List Price: $49.99
Sale Price: $23.49
Today's Bonus: 53% Off
By now, you are familiar with the infamous Ninja Gaiden double-dip. Released a little over a year ago on the XBOX360, Ninja Gaiden II comes to the PS3 as Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.
After a lengthy 8 minute install, you begin the game. The wait is made a little better (or worse, depending on your perspective) by a series of comic book stills with cheesy voices and sound effects while it's copying. The improvements are vast and numerous, starting with the graphics. As good as the 360 version was, Sigma 2 is better. Enemies are lavishly detailed, moves are flashy and spectacular with terrific lighting effects, and bosses are absolutely HUGE. Some levels, gameplay mechanics and enemies received small tweaks, and some are completely revamped. I beat the 360 version and now having completed Sigma 2, I can say that playing the PS3 version is almost like a new experience, especially because of the introduction of several new bosses, online play, mission mode, and 3 new playable characters: Momiji, Rachael, and Ayane. There are a total of 17 levels, 2 or 3 of which are totally new (1 level each for the playable characters). There is none of the slowdown that plagued the 360 version, although I noticed that some bodies now vaporize in order to save processing power. Story is pretty much nonsense and a lot less focused than Ninja Gaiden/Sigma, having you jump around the world, so just ignore it.
First of the changes is the oft-mentioned easier difficulty. I played on "Path of the Warrior" ("Path of the Acolyte" is the other starting difficulty) and found it very easy to defeat many of the bosses. You can just brute-force attack many of them and spam with the same moves over and over. This is how I defeated most of the bosses, even the later ones in the game. The last 3 bosses are especially easy. Arrows and projectiles are on auto-aim. Often you can just jump up and shoot blindly while facing in the direction of opponents. Pushing L1 also snaps to targets, making it very easy to kill attackers from a distance, especially those annoying archers or rocket launcher soldiers. Arrows (and all projectile weapons, including Ayane's exploding shuriken and Rachel's sub-machine gun) are now unlimited, removing a lot of the tactical decision-making and conserving you need to do. You can also move now while aiming, which is a plus. Gone are Ryu's windmill shuriken and incendiary shuriken. I miss the windmill shuriken.
Powering up your Ultimate Technique now is a lot faster it seems. The controls are very forgiving and don't require precise timing as they did in the past. Many of the combos also seem easier to execute and often times, I wonder if I've been triggering combo fatalities by accident. Items and save points are much more numerous. This is the first game in the series where I've actually had a problem with too many items. You can only carry a max of 3 of each of the restore items (small health restore, big health restore, magic restore). Items don't increase in price each time you buy them from Muramasa like they did before. Also, a big change is that he now upgrades your weapons for free. There is usually one or two upgrade statue per level. You can upgrade one weapon once per shop. Previous versions allowed you to upgrade whenever you wanted, as long as you had the money (very expensive), forcing you to save up and strive for more ultimate technique kills because they rewarded you with more essence. The abundance of items and the free upgrades makes collecting essence now rather pointless, because you'll have all this money but nothing to buy. Lastly, load times after dying have been greatly reduced to a few seconds, removing a lot of frustration experienced by players in previous NG games. The downside is that menu load times are inordinately long. If you find a magic scroll or technique scroll, it can take several seconds for the demo video to load, and several seconds after pushing X to close the screen.
Next is the toned-down violence. The menu system is now painted blue instead of red blood splatters. Arms, legs and heads can get chopped off, but they disappear in a wisp of blue ether instead of rolling onto the floor. In the 360 version, heads rolled everywhere and buckets of blood sprayed out from severed limbs. It's all gone here.
New bosses include a giant Buddhist statue at the end of the first level, a pair of tengu, and even the Statue of Fricking Liberty! Some of the bosses have their special attacks removed and made a lot less aggressive about attacking and blocking. You no longer have to time attacks perfectly. Just button mash.
Thankfully, a lot of the "cheap" moments players complained about from Sigma are gone. The piranha ghost fish are still here though, but those extremely annoying exploding jellyfish are gone. Gone also is the ridiculous ability to swim in lava. "Invisible walls" are also a lot less apparent. In the previous game, areas that looked like you could walk around are unreachable, destroying the illusion of depth. In Sigma 2, it's not as noticeable.
Weapons are fun to use, with some being very flashy and cool to see in action, like the tonfa, which turns Ryu into a lethal whirlwind of skull and limb cracking goodness. I don't ever get tired of powering up Ryu and seeing him go berserk on a group of bad guys. Locales include a futuristic Tokyo, NYC, Venice, South America, Mt. Fuji, some non-descript sewers and tunnels of hell or some other demonic dimensional warp. Sky City Tokyo is beautiful and lovingly rendered. NYC is less so. Times Square, Brooklyn, and Liberty Island look bland and inauthentic (because I live here). Some of the levels feel recycled directlty from Sigma (Airship Daedalus = airship stage from previous, Draga Dai = Vigoor city, sewers, lava levels).
Verdict:
Are all the gameplay changes good? No. Is Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 fun? Yes, without a doubt. I enjoyed playing the new sexy female characters and the mission mode. It's a shame you can't play the entire game as one of the girls and you lose all your weapons when you begin a new game. One of the weirdest, most juvenile and sexist things you can do is jiggle the girls' goodies with the SIXAXIS.
Replaying on Path of the Mentor (unlocked by beating the game), I found it a lot harder and I got killed several times on level 1 by even minor enemies. They are a lot more lethal and harder to kill. Too bad this difficulty wasn't available at the very beginning to choose from. Chapter Mode also opens up, which lets you choose any chapter to replay.
All in all, a fun game with good replay value, and I'm glad I bought it. It's a stunning display of the PS3's capabilities and a blast to play as everyone's favorite ninja.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Click Here to Read More Reviews >>
I almost bought an Xbox 360 just to play Ninja Gaiden 2.Luckily, if you only have a PS3 you can have this not-so-new, but improved game. I'm a huge fan of the series and this one bears the Ninja Gaiden name proudly. You can get an overview of the game in better places then my review, so I'll just get to the point:
Game looks and plays fantastic. No slowdown, which 360 owners were reporting, but just a minor occurence of screen-tearing, barely noticeable and does not affect the experience.
Difficulty. This is no easy game, but it's by far the easiest Ninja Gaiden I ever played. Veterans will find their challenge in difficulty settings that will get unlocked after you play through the game the first time. Newcomers to the series will enjoy the action without smashing their controllers when playing on Alcolyte and Warrior modes offered from the beginning. I think it was a smart decision on part of developers.
Blood and Gore. Many people have complained about the removal of over-the-top blood and gore that Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox was famous for. I'd say the level of depiction of violence in Sigma 2 is on par with Sigma 1 some blood, but nothing like the Xbox version. What I don't understand is why this game is still rated M.
New Characters. These are actually fun to play with, not just thrown in for the sake of putting them on the game cover.
In short, I recommend this to anyone who likes action games. Previous Ninja Gaiden games were not for everyone due to their crushing difficulty. The only exception to my recommendation: if you already played Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox, you may not find that this game is worth the full price. If not get it, it's one of the best games this year.I have been looking forward to this release ever since I first heard it was coming out at this year's E3. I own an Xbox 360 and Ninja Gaiden II is still my favorite game for that system.
I still play the Xbox version like it was new, so when I heard an exclusive expanded version was coming out for the just reduced price PlayStation 3 120 GB, I had to buy both the system
and the game the day it came out. Since I own both versions, I wanted to compare both and let owners of both consoles decide if this latest version is worth picking up.
First, the Xbox version has better graphics for the most part. Some character models on the PS3 version have been improved, which is nice, but the backgrounds which were highly detailed on the Xbox 360
version are slightly downgraded here. For most, this wont be an issue, but I wanted to point it out. There were slowdown issues on the Xbox 360 version and the only time my PS3 game slowed down, was when
I was awarded a trophy during in game play, otherwise, the PS3 version is clean and fast paced. Sigma in many ways has improved the game over it's original Xbox 360 version. Some of the levels have been
redesigned and have better layouts than in the Xbox version. Also, lame bosses from the Xbox version have been replaced with all new enemies that are a million times more fun to fight than the previous bosses.
For example, the two gold dragons at the end of Chapter 9 have been replaced with one awesome looking black dragon. The double armadillo fight from Chapter 12 has been replaced with a new fiend, awesome!
Enough has been changed from the Xbox 360 version to keep veteran players like myself on our toes. Enemies you're use to facing in one section of the game, have been replaced with others, that kind of thing.
Plus, the ability to play important side missions as Rachel, Ayane and Momiji really add to the game. For example, in Ayane's segment you get to play as her and discover how she obtained the jewel she gives
Ryu to create the true dragon sword, cool stuff! Playing as the female characters makes me wonder why Tecmo has never released an action game staring the female characters from DOA, it would
be great to see that someday.
There have also been several surprising subtractions from the original Xbox 360 game, the biggest is the reduction in blood and gore. All blood and gore have been removed from the cut scenes
and while there is still a little bit of blood present during battles, most of it has been replaced with what I can only describe as a magic purple mist. Basically, the game went from reminding me of Kill Bill Vol. 1, to
an episode of Inuyasha. The game has a more anime feel to it now because of it, while the original was more visceral and pulled the player in. Also missing are: Incendiary Shurikens for Ryu (Ayane has them), the Tests
of Valor (one of my favorite things about the original game) and the ability to save your Spirit of the Devils, Lives of the Gods and Lives of the Thousand Gods items. They are now used as soon as you find them instead of
being able to save them and use them at will. Also, one of the original game's coolest moments has been watered down. Remember the massive fight against a seemingly never ending horde of ninjas up the steps to the temple
in Chapter 10? Well, it's not quite such a horde now, it's more like just a few dozen guys. Now, I'm hoping the number of ninjas increases as the difficulty goes up, but who knows?
I've beaten the game on Acolyte and I've gotta tell you, it's a million times easier now. Maybe it will get harder as I defeat the other difficulties, but I'm shocked at how much easier this game is. When I saw the credits,
I understood why. Tomonobu Itagaki was absent from the credits. Itagaki quit or was fired from Tecmo, depending on who you believe, last year and he was responsible for designing the DOA & Ninja Gaiden games, along with
Team Ninja, for Tecmo. He was very adamant about how difficult his games should be, some say he took it too far, and I guess Tecmo agreed because it's a cake walk now. I proudly defeated Master Ninja mode on Ninja Gaiden
2 on the Xbox, so to see the game become so easy now is a little bit of a let down, but hopefully it will get more challenging. With the Sigma version, the playing field has been leveled out. For example, you can now hit Genshin
with magic, the drawback is that now he uses it on you as well. The designers must have thought the Eclipse Scythe was too powerful because now it takes more than one ultimate attack to bring down characters that previously
only took one. And characters that could come close to killing you with one of their combos, now only take away a small amount of health. So, this is radically different from Itagaki's original vision, for better or worse. If you're
like me and enjoyed the challenge of the original, you may be disappointed. If you played the original 360 version and was frustrated beyond belief with it, here's your chance to simply enjoy the game without wanting to smash
your controller.
With all that said, let's pretend for a moment that there was never an Xbox 360 version. So, is this a great game? Absolutely! PS3 owners craving some hardcore ninja action should pick this one up asap. It's one of the most action
packed and addictive games I've ever played and wont disappoint! The only reason I gave it 4 stars was because of the subtractions that were made from the Xbox version. Otherwise it would've been perfect!
However, if you also own an Xbox 360 and have this game, the addition of the 3 new playable characters, new game modes and overall changes may not justify your purchase, but I was very pleased overall with the game.
Read Best Reviews of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Here
Im gonna get right to the point:Pros:
* The new online feature is SOOO COOOL!!! (you can even play the team mode without been connected to the internet).
* Two new female extra characters for you to control instead of just that stupid blonde girl.
* MUCH more battle environments (Im talking about Tokio city, New York city, Feudal Japan, airplanes, castles, jungles ect...)
* FASTER gameplay (you can access faster to the weapons, health, menu and stages).
* FASTER action and MUCH MORE excitement.
* MORE cool challenges.
* MORE movements and stunts.
* MORE different cool dresses (the original blue ninja dress is still here).
* MORE and COOLER weapons.
* MORE special effects.
* Better story and concept.
Cons:
* The production, graphics and movements are not sooo realistic as the fisrt Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
* The camera angles are not to close to the characters as in the first game.
* This one is a little more easy than the first one.
* The blood and gore was really tuned down.
* Ryu doesn't transform into an "ultimate ninja" like in the first game.
P.S: I don't know anything about the XBOX versions so I only reviewed the Playstation versions.
Adios.
Want Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Discount?
As far as action games go, I consider Ninja Gaiden games to be definately the best as far as not only have the controls responsive but delivering an actually fun combat system that, to coin a really old cliche, is easy to learn but hard to master. Well, I wouldn't say easy to learn because one thing people fully well know about Ninja Gaiden is that these games are tough, maddeningly and frustratingly tough at times and more than once you will yell and you will want to throw your controller. Ninja Gaiden Sigma was basically a more HD version of the original and Black from the original Xbox and Sigma 2 is the same thing only it deals with Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360. The game hasn't gotten a huge overhaul so much as the occasional re-tooling as far as difficulty, enemy encounters and even certain mechanics but like Ninja Gaiden 2, Team Ninja has a habit of sneaking in things that sour the experience. Not enough to fully ruin the game of course but it does make it a release that's still not as fully perfect as it should despite the second try with Sigma 2.Story: Ninja Gaiden games aren't that well known for their stories and we have a tale concerning the Archfield, a really powerful demon from way back when, Ryu and the Dragon Lineage's ties to it, the Black Spider Clan and the 4 Greater Fiends as well as Sonia, a CIA agent Ryu works with. Unlike the original, Sigma 2 allows 3 new characters to play as in addition to new missions for them: Momiji from Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS, Ayane from the Dead or Alive series and Rachel from Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
Graphics: The original wasn't really a graphically stunning game but there were certain sections that did stand out but the main draw is the character animation for all the characters from their move lists, special abilities and the Ultimate Techniques where they completely go off on an enemy or 2 (or 3). They're smooth and fluid and just look cool. As for the backgrounds, they're just okay. They're really barren and it's only in certain stages does it really get shown off. As far as slowdown was concerned or framerate dips, I barely saw any though the "now loading" screen did pop up quite a bit. One last thing: the gore is still present but it's not as obvious. Meaning when you decapitate an enemy, you will cut off their head but it's not going to be as obvious as it was on the Xbox 360, instead the blood is replaced by purple mist.
Sound/Music: Not exactly the most stellar soundtrack but it does its job well though I doubt anyone would wanna buy the OST for it. The voice acting is workable but in games like this or Valkyria Chronicles which add the option to use either English dub or Japanese with subtitles well, I always picked the subs. The sound effects are also quite visceral and the sound the Tonfas make when smacking against the enemies is just awesome but thanks to the changed gore, slices and dices don't have the satisfying kick when you know your moves are really doing damage on people but oh well.
Gameplay: Gameplay remains largely unchanged: you get weak and strong attacks with various combos to use (I highly recommend learning the Izuna Drop for each weapon, it'll come in handy a lot), Obliteration techniques where you permanently kill a de-limbed enemy and Ultimate Techniques where you charge up and you can unleash a really powerful attack on an enemy or a group. The on-landings are back (thank god) but the bow UT's are not (boo). One thing that has been changed though is enemy encounters so for example in one level instead of fighting those weird steel fish things they'll be...nothing but then what should've been a simple fight against normal werewolves will have a different fight altogether against something new so it keeps you on your toes since you can't go "okay this is where those guys show up and....wait, where'd they go?" and when you least expect, boom, enemies.
Certain other things have been altered as well: essence, which is basically your money, is strictly for items like potions, magic-refilling mushrooms and revival scrolls. Your weapon upgrades instead of being tied into essence is free, the change being you can only upgrade one at a time. So no longer can you upgrade 2 handy weapons, you have to choose: upgrade this guy...or that guy? Arrows are now infinite and some boss fights have been altered a bit and there's even some new ones. It was strange fighting a boss and wondering "why was he so easy?" and suddenly I get attacked by the Statue of Liberty (and no I'm not kidding) which turned out to be surprisingly hard and I went "ah, that's why". Unfortunately, Team Ninja didn't want to completely nerf the game so we have certain bosses that still feel cheap like Momiji going up against 2 guys at once with incredibly powerful attacks and while I thought this game was supposed to fix the move spamming from NG2, 2 bosses in a row literally did their most powerful attacks back to back without any pause.
Another big new addition is Team Missions, the co-op aspect of the game where you and computer-controlled AI or an online buddy take on enemies for high scores. It's quite fun and with the ability to play as any of the 4 characters, it's a blast but not really revolutionary for the series and probably won't have big lasting appeal unless you're a high-score seeker. However there's one flaw in this is that you can't filter incoming fight requests by region so you can literally be fighting with a guy from halfway around the world and you're going to have lag like you've never been lagged before. I do have 2 complaints aside from the aforementioned cheapness of some bosses. One is that the camera is still not that dependable and more than once I almost lost because I couldn't see whoever jumped on me because he was offscreen and 2 is that the game for some reason wants you to be on PSN the whole time and if you sign out or your connection briefly goes, it literally cuts you off and brings you back to the title screen so you could be playing on Master Ninja, about to get to a save point and BZZT, your internet connection decides to screw with you and you're sent back to the menu. Unbelievably frustrating this is and a really stupid move on Team Ninja's part.
I still consider Ninja Gaiden Sigma to be the most balanced of all the games. If I was terrible at that game it wasn't because of cheap AI or BS attacks or glitchy programming but it's because I needed to improve. Sigma 2 on the other hand is waaaaay more balanced than the original Ninja Gaiden 2 but there's still a couple of moments that stand out as being strangely difficult despite the toned-down difficulty. But if you want that visceral satisfying action, arguably nobody does it better than Team Ninja.
0 comments:
Post a Comment