E3 2003: Ninja Gaiden Impressions

Our impressions from Itagaki-san's gameplay demonstrations at the Microsoft and Tecmo booths. New screens and video inside.

The lucky few that were fortunate enough to hang out with Microsoft and Tecmo early on got a chance to see a great five-minute demo of the latest installment of Ninja Gaiden, a highly popular series that has pretty much remained dormant for many many years until now.

In this latest installment, the hero of the series, Ryu Hayabusa seeks to avenge the unfortunate demise of his clan at the hands of the Vigor Empire. During his journey to avenge them, he'll slice and dice the powerful giants that the Vigor Empire unleashes on him. Using his katana sword and waning Ninja skills due to being MIA for so bloody long, Hayabusa has to do all he can to defeat the Holy Emperor and reclaim the magic sword known as "Ryuken".

Just like its predecessors, the storyline and gameplay of Ninja Gaiden will be quite a captivating and engaging experience.

The graphics shown were quite amazing and showcased Team Ninja's ability to push whatever hardware they're working on. Rumored long ago to be running on a modified Dead or Alive 3 engine, Ninja Gaiden is sure to be a powerhouse in the graphics department once the final game is complete and ready to strut its stuff in front of the world. The character designs, like in Dead or Alive 3 are superbly modeled with so much attention paid to details and smooth animation routines that brings them to life. Things like Water in the game had some pretty cool physics and reacted appropriately to Ryu interacting with them. Some of the other characters shown so far looked like a pretty interesting bunch.

One of the cut-scenes showed a beautiful feisty female warrior and a scary looking female boss character sporting wings and scales throughout certain parts of her body.

Catching a glimpse of some of the environments in the game showcased the potentially beautiful landscapes that Hayabusa will traverse during his mission. Although graphically, the initial environment shown wasn't exactly a technical marvel of the Xbox's power by any stretch of the imagination, the details and depth of it were surely enticing.

Musically, one can expect the musical prowess of Tecmo's sound team to shine through once again. Not much was heard of the game's soundtrack but I believe we can have faith that the music will be as epic as the adventure itself. Hopefully the composer of Dead or Alive 2 handles the music of this game as I found his Dead or Alive 2 soundtrack to be quite amazing at times. The current music offering from the demo worked very well with the action but I can't wait to hear the more memorable stuff. The initial sound effects weren't much to write home about as they were pretty few and far between, but as with any work in progress, we'll just have to wait til the final version hits our grubby little paws later in the year before passing judgement on any aspect of the game.

The all important gameplay of the game has also recieved special treatment as Team Ninja has worked long and hard in trying to craft a highly replayable Ninja Gaiden action-adventure experience not to be forgotten. The basic controls and play mechanics appear easy to pick up and are quite intuitive, but as the series has demonstrated, the farther you get, the steeper the difficulty curve becomes until reaching hair raising levels. Boss encounters are something else as Ryu faces some impressive looking end level bosses. Along with that ugly winged female boss I mentioned earlier, one of the other impressive bosses was the giant Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton.

During the demonstration, gamers watched on as Hayabusa made his way through a beautifully lit sewer and battled the minions of the Vigor Empire, including a fire breathing creature shown in the game's original trailer. Along with that, Hayabusa subdued various kinds of enemies with the use of standard Ninja weapons such as nunchucks, ninja stars and a bow and arrow obtained later in the game. He also demonstrated some of his special moves and Ninja magic by performing a fiery explosion and a frenzied sword spin attack. During his adventure he'll also collect treasure chests throughout the levels and solve puzzles in order to proceed further.

The weapon selection feature is accessible through the start menu, with Hayabusa making use of his trusty, or in terms of the age of the series, rusty old sword at the game's start. Along with the use of his weapons, Hayabusa will be able to perform familiar acrobatic moves that should be familiar to fans of the series.

Moves such as running up walls, dodging and performing cool flips such as the wall-kick-back- somersault to avoid the approaching enemy will make their return once again. Along with that is the ability to unleash multiple combo attacks to serve a nice cold can of whoop ass to the unsuspecting enemies in the game.

Other cool gameplay features include the ability to go into a first person view mode and effectively make use of weapons such as the bow and arrow by zooming in on targets and getting a fix on just where to land those well placed shots. There's also a pretty nice feature that allows you to quit the game anytime and restart at the same point.

One of the other new options that's being kept very secretive is the Xbox Live feature that's being implemented into the game. Tecmo's been making a big deal about this feature while keeping a tight lip about it, boy what a bunch of teases, so we can only patiently await the release of more details as the game's release date draws near.

Ninja Gaiden should finally see its long awaited release sometime in the later part of the year, making a great stocking stuffer for the holidays. Barring any delays that is, but perish that thought!

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo Games