Saturday, January 30, 2010

Ninja Blade tells the story of Ken Ogawa, a ninja that is trying oh-so-hard to be just like Ryu Hayabusa of Ninja Gaiden. He jumps out of helicopters, shuns stealth, and fights all sorts of nasty creatures. A parasitic outbreak has hit Tokyo, turning everyone and everything into destruction happy monsters bent on turning the entire world into a pile of rubble. The only hope, naturally, is Ken. This tale is told through a series of cutscenes and quick-time-events (sequences where the player is required to push a series of buttons as they flash on the screen to interact with a cutscene) in a fairly traditional anime fashion. With voiceovers that switch between English and Japanese and a fractured storyline, Ninja Blade toes the line between something mainstream America will be familiar with and a story that feels foreign. If you’re going to play Ninja Blade, it’s for the totally ridiculous and over-the-top action that closes out each level. Ken Ogawa doesn’t just kill these parasitic monsters of the night. He ends them with the kind of style great B-movies are made of. What’s the best way to kill a giant spider? With a wrecking ball, of course. Cars and rubble flying through the air aren’t just debris. They’re platforms to run atop and jump off. These are all played out through quick-time-events to keep the player engaged, not that you really need any encouragement. These kill moves had the entire IGN editorial office cheering at their sheer lunacy.

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