Ninja Gaiden - Review

The origins of this game are muddled. Most believe it was loosely based on the concept of the arcade game with the same name. The arcade Ninja Gaiden was a Beat 'em up brawler whose only real innovation was a button on the joystick that let you grab onto poles and bars. This game is a platformer, drastically different from the arcade game and seemed destined to be lumped in the category of "console games different from and superior to their arcade versions" like Bionic Commando and Contra. That's all well on good, but it is unclear whether the arcade game actually came out before the NES version. Even if it did, there wasn't much time, so the two games were likely developed concurrently. There are also those who postulate that the NES Ninja Gaiden ripped-off Castlevania. While it certainly borrowed the player/enemy life and power-ups in candles, those people are otherwise crazy.

Regardless of its origins, Ninja Gaiden stands as a classic NES game. People remember it to this day and have very fond memories of it. Generally, people remember four things about it: The story, the tight play control, the difficulty, and the music.

While there were certainly previous NES games that had a story and told you what was going on, Ninja Gaiden was one of the first to do it in movie style. Indeed, the game's main stages were labeled "Acts". Ninja Gaiden was a pioneer of the cut scene, or as it dubbed them, "cinema scenes". At the beginning, you are treated to a beautiful prologue, featuring two characters dueling in a field. One falls and you learn that this was the father of Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja of the Shinobi clan. Ryu finds his father dead and finds a letter left by his father saying that if he dies, Ryu should take the family's dragon sword and go to America seeking his father's archaeologist friend. All of this is told in beautfiul graphics accompanied by text and stirring music. As the story progresses, Ryu discovers his father's link to an ancient Amazonian temple, a madman intent on awakening a demon that has slept for 700 years, and the involvement of the CIA. While the story won't be winning any awards, it is written well, clever enough, and appropriate for an action game (as it would be in an action movie). Moreover, it is of appropriate length, whetting the player's appetite just enough between levels and serving as a reward for completing them, not a distraction from the actual game itself.

That is good, because the actual game is a delight to play. During the simple first level, you learn pretty much all of the platforming tricks. Ryu can jump a good height and has limited control of himself while in the air. Using his ninja training, he can grab onto any vertical surface and then jump off it in the opposite direction. This simple change to standard platforming really opens up a lot in terms of level design and is used very well throughout the game. By the end of the game, you will have mastered jumping onto a wall and then off it again to reach the desired platform. There is even one infamous series of jumps in level 5-2 that requires understanding of just how it works.

Beyond the platforming, Ryu generally uses his sword to attack the foes he comes across. His sword slashes out horizontally and he can do it in mid-air, so perhaps the similarities to Castlevania shouldn't be overlooked. Ryu adds to his arsenal by acquiring ninja arts which are located in the candles, birds, hummingbirds, spiders or various other small objects dotted throughout the stages. These ninja arts consist of basic throwing stars that shoot out horizontally, great flames that leap out diagonally, or slashing in 360 degrees in the air making you all but invincible. Each use of a ninja art depletes your ninja spirit level which is filled by finding power ups in the same object that ninja arts are found in.

All of these attacking techniques are used for the game's variety of enemies. Each enemy has a certain behavior it follows that must be taken into account. Basic warriors with swords or bats just move back and forth on one platform. More advanced boxers or crouching men lunge or jump at you when you come near. Other foes shoot or throw projectiles at you, some always facing you. And then there are the birds that home in on you. Those birds still give me nightmares. This variety and intelligence in enemy behaviors make getting through parts of stages almost a puzzle, requiring swift thinking to maneuver yourself into the right position and quick reflexes to slash your sword just when the enemy is in range. At the end of each act, you face a boss. Though big, colorful, and artistically designed, these bosses are generally not very difficult. They don't have interesting patterns that must be discovered and exploited, but rather simple ones that usually just require figuring when the right spot to repeated slash at them is. It isn't until the very end of the game that you face any truly interesting (in terms of challenge) boss fights.

Though the gameplay generally exudes polish, when you look close enough, chinks show in the armor. It is often possible to fall through platforms at the screen's edge. Worse, these platforms are often ones with ladders leading to the next area and so you may have to retry your jump several times before hitting it right (or worse, die in the attempt). The game also gets into trouble with too many sprites on the screen at a time, leading to flicker and difficulty in telling where you or the enemies are. Finally, and most frustratingly, the game sets certain points in a level for where enemies spawn. If you pass this point and then come back to it, the enemy will usually respawn - even if the first incarnation is still on the screen.

This is part of what makes the game so tough. If you are running away from an enemy to regroup and turn around to attack it, you will often now have a second one to deal with. Or if you finally figure out how to defeat an enemy on a precarious platform you need to jump to, you may find you've backed up too far and it will appear there again. The game gives you a health bar with sixteen slots in it, though certain enemies will do more than one unit of damage in a hit. When an enemy hits you, you are invincible for a temporary period, but you also are forced back and can't move for part of that which can lead to being knocked into a group of enemies and taking more hits, or worse being knocked into a pit. The pits are instant death and if you are in the air and are hit by an enemy of projectile, you have no control while you begin plummetting to your doom and have to hope you regain control of your character with enough time to maneuver onto a ledge or wall. But you probably won't.

Despite this challenge, people come back to this game because it feels tough, but fair. Much like the GnG series, when you die, it rarely feels cheap. It doesn't feel like you had no way to avoid the death, but rather if you were a little more careful or had reacted a little more quickly you could have been fine. Yes, the birds torment you with their dive-bombing, but once you learn how they react, you can dodge and attack and get them back. While memorizing levels helps and is probably the only way you will beat the game, unlike difficult games such as Battletoads, it is not required. If you move cautiously enough and react quickly enough, you can get through any situation. It is just very tough to do so.

Fortunately, while you are tearing your hair out over the game's difficulty, you will be listening to one of the best soundtracks on the NES. I'm sure the music is another reason people keep coming back to this game. Mega Man 2 has a great soundtrack too, but its lack of story means that its songs don't carry the same emotional impact. The music that plays during the prologue at the beginning is just what would play during the same sort of prologue in a movie. The music for Act 3, which is all about chasing someone feels fast and frenetic like a chase should. After being captured, mugged for the statue to reawaken the demon, and having your girl dragged off to be sacrificed, the music in level 5-1 carries the sense of desperation that Ryu Hayabusa would feel and in 5-3 the desperation twinged with hope that he might just get there in time.

The rest of the game is merely fine. The graphics for the levels and sprites are good, but not generally amazing. While there is some great background art for the level (which should be expected given the quality of art in the cinema scenes), it sometimes doesn't seem to have been checked with the sprites, so they can not be as visible as they should. The sprites themselves work, but aren't very special. They work, but don't stick out because of their detail or color. The same could be said of the sound effects. They are only used when they have to be - slashing your sword, an enemy dying, picking up and item, etc. The slicing/explosion sound when an enemy dies is the only memorable one, the rest are either beepy and bloopy or worse a bit muffled which is a problem when it is the one used to denote that you've hit a boss.

Whether this game is a great example of a game changing in the move from arcade to home console or a shamless crib of ideas from Castlevania, it stands up today. It is still incredibly fun to play despite the fact that better platformers have been made or other games have done stories better. I personally love this game, but I know that nostalgia clouds some of that. I like this game better than its sequel despite that fact that I think the sequel has more refined gameplay, more appropriate challenge, better music, and a better story. No matter how fun this game is to play, and just about everyone agrees on that, I have to concede that its relentless difficulty probably prevents it from being seen as great. I also have to remind myself that my rating system is supposed be both objective, and on a bell curve, so few games will rate at the extremes. Subjectively, this is one of the my top three favorite games for the NES. Objectively, it is a very good game that some flaws which are thrown more in the spotlight by how the sequel fixed many of them.

Rating: 8 / 10

Ninja Gaiden - One Life Challenge, beat the game

So the official "One credit challenge" over at the (new, improved!) talking time forums is gone, but one member issued a challenge that I took personally. He managed to beat a game, not just on one credit, but on one life. It wasn't just any game - it was Ninja Gaiden.

This game has such amazing memories for me. I got it for my 10th birthday and loved it almost immediately. It just jumped out at me. This platformer featuring a ninja (during the late 80s/early 90s, ninjas were automatically awesome) totally did it for me. It played wonderfully, despite there being some glitches that showed through at the corners. The sticking to walls gave it its own unique feel. And the scenes in between levels (cinema scenes, the instruction booklet called them), gave the game a story as good as my ten year old mind would have hoped for. They made me identify so much more with the main character, Ryu Hayabusa. I used to play through the game, speaking all the dialogue in the cinema scenes, giving each character a different voice (Ryu's voice was my natural voice, of course).

To sum up, I love this game (and its sequels). I love it so much that used to play through it yearly (lately that has changed to bi- or tri-yearly). I love it so much that I use its seminal cinema scene as my avatar in any video game related forum I post to (see the picture in the upper left corner of the title of this blog).

When I heard someone else had done something that I had never done with this game - with my game! - I knew I could not let that stand. So I girded myself and played the game for the first time since 2004.

And I was rusty - It took me two tries to even beat it on one credit.

Finally having done that again, I knew there was one obstacle I would have to overcome in order to beat it on one life: beating Jacquio with no ninja art. You see, at the end of the game is a boss rush of sorts. After you get through stage 6-3, you face the Masked Devil, the Jacquio, and then the demon Jashin one right after another. Your health is restored after each battle, but after the first one, you lose your ninja art and all ninja magic power. So basically, if you want to beat the game on one life, you need to be able to beat the Jacquio and the demon with just your sword. I had beaten the demon with only a sword before, but never the Jacquio.

I tried several times on my own to come up with a strategy to beat him. I was getting a little further, but the best I was able to do was knock him down to half his health. Feeling slightly defeated, I decided to look up some FAQs to see if they could help. Getting a strategy from one of them, I attempted to put that to use. I failed, but I saw how it could be implemented to win. After two or three more tries, I had finally defeated Jacquio with just the dragon sword.

Now came the hard part of beating it in one life. You see, while I pretty much know the game inside and out, things can change slightly depending on what pixel you are on when you jump. And nobody is perfect. So I made many mistakes, dying in levels before the end. When I finally got to the end bosses, I had trouble with the demon and died there twice. Also, I decided if I were to attempt such a monumental task, I wanted to document it. I had my digital camera out and was snapping photographs to document my progress along the way. The need to do this interrupted my flow every so often and caused some death. Finally, though, I did it.

I beat Ninja Gaiden on one life.

I put together a pictorial essay to document it.

All is right in the world.

Guitar Hero - Completed all songs of medium difficulty at 5 stars

I bought this game at full price - mistakenly since I thought I was getting an amazing deal on the Guitar Hero bundle. I meant to return it, but put it off too long and it was too late so I held onto it, thinking I might sell or trade it once I found a great deal on the original Guitar Hero bundle. I finally ended up getting a good deal on a plain controller so now this game once again had merit.

What prompted me to play it was talk of doing a video game party at some point and Guitar Hero is a great party game. But... at least in Guitar Hero II, you need to unlock some songs before they are available so I figured I should do that for the first game. I have now gotten as far in this game as I have in Guitar Hero II so I have some interested impressions on the differences between the two.

Guitar Hero II is definitely more of a polished game. The biggest issue is the control difference. The first Guitar Hero feels a bit more mushy in the controls. It's hard to explain - maybe just slightly less responsive or not handling the transitions between chords or strums as well? It definitely doesn't handle hammer-ons and pull-offs as well. There are little things too. Llike the way you progress between song tears and the fact that you get encores. Guitar Hero is still very fun, but I think they really got the formula right with the second game.

Some people (that I remember, those who do the Player One Podcast) have remarked that the song list in Guitar Hero is better than the one in Guitar Hero II. I'm just not seeing it, unless you are really into heavy metal. To me, they both have the about the same appeal in terms of songs. Each tier of songs has one song I really like, another song I think is good, one or two more that I have heard before, and one or two that I have never heard (or only heard in passing). This holds across both games. Guitar Hero II get some props because, though I am unfamiliar with the independent band bonus songs on each game, I do know the Trogdor song.

Because of its lack of practice mode and more difficult hammer-ons and pull-offs, this Guitar Hero seems like the more difficult one. Since I am just learning how to do hard mode in both games, I think it might be to my benefit to go through Guitar Hero II first before coming back to this one. We'll see.

Pokemon Diamond - Surfing around

So I've been back to Pokemon for most of this week. The gradual pace of the game makes it difficult to decide when to write about it. Beating the Hearthome gym leader seems like an obvious spot, but I didn't really get much further then. It is only now, once I have been using the Surf technique and exploring new areas that I feel I've really kind of gotten somewhere - even though I haven't.

Rereading the previous paragraph, it seems to make little sense. The point I want to get across is that there don't seem to be major milestones in Pokemon. Beating the gym leaders are one of the few times that happens. But you always get a new technique after beating them so you open up more areas to explore - it is almost like Super Metroid in that aspect. The game is actually fairly linear in that you are supposed to progress from one town to another. It doesn't feel linear because each town opens up more stuff to do: try the global trade station, raise and breed pokemon in the daycare, explore the underground, so that as you get to each new area it seems like the game is opening up exponentially.

The battle with the Hearthome gym leader was my toughest so far. I ended it with only one of my six Pokemon left alive. This is despite knowing that all her Pokemon were weak to Dark attacks. I think, for the first time in the game, I was actually a bit underleveled. I've been concentrating on raising a core of 6-8 pokemon and so I guess my Pokemon are a few levels under where they could be if I was only worrying about 4-6. Anyway, the battle was tense, I was forced to use many potions and finally Mercury, my Vespiqueen, stood as the sole survivor.

And the surf technique is totally awesome. It opens up just a ton more areas.

Odin Sphere - Gwendolyn, Chapter 4

This is definitely a game I probably would not have picked up if not for actively reading various game-related forums. I mean, I would have been aware of it, but would not have made an effort to pick it up the day it came out. While it is pretty readily available through online retailers right now, it definitely seems like this will be a game that is destined to become hard to find and command high eBay prices.

Even if not, this game is special because it is one of the very few games made for a home console that is done entirely in two-dimensions. I'm not even talking about a cel-shaded 2D look or 3D-rendered graphics on a 2D plane. This games features two-dimensional sprites that move on a two-dimensional plane, just like the way things were back before Bill Clinton was president.

And the two-dimensional graphics are gorgeous. It is obvious that a lot of time and effort was put into drawing them. They are large, colorful, and contain many moving parts. Apparently this game was something like ten years in development and I can believe it for all of the detail in the graphics. It actually took me awhile to get used to the way the graphics flow in the game. I am used to either modern 3D games that have many frames of movement animation for each character, or modern 2D games on portable sytems where the small size and lack of detail makes the fewer frames of animation less noticable. When I first started playing, it was a little jarring to see the character move, oftentimes without looking different every time. I've gotten used to it, and I can certainly understand that it wasn't worth the effort to draw fifteen separate sprites for every character's movement, but it is so different (and such a throwback) that it rattled me.

The gameplay is almost that of a 2D one plane, beat 'em up. You move left or right, enemies appear, and then you whack them in various combos with your sword. Everything happens on the same plane and there is no real platforming. There are enough varieties of attacks and responses to enemies that there is a good learning curve for each foe. Only the easiest ones can just be repeated whacked with your weapon. And even then, your character tires, so if you do nothing but pound on the square button without occasionally retreating, your character will stop to rest and you will get hit. I'm enjoying this, but I wonder how deep it really is. Will I be tired of the possible attacks by the end of the game?

The game has what most people would describe as "RPG elements" so I'll throw it in the action/RPG genre. Unlike most RPGs, you don't get experience and level up by defeating enemies. Your magic almost levels up in this way. When you defeat enemies, they release phozons. By absorbing these, you not only fill up any depleted magic points, but you also earn magic experience, and so when you have absorbed enough, your magic level rises. Your health is similar leveled up by eating food. So food both restores HP and earns food experience which will eventually increase your maximum. It is certainly novel.

My basic impression of the game is positive. I am enjoying it quite a bit right now. The graphics are outstanding. The music and sound is clever (and the English voice acting is above average as well). The gameplay is currently satisfying, but I have a nagging suspicion that it might get old before I've finished the game. We'll see.

Fire Emblem - Finished Lyn Hard Mode

Well, I threatened to start playing this game over again and I did. I really learned a lot about proper strategies, leveling up and promoting characters, hw support works and what weapons and items to use through playing the game, so I feel I can definitely get something out of playing through again. Plus, there's more story revealed in Hector mode, which I went on to after finishing up Lyn's story.

I decided to try out Lyn's story in hard this time. It didn't really seem any harder, but then that could just be because I know much more about the game mechanics. The biggest difference is that you aren't forced to do the tutorial things and they aren't scripted. You don't have to attack guys with different weapons or promote Wallace. It was interesting, but as I said still pretty easy so I breezed through it.

I've started a little bit into Hector's story (normal, not hard - considering how difficult some of Eliwood's chapters were on normal, I don't want to be a masochist) and I like how you start out with a unique story of escaping from Ostia while assassins pursue you. I'm curious if I'll have any more insights into the game in my second playthrough.

Fire Emblem - Finished the Game

After putting what was, according to the game timer, 45 hours into this game over the course of a year, I find myself quite satisfied. Yes, the later levels became frustrating because I insisted on getting through them without any characters dying, but eventually I came to accept that as part of the gameplay. The levels started feeling closer to puzzles where I had to figure out the right way to move my units across them so as to kill the enemy and not be too exposed. This game just really fulfilled my need for strategic gameplay with stats and item management. And I will admit that in the second part of the final stage, I just let Canas die so I wouldn't have to start part one over.

This game was made by the same people who did the Advance Wars and it shows. A lot of the mechanics and graphic styles are similar. It is more complex, involves more numbers, and has non-expendable units (when your characters die, they are dead for good). While I am generally all over fantasy role-playing stuff and strategy stuff, I think the game requires a bit too much for people like me who try to do 100% of what games have to offer. So, while I will not rave about this game the way I did Advance Wars 2, it is still an excellent game.

One sign of how much I have enjoyed this game is that I am tempted to play it again. Once beating the game, you open up additional modes of play, one of which adds new stages and slightly changes the story. I am all over that.