Viewing Thread:
"Ninja Gaiden - Good and bad"

Got it on Friday.

It's good because ninjas are good. It's innately cool to do ninja stuff, and unless your name is Sho Kosugi, it's unlikely you can actually do that stuff for real.
It's bad because, for all the excellent graphics, awesome speed etc, it relies on that creaking cliche of end-of-level bosses.
I mean really, in an age where you have soft-physics systems in Splinter Cell 2 and independant AI in Half-Life 2, must we still be forced to drudge through that ancient game-stretch technique of making you face multiple Bosses?

Throw yourself at it until you realise the weakspot.
*yawn*
I prefer games where, if your skillfull and observant enough, you can make it through and feel like you're participating and actually controlling what's happening.

Ninja Gaiden?
Checkpoint reach - FMV - Boss.
SMASHPUNCHKICKSTAB
Dead
Restart
SMASHPUNCHKICKSTAB
Dead
Restart
SMASHPUNCHKICKSTAB
Dead
Turn off and smoke several cigarettes to calm down and stop yourself from putting the controller through the tv
Return to game
SMASHPUNCHKICKSTAB
Dead
Restart
SMASHPUNCHKICKSTAB
Dead
Restart
SMASHPUNCHKICKSTAB
Defeat Boss
Continue

2004. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, mobile camera phones, internet, txt messaging.
Good things that have progressed since 1980 when video games were dull and bosses were prolific.
Ninja Gaiden - ninja excellence, cool weapons, awesome graphics.
End of Level Boss.
They're as cheesy cliche as ladder-death in FPS and bugs too small to shoot.
Why?
And whilst I'm fuming about bosses, the other thing that's boiled my blood about this game?

LET ME SAVE WHEN I'VE DONE AN IMPOSSIBLY HARD BIT
Don't give me set-save points that means when I die (and you will, continously), I don't have to redo huge portions of a level.
I'm thinking specifically about the first time you reach the Vigoor capital.
You have to fight large groups of black ninja (ridiculously hard), regular enemies and ever-oncoming foes.
With not a single save point. Not one. Anywhere.
A level that takes 10 mins once you know where to go and what to do.
And not one solitary point at which to save your game.

What kind of retarded level designed came up with that idea?
"Oooh oooh, I know! The first time the player encounters Black Ninjas with exploding stuff and impossibly fast attacks...let's not give them a save point anywhere!!!!"
"Cool! That'll frustrate them beyond bloodboiling!"
"Yeah! Let's have the player fight these new foes 3 times in a level with no saves! And only 2 health potions to collect!!!"
"nice one!!!!!"

It's a good game, but for me the lack of saving after I've done a really hard bit (of which there are many) makes it a tedious thing to plow through level sections again and again and again and again and again.

Feel free to preen like acne-stricken peacocks and brag about "Well I did it with no problems so it must be you then", it's nothing to boast about that your hand-to-glans combat skills enable you to have pointdexter levels of accuracy.

Love you too sweet pea.

you are a sarcastic pr*ck alistair, who moans about everyone else coz ur just a sad wa**er who spends his life mocking others and sitting in front of his pc thinking of things to throw at people. Get a life a**hole

One good method is too kick one or two of the smaller guys in, then do the charge attack, so you grab the orbs they release. When you let go of the button, most of the time you'll slam into the boss with it and do plenty of damage.

thanks for that guys. my brother just said lay into him, keep slashing with "X" as fast as you can. i did that and made him my b***h :-)

2nd boss is harder'ish though! the big red dude on the horse with his minions trying to flirt with me while i'm trying to kick his azz. he'd proberly be a lot easier if those stupid punks didn't keep popping up! any help would be hot :-)

If you watch he has a 2 hit move and a 4 hit move. After the two hit move he willalways unleash the big one hit move which takes half your health out, after the 4 hit move if you fly at him with a combo they will clash weapons and your sword will push his nunchukas away leaving you chance to grab a combo. I managed to finish him off in one bash with a 14 hit combo. If you press L and roll out of the way of his massive attack you can seriously unleash into him.

If you do that straight away he will kick your ass however if you watch his move pattern he is a piece of pi**.

Easiest way to do the first boss is to just keep flipping off the wall and pressing Y.

No point laying into him properly as 9 times out of 10 he kicks ya ass.

just started to get into the game. at the level 1 boss. you know, the big-azz dude with sticks.he's kinda hard int he? i run out of health after a while. any methods/hints for killing him?

I had another go at this today and I got to the first boss; difficult is not the word. However, to my surprise, I'm not getting frustrated by it. It's providing me with a way to improve my skills, before you fight the boss you have to fight five white ninjas. The first time I fought them they almost killed me and I had to use all my health packs before I got to the boss, however with a lot of practise I can now beat those ninjas without being hit once, but unfortunetly the boss still kicks my ass. However I'm actually really enjoying the challenge, and I think I may have found a game that I'm willing to spend a lot of time with in order to 'master' it.

I bought Ninja Gaiden yesterday and it was in the second hand section, so I'm assuming someone just got really annoyed at it and gave up. Even before I bought it, the guy at the counter told me that it was ridiculously difficult, but since I already knew that from peoples' opinions on this site I still bought it.

There's no doubt that it's difficult, I got killed before I even reached the first save point, but the main reason I bought this game is because I need something that's going to last me a while, and this certainly looks like it will.

I just finished this game today. Thought it was good and like everybody's saying - it was tough at times but I wasn't a baby about it (apart from the whole screaming into a pillow thing I did). If I died at any part, I just did it again. And again and again until it was done. Then I felt real warm inside.

It was tough but it's what made it so rewarding.

Also, am I the only one annoyed by the fact that the games developers used the X button as both the attack and action buttons? It's annoying because it means that if you're in a fight near a door and press X to attack, you'll suddenly walk through the door without meaning to and like somebody said, because the monsters respawn, they'll be back when you stroll back through! The same applies to chests - get into a fight near one and Ryu will kick it open whilst everybody else patiently waits for him to rifle through its contents.

Not that it really means anything, but on the back of every box printed for the game, it says "unleash you inner ninja". Somebody got fired the day those were printed.