Ninja Gaiden (and some platforming ranting)
On friday I broke down and got a blockbuster card, so that I could play video games that I probably don't want to shell out fifty bucks for.
Sixty, come next-generation consoles.
So I get two weeks to play a game and beat it. Usually not too hard.
I was going to rent EA's latest Baseball game, see how it was, but it was rented out. So I got this little game released a year ago called Ninja Gaiden, who's reviews were indeed rave.
First off, the game is beautiful. While the technical aspects of the graphics are indeed superb, the style is what makes it great. There may not be 50,000 polygons everywhere, but you don't care, because the excellent textures not only look great but they also mask the fact that these images are all computer generated, by making flat walls look like they are as rocky as the inside of a cave should be, for example, and masking the edges that do exist but shouldn't.
Also, your little ninja not only moves just like a ninja should, quickly and acrobatically, but he's got this bandana, which serves two purposes: 1: To disguise his features and 2: So that there's this long tail of fabric going down his back to look cool when fully animated.
The damn bandana tail moves so fluidly with your movement, its sorta awe-inspiring. Its sort of a little graphical thing that says "ooh, look at me, look at how cool I am, look at how awesome the graphics programmers are!" Its showing off. And it does it so well.
Okay, now that the requisite, and kinda pointless graphics commentary is over (I mean, come on, you play a game for the gameplay, not to say ooh and ahh!), lets get to the meat of the matter, the gameplay.
Its sorta a beat-em-up with some platforming elements. TECHNICALLY this is called an action-platformer, but the platforming, where you run, jump, swing and climb to get from one spot to another without falling to your grisly demise, isn't very important, or as well done as the combat is.
The combat is superb. Amazing. Awesome. So many applicable hyperbolic adjectives, so little time.
Most fighting games, either Streetfighter-esque or beat-em-ups, fall into the button-mashing trap, where the faster you hit the attack buttons the better you do. Not here. While, true, if you grap your nunchuka, you can go into a mass of baddies swinging and rack up some insane combos. You'll usually come out on the other side in one piece, too!
But if you use your sword you can deal a few really powerful, and quick attacks, then jump away from the crowd before they can counter attack. Lure a group of them towards a wall and then you can jump up off of it, high into the air, and land, sword down, dealing one punishing blow to the whole group. Or jump on one, throw him far, and charge his ass finishing him off in one blow.
It really gets fun when you fight zombies. They are slow, and their attacks are easy to avoid because their animations that lead into the attack are long and obvoius (like when they pull their giant axe behind them, lean back, and THEN swing, five seconds after starting the attack motions), but they soak up damage like nobody's buisness and when they hit you, you feel it. Its sort of like you spend a second on the ground checking yourself for missing limbs. They're virtually impossible to beat with the nunchuka, simply because they take so long to kill and you'll often be in the middle of a combat animation when you see the zombie rear back and think "F***. That guys about to split me in two".
However, with the sword, you can do a jump charge and lop off thier heads. Sure, it doesn't kill them (they're zombies, after all), but they do lose their eyes. So, headless zombies basically spend all their time walking around and swinging randomly. Its kinda funny, and they're really easy to kill once you do this.
Its strategy, its tactics. Its FUN. Its almost perfect combat.
The almost comes from the camera. You know, that little thing that shows you what's going on? While it isn't bad, per se, its not very good, either. You see, the camera does an excellent job of following Ryu, the player-controlled character, so that you don't get lost, and if it is being uncooperative, you can pull the right-trigger to center the camera right behind Ryu. But it isn't directly controllable. Most other games use the right thumbstick to allow the player to rotate the camera in up, down, and side-to-side, which comes in handy in combat, so that you can always see where the baddies are, but Ninja Gaiden has the right stick automatically move the camera into first person mode, which allows you to look freely about but you are unable to move or fight while in this mode, which makes it useless in combat.
Its servicable, and the problems it creates are rarely major, but its still a bit clunky.
The main problem I have with the game is the platforming. I've played great platforming in the Prince of Persia games. The trick to good 3D platforming is precision and accuracy. You should be able to jump from one platform to another that's withing your simple jumping range easily. You should be able to line up the jump without having to re-position yourself or rotate your avatar ten degrees clockwise in order to make it.
The best way of putting this, without delving into terminology only gamers are going to get, is that platforming is not about whether or not you traverse the course. Its about how you do it. Its about recognizing the series of jumps, wall runs, swings, etc, that make up the path you need to take. Its like an algebra program. Its not about the answer, but the steps taken to get there.
An intellectual exercise, not a physical (or metaphysical, in a sense) one.
Ninja Gaiden falls a bit flat there. There are some platforming sections that I know how to do. They're simple. Wall jump up to this platform, jump across a pit to another, wall run to a third, and then jump to the exit. But I have to try again and again to line everything up just right, and far too often I'm off by a centimeter and Ryu goes too far off the edge of the platform, down to the bottom of the area, and I have to try again. Or when I try to do a horizontal wall run, but the game thinks I'm trying to do a vertical one.
Its gets frustrating quickly.
Hard is one thing. Cause boy howdy is this game hard. It will eat you alive. The combat requires such a huge degree of ability that there's a feeling of jubilation when you finally beat that one damn boss. But when a game gets frustrating, that's a bad sign, because instead of jubilation, you feel relief when you get by an annoying platforming section. Instead of a "F*** YEAH!", its a "about f***ing time..."
But the platforming is such a minor aspect of Ninja Gaiden that it doesn't really matter. You want platforming, play one of the Prince of Persia games. Ninja Gaiden is all about the action, and its just so awesome that the lackluster camera and poor platforming just don't really matter.
(geez, what's with me and these oppresively long posts?)
Sixty, come next-generation consoles.
So I get two weeks to play a game and beat it. Usually not too hard.
I was going to rent EA's latest Baseball game, see how it was, but it was rented out. So I got this little game released a year ago called Ninja Gaiden, who's reviews were indeed rave.
First off, the game is beautiful. While the technical aspects of the graphics are indeed superb, the style is what makes it great. There may not be 50,000 polygons everywhere, but you don't care, because the excellent textures not only look great but they also mask the fact that these images are all computer generated, by making flat walls look like they are as rocky as the inside of a cave should be, for example, and masking the edges that do exist but shouldn't.
Also, your little ninja not only moves just like a ninja should, quickly and acrobatically, but he's got this bandana, which serves two purposes: 1: To disguise his features and 2: So that there's this long tail of fabric going down his back to look cool when fully animated.
The damn bandana tail moves so fluidly with your movement, its sorta awe-inspiring. Its sort of a little graphical thing that says "ooh, look at me, look at how cool I am, look at how awesome the graphics programmers are!" Its showing off. And it does it so well.
Okay, now that the requisite, and kinda pointless graphics commentary is over (I mean, come on, you play a game for the gameplay, not to say ooh and ahh!), lets get to the meat of the matter, the gameplay.
Its sorta a beat-em-up with some platforming elements. TECHNICALLY this is called an action-platformer, but the platforming, where you run, jump, swing and climb to get from one spot to another without falling to your grisly demise, isn't very important, or as well done as the combat is.
The combat is superb. Amazing. Awesome. So many applicable hyperbolic adjectives, so little time.
Most fighting games, either Streetfighter-esque or beat-em-ups, fall into the button-mashing trap, where the faster you hit the attack buttons the better you do. Not here. While, true, if you grap your nunchuka, you can go into a mass of baddies swinging and rack up some insane combos. You'll usually come out on the other side in one piece, too!
But if you use your sword you can deal a few really powerful, and quick attacks, then jump away from the crowd before they can counter attack. Lure a group of them towards a wall and then you can jump up off of it, high into the air, and land, sword down, dealing one punishing blow to the whole group. Or jump on one, throw him far, and charge his ass finishing him off in one blow.
It really gets fun when you fight zombies. They are slow, and their attacks are easy to avoid because their animations that lead into the attack are long and obvoius (like when they pull their giant axe behind them, lean back, and THEN swing, five seconds after starting the attack motions), but they soak up damage like nobody's buisness and when they hit you, you feel it. Its sort of like you spend a second on the ground checking yourself for missing limbs. They're virtually impossible to beat with the nunchuka, simply because they take so long to kill and you'll often be in the middle of a combat animation when you see the zombie rear back and think "F***. That guys about to split me in two".
However, with the sword, you can do a jump charge and lop off thier heads. Sure, it doesn't kill them (they're zombies, after all), but they do lose their eyes. So, headless zombies basically spend all their time walking around and swinging randomly. Its kinda funny, and they're really easy to kill once you do this.
Its strategy, its tactics. Its FUN. Its almost perfect combat.
The almost comes from the camera. You know, that little thing that shows you what's going on? While it isn't bad, per se, its not very good, either. You see, the camera does an excellent job of following Ryu, the player-controlled character, so that you don't get lost, and if it is being uncooperative, you can pull the right-trigger to center the camera right behind Ryu. But it isn't directly controllable. Most other games use the right thumbstick to allow the player to rotate the camera in up, down, and side-to-side, which comes in handy in combat, so that you can always see where the baddies are, but Ninja Gaiden has the right stick automatically move the camera into first person mode, which allows you to look freely about but you are unable to move or fight while in this mode, which makes it useless in combat.
Its servicable, and the problems it creates are rarely major, but its still a bit clunky.
The main problem I have with the game is the platforming. I've played great platforming in the Prince of Persia games. The trick to good 3D platforming is precision and accuracy. You should be able to jump from one platform to another that's withing your simple jumping range easily. You should be able to line up the jump without having to re-position yourself or rotate your avatar ten degrees clockwise in order to make it.
The best way of putting this, without delving into terminology only gamers are going to get, is that platforming is not about whether or not you traverse the course. Its about how you do it. Its about recognizing the series of jumps, wall runs, swings, etc, that make up the path you need to take. Its like an algebra program. Its not about the answer, but the steps taken to get there.
An intellectual exercise, not a physical (or metaphysical, in a sense) one.
Ninja Gaiden falls a bit flat there. There are some platforming sections that I know how to do. They're simple. Wall jump up to this platform, jump across a pit to another, wall run to a third, and then jump to the exit. But I have to try again and again to line everything up just right, and far too often I'm off by a centimeter and Ryu goes too far off the edge of the platform, down to the bottom of the area, and I have to try again. Or when I try to do a horizontal wall run, but the game thinks I'm trying to do a vertical one.
Its gets frustrating quickly.
Hard is one thing. Cause boy howdy is this game hard. It will eat you alive. The combat requires such a huge degree of ability that there's a feeling of jubilation when you finally beat that one damn boss. But when a game gets frustrating, that's a bad sign, because instead of jubilation, you feel relief when you get by an annoying platforming section. Instead of a "F*** YEAH!", its a "about f***ing time..."
But the platforming is such a minor aspect of Ninja Gaiden that it doesn't really matter. You want platforming, play one of the Prince of Persia games. Ninja Gaiden is all about the action, and its just so awesome that the lackluster camera and poor platforming just don't really matter.
(geez, what's with me and these oppresively long posts?)
posted by Wraithy at 3/06/2005 03:14:00 AM
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