'm usually a stickler for all things writerly in videogames. To my mind, all games must have some semblance of a plot. All games need to have semi-convincing, non-cheeseball dialogue. And, above all, all games need to make sense.

"You can't hear what I'm saying, but trust me, I'm saying something pretty dumb right now."

Call it The School of All Your Base Are Belong to Us.

Ninja Gaiden II, Team Ninja's follow-up to their hard-as-nails 2004 original, abides by none of these tenets. And yet, wonder of wonders, I still relished every poorly written, nonsensical moment of it.

Instead of traditional plot points, Ninja Gaiden II features paper-thin excuses designed only to move the game's protagonist (see? there's the old M.F.A. at work!), Ryu Hayabusa, aka the neoprene ninja, through a series of disconnected environs. You'll go from a Tokyo skyscraper to New York's Times Square to a subterranean sewer, to ? well, you'll just have to play the game to see what exciting and totally illogical locale the game whisks you off to next.

The game opens with a typical thanks-for-the-mammaries-type blonde named Sonia walking into old man Muramasa's shop. Muramasa, you may recall, is the ancient, do-rag-wearing man who also ran a series of elixir/upgrade-your-weapons shops in the original 2004 Xbox game.

Hey kids! It's time for the Crispy rhetorical question of the day: Why does Muramasa always make those go-away-I'm-making-a-B.M. sounds? Mrrr. Hrrrmpph. Ohhrrhhhgggh.

It takes all of 15 seconds for Ninja Gaiden II to get cooking. Some rogue ninjas smash through the front door of Muramasa's shop and grab Sonia. They're about to do her in when, alas, Ryu appears, shuriken flying, Dragon Sword at the ready.

"Tonight, we've secretly replaced this enemy's head with Folger's crystals."

What happens next is violent, brutal ? and terribly, terribly thrilling.

Ryu dashes about with such speed and grace, such skill and style, that it's nearly impossible to look away. Overmatched? Outnumbered? No problem. Dive into the fray -- the X button is your quick, light attack; Y is your heavier, more damaging attack -- and give those evil minions a big, fat dose of what-for.

The first thing you'll notice in the sequel is the significant uptick in gore. Arms are lopped off. Ditto for legs. Ryu tees off on wounded enemies like the Red Sox's David Ortiz tees off on fastballs. Heads sail into the distance. Bon voyage, heads! Have a safe flight! Write if you get work!

During the game's busier battles, pass the umbrella, because it quite literally seems as if limbs are raining down from the sky.

The game doesn't skimp on the blood, either. In fact, this just might be the bloodiest game in the medium's history. Sever a limb, and blood gushes forth like Niagara Falls. After a battle, the game's landscapes look as if a pair of 18-wheelers loaded down with bloody steaks just crashed head-on into one another. As sadistic as this might make me sound, before heading on to the next area, I'd always linger a moment in the limb piles, to admire my gruesome handiwork -- and yes, sometimes I'd rub my hands together and cackle maniacally while doing this.

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 ? 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.

"New rodeo record for ninja head riding: 8.2 seconds set by Ryu Hayabusa."

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.

Instead of words or lines of dialogue, the game's characters communicate through sword slices and shuriken. Instead of a traditional story, the game's fight sequences, all the minutiae, all the little nuanced moments during battle, how you/Ryu handle a series of increasingly difficult challenges -- they tell the only story that matters in Ninja Gaiden II. And when they do, let me tell you, it's almost Shakespeare.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.