Ninja Gaiden 4 was certainly one of a number of video games that Xbox confirmed off in its video games showcase over the weekend. And through its Summer season Sport Fest-adjacent in-person preview occasion, I received the possibility to play it for myself. I’ve by no means performed Ninja Gaiden earlier than and was skeptical that the sport’s generic darkish aesthetic, which feels straight out of 2012, may seize my curiosity. However after a brief hands-on demo and an interview with the sport’s builders, I’m much less cautious and powerfully intrigued.
Regardless of the “4” within the title, Ninja Gaiden 4 represents a smooth reset for the franchise. You play as Yakumo, a ninja of the Raven Clan, who should save Tokyo from corruption. The sport looks like a hack-and-slash beat ‘em up with excessive emphasis on the hacking and slashing. Yakumo makes use of quite a lot of weapons and skills at his disposal, together with swords, throwing knives, and a capability that briefly transforms him right into a demonic raven for an additional burst of energy.
My time with the demo was brief, consisting of Yakumo ninja-flipping by way of ruined metropolis streets, preventing packs of cybernetic demons. In fight, you possibly can string collectively assaults, producing visually spectacular combos. One of many issues that I most appreciated concerning the fight system was that it included certainly one of my favourite strikes in any motion recreation — an air restoration means. Should you’re hit into the air, you possibly can shortly faucet a button to proper your self and get again into the struggle reasonably than get knocked away. Whoever at Group Ninja / PlatinumGames is a Kingdom Hearts fan, I see you.
Additionally, alongside the way in which, I encountered quite a lot of Yakumo’s allies (together with one voiced by Brandon “Garrus Vakarian” Keener, whose voice I’d know anyplace) who launched me to the world, giving me power-ups and fight recommendation.
This recreation is bloody, cartoonishly so. As soon as I’ve whittled down my enemies’ well being, I can dismember them in quite a lot of more and more brutal methods. It was so excessive that it veered into absurd territory, and I discovered myself laughing out loud in an in any other case quiet demo room. I puzzled if the strain between the hardcore seriousness of Yakumo and his mates versus the goofy violence was intentional, however in keeping with the builders, the sport is working as meant.
“Ninja Gaiden has all the time been often called a really violent recreation, however we didn’t wish to simply make it grotesque,” says Yuji Nakao, recreation producer and director at PlatinumGames, talking by way of a translator. “As a result of if we did that, you’d get uninterested in it.”
Group Ninja partnered with PlatinumGames to develop the title, and the inclusion of the studio that made Bayonetta informs a little bit of that tonal dissonance. Bayonetta is campy and enjoyable, and I can see components of that camp in Ninja Gaiden 4.
“After we had been working with PlatinumGames,” says Masakazu Hirayama, the producer and director at Group Ninja. “We needed to convey their distinctive fashion method to the motion style and inject that into the collection.”
Until you rely ports, remasters, or spinoffs, it’s been greater than 12 years because the final authentic title within the Ninja Gaiden collection. In that point, a brand new crop of players, who’re most likely extra conversant in Bayonetta, have come up. In the meantime, there’s nonetheless an older era operating round with recollections of Ryu Hayabusa and Ninja Gaiden Black. The results of the partnership between PlatinumGames and Group Ninja is a recreation that has components that’ll enchantment to totally different generations of gamers.
“Ninja Gaiden is about having a really numerous device set that permits you to really feel like that final tremendous ninja,” says Hirayama. “And I feel you’ll see that the brand new protagonist and his new device set opens up lots of new potentialities.”
The brand new recreation might not appear to be essentially the most thrilling of titles in case you’re not a long-time fan of the collection. However my skepticism of the sport was slashed away within the face of an over-the-top gorefest that appears to take itself severely however is hiding a smooth, goofy heart that wound up being actually enjoyable to play. Ninja Gaiden 4 comes out on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC on October twenty first.
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