The "Retro Game Reviews" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
This thread has been linked to the game 'Ninja Blade'.
From software are more well known for the Souls series (demon and dark souls etc) it's easy to ignore its previous achievements. Ninja Blade garnered mixed reviews but peaked my interest enough to give it a try to find out what the fuss was all about and satisfy my personal curiosity of the game. After all, ninjas are awesome and ninja games can be also awesome. It was also on the PC, how bad could it be?
The Story is not Ninja Blade's strong point. A deadly parasitic outbreak occurs in a Tokyo mutating those infected into monsters. A Secret task force consisting of Ninjas spring into action to contain it. But the ninja clan is betrayed and are all but wiped out. It's up to ken ogawa, the sole survivor, to single handily contain the infection and exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed the clan. The plot is complete B movie nonsense and barely worth mentioning if it weren't so poorly executed. The nature of the parasites flip flops between being biological to supernatural in nature in what seems to be at the whim of indecisive developers convenience. For the majority of the time you may be dicing mutated humans, winged monstrosities, worms. By game's end you're whisked away to a sprit dimension of sorts for the final confrontation. It's not helped by generic and shallow characters, crap scripting and the arbitrary plot twists thrown into the story in a desperate attempt at regaining some credibility. Needlessly to say, it's probably best not to look too closely to the story and just roll with it.
In the past, attempts at converting console games onto the pc have resulted in truly horrific ports. Ninja blade's Port is lacking and not fault free. Controls aren't fully optimized for keyboard and mouse, so a joypad is recommended. But that is nothing compared to the game breaking bug forcing users to endure sluggish frame rates with the frame limitations turned on. Without frame limitations, the game play is smooth and slick. But this is a mute point when an annoying glitch/bug rendering the numerous breakable walls unbreakable, preventing progression through the game. Unless players are prepared to endure disappointing sluggish frame rates, they should stay well away from this game.
With the game set around Tokyo, Ninja Blade had scope for varied and beautiful backdrops and vistas for some hack and slash action. Sadly, in reality players are expected to spend a large amounts of time in bare concrete buildings, unlit rooftops, grey tunnels and warehouses. Unsurprisingly this leaves levels looking drab, bland and uninspiring visually; the colour palette consisting mostly grey, bluish greys and brown environments. It's made especially disappointing that considerable effort had been made in character and monster design. ken's weapons, armour and the boss monsters look suitably deadly and stylish. To Ninja Blade's credit it does boast some excellent, visually exciting cinematic sequences. But at the same time it takes things OTT that I found occasionally laughable which I doubt was the intention regardless how memorable they were.
With black marks on pc optimization, graphics and story, Ninja Blade (thankfully) delivers more on the important game play aspect. Combat is satisfying, stylish and has some depth to it thanks to the wide array of upgradable weapons and numerous move sets to master for each weapon providing users to weld multiple weapons at once. The game does boast some interesting and unusual boss fights that are both challenging and exciting to fight through. But again, Ninja Blade competent combat mechanics and satisfying game play is tarnished by its repetitive nature and insisting on tedious on-rails shooter sections at the start of each mission. Level design is linear but by the end of the game the developers become lazy and reuse large elements of previous levels to pad out game length. QTEs also appears that adds little than to break up momentum and becomes an annoying distraction. Should players persevere with the game, Ninja Blade has colour schemes and weapons to unlock and a high score system to encourage multiple playthroughs. Even this feels more like an afterthought or token gestures at prolonging longevity.
Despite some of its glaring faults, Ninja blade does JUST enough to make it an average title and not an absolutely awful one. At the end of the day, it's a playable 3rd person action game. But with its numerous glaring flaws it's hard to recommend this over Ninja Gaiden or other third person hack and slash for that matter. It's worth renting or purchasing for a very, very cheap price, but it does so little to elevate itself beyond a lacklustre experience that buyers won't miss out on much if they gave this game a miss. At least when it comes to the pc version.
5/10
The Story is not Ninja Blade's strong point. A deadly parasitic outbreak occurs in a Tokyo mutating those infected into monsters. A Secret task force consisting of Ninjas spring into action to contain it. But the ninja clan is betrayed and are all but wiped out. It's up to ken ogawa, the sole survivor, to single handily contain the infection and exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed the clan. The plot is complete B movie nonsense and barely worth mentioning if it weren't so poorly executed. The nature of the parasites flip flops between being biological to supernatural in nature in what seems to be at the whim of indecisive developers convenience. For the majority of the time you may be dicing mutated humans, winged monstrosities, worms. By game's end you're whisked away to a sprit dimension of sorts for the final confrontation. It's not helped by generic and shallow characters, crap scripting and the arbitrary plot twists thrown into the story in a desperate attempt at regaining some credibility. Needlessly to say, it's probably best not to look too closely to the story and just roll with it.
In the past, attempts at converting console games onto the pc have resulted in truly horrific ports. Ninja blade's Port is lacking and not fault free. Controls aren't fully optimized for keyboard and mouse, so a joypad is recommended. But that is nothing compared to the game breaking bug forcing users to endure sluggish frame rates with the frame limitations turned on. Without frame limitations, the game play is smooth and slick. But this is a mute point when an annoying glitch/bug rendering the numerous breakable walls unbreakable, preventing progression through the game. Unless players are prepared to endure disappointing sluggish frame rates, they should stay well away from this game.
With the game set around Tokyo, Ninja Blade had scope for varied and beautiful backdrops and vistas for some hack and slash action. Sadly, in reality players are expected to spend a large amounts of time in bare concrete buildings, unlit rooftops, grey tunnels and warehouses. Unsurprisingly this leaves levels looking drab, bland and uninspiring visually; the colour palette consisting mostly grey, bluish greys and brown environments. It's made especially disappointing that considerable effort had been made in character and monster design. ken's weapons, armour and the boss monsters look suitably deadly and stylish. To Ninja Blade's credit it does boast some excellent, visually exciting cinematic sequences. But at the same time it takes things OTT that I found occasionally laughable which I doubt was the intention regardless how memorable they were.
With black marks on pc optimization, graphics and story, Ninja Blade (thankfully) delivers more on the important game play aspect. Combat is satisfying, stylish and has some depth to it thanks to the wide array of upgradable weapons and numerous move sets to master for each weapon providing users to weld multiple weapons at once. The game does boast some interesting and unusual boss fights that are both challenging and exciting to fight through. But again, Ninja Blade competent combat mechanics and satisfying game play is tarnished by its repetitive nature and insisting on tedious on-rails shooter sections at the start of each mission. Level design is linear but by the end of the game the developers become lazy and reuse large elements of previous levels to pad out game length. QTEs also appears that adds little than to break up momentum and becomes an annoying distraction. Should players persevere with the game, Ninja Blade has colour schemes and weapons to unlock and a high score system to encourage multiple playthroughs. Even this feels more like an afterthought or token gestures at prolonging longevity.
Despite some of its glaring faults, Ninja blade does JUST enough to make it an average title and not an absolutely awful one. At the end of the day, it's a playable 3rd person action game. But with its numerous glaring flaws it's hard to recommend this over Ninja Gaiden or other third person hack and slash for that matter. It's worth renting or purchasing for a very, very cheap price, but it does so little to elevate itself beyond a lacklustre experience that buyers won't miss out on much if they gave this game a miss. At least when it comes to the pc version.
5/10
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
From software are more well known for the Souls series (demon and dark souls etc) it's easy to ignore its previous achievements. Ninja Blade garnered mixed reviews but peaked my interest enough to give it a try to find out what the fuss was all about and satisfy my personal curiosity of the game. After all, ninjas are awesome and ninja games can be also awesome. It was also on the PC, how bad could it be?
The Story is not Ninja Blade's strong point. A deadly parasitic outbreak occurs in a Tokyo mutating those infected into monsters. A Secret task force consisting of Ninjas spring into action to contain it. But the ninja clan is betrayed and are all but wiped out. It's up to ken ogawa, the sole survivor, to single handily contain the infection and exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed the clan. The plot is complete B movie nonsense and barely worth mentioning if it weren't so poorly executed. The nature of the parasites flip flops between being biological to supernatural in nature in what seems to be at the whim of indecisive developers convenience. For the majority of the time you may be dicing mutated humans, winged monstrosities, worms. By game's end you're whisked away to a sprit dimension of sorts for the final confrontation. It's not helped by generic and shallow characters, crap scripting and the arbitrary plot twists thrown into the story in a desperate attempt at regaining some credibility. Needlessly to say, it's probably best not to look too closely to the story and just roll with it.
In the past, attempts at converting console games onto the pc have resulted in truly horrific ports. Ninja blade's Port is lacking and not fault free. Controls aren't fully optimized for keyboard and mouse, so a joypad is recommended. But that is nothing compared to the game breaking bug forcing users to endure sluggish frame rates with the frame limitations turned on. Without frame limitations, the game play is smooth and slick. But this is a mute point when an annoying glitch/bug rendering the numerous breakable walls unbreakable, preventing progression through the game. Unless players are prepared to endure disappointing sluggish frame rates, they should stay well away from this game.
With the game set around Tokyo, Ninja Blade had scope for varied and beautiful backdrops and vistas for some hack and slash action. Sadly, in reality players are expected to spend a large amounts of time in bare concrete buildings, unlit rooftops, grey tunnels and warehouses. Unsurprisingly this leaves levels looking drab, bland and uninspiring visually; the colour palette consisting mostly grey, bluish greys and brown environments. It's made especially disappointing that considerable effort had been made in character and monster design. ken's weapons, armour and the boss monsters look suitably deadly and stylish. To Ninja Blade's credit it does boast some excellent, visually exciting cinematic sequences. But at the same time it takes things OTT that I found occasionally laughable which I doubt was the intention regardless how memorable they were.
With black marks on pc optimization, graphics and story, Ninja Blade (thankfully) delivers more on the important game play aspect. Combat is satisfying, stylish and has some depth to it thanks to the wide array of upgradable weapons and numerous move sets to master for each weapon providing users to weld multiple weapons at once. The game does boast some interesting and unusual boss fights that are both challenging and exciting to fight through. But again, Ninja Blade competent combat mechanics and satisfying game play is tarnished by its repetitive nature and insisting on tedious on-rails shooter sections at the start of each mission. Level design is linear but by the end of the game the developers become lazy and reuse large elements of previous levels to pad out game length. QTEs also appears that adds little than to break up momentum and becomes an annoying distraction. Should players persevere with the game, Ninja Blade has colour schemes and weapons to unlock and a high score system to encourage multiple playthroughs. Even this feels more like an afterthought or token gestures at prolonging longevity.
Despite some of its glaring faults, Ninja blade does JUST enough to make it an average title and not an absolutely awful one. At the end of the day, it's a playable 3rd person action game. But with its numerous glaring flaws it's hard to recommend this over Ninja Gaiden or other third person hack and slash for that matter. It's worth renting or purchasing for a very, very cheap price, but it does so little to elevate itself beyond a lacklustre experience that buyers won't miss out on much if they gave this game a miss. At least when it comes to the pc version.
5/10
The Story is not Ninja Blade's strong point. A deadly parasitic outbreak occurs in a Tokyo mutating those infected into monsters. A Secret task force consisting of Ninjas spring into action to contain it. But the ninja clan is betrayed and are all but wiped out. It's up to ken ogawa, the sole survivor, to single handily contain the infection and exact bloody revenge on those who betrayed the clan. The plot is complete B movie nonsense and barely worth mentioning if it weren't so poorly executed. The nature of the parasites flip flops between being biological to supernatural in nature in what seems to be at the whim of indecisive developers convenience. For the majority of the time you may be dicing mutated humans, winged monstrosities, worms. By game's end you're whisked away to a sprit dimension of sorts for the final confrontation. It's not helped by generic and shallow characters, crap scripting and the arbitrary plot twists thrown into the story in a desperate attempt at regaining some credibility. Needlessly to say, it's probably best not to look too closely to the story and just roll with it.
In the past, attempts at converting console games onto the pc have resulted in truly horrific ports. Ninja blade's Port is lacking and not fault free. Controls aren't fully optimized for keyboard and mouse, so a joypad is recommended. But that is nothing compared to the game breaking bug forcing users to endure sluggish frame rates with the frame limitations turned on. Without frame limitations, the game play is smooth and slick. But this is a mute point when an annoying glitch/bug rendering the numerous breakable walls unbreakable, preventing progression through the game. Unless players are prepared to endure disappointing sluggish frame rates, they should stay well away from this game.
With the game set around Tokyo, Ninja Blade had scope for varied and beautiful backdrops and vistas for some hack and slash action. Sadly, in reality players are expected to spend a large amounts of time in bare concrete buildings, unlit rooftops, grey tunnels and warehouses. Unsurprisingly this leaves levels looking drab, bland and uninspiring visually; the colour palette consisting mostly grey, bluish greys and brown environments. It's made especially disappointing that considerable effort had been made in character and monster design. ken's weapons, armour and the boss monsters look suitably deadly and stylish. To Ninja Blade's credit it does boast some excellent, visually exciting cinematic sequences. But at the same time it takes things OTT that I found occasionally laughable which I doubt was the intention regardless how memorable they were.
With black marks on pc optimization, graphics and story, Ninja Blade (thankfully) delivers more on the important game play aspect. Combat is satisfying, stylish and has some depth to it thanks to the wide array of upgradable weapons and numerous move sets to master for each weapon providing users to weld multiple weapons at once. The game does boast some interesting and unusual boss fights that are both challenging and exciting to fight through. But again, Ninja Blade competent combat mechanics and satisfying game play is tarnished by its repetitive nature and insisting on tedious on-rails shooter sections at the start of each mission. Level design is linear but by the end of the game the developers become lazy and reuse large elements of previous levels to pad out game length. QTEs also appears that adds little than to break up momentum and becomes an annoying distraction. Should players persevere with the game, Ninja Blade has colour schemes and weapons to unlock and a high score system to encourage multiple playthroughs. Even this feels more like an afterthought or token gestures at prolonging longevity.
Despite some of its glaring faults, Ninja blade does JUST enough to make it an average title and not an absolutely awful one. At the end of the day, it's a playable 3rd person action game. But with its numerous glaring flaws it's hard to recommend this over Ninja Gaiden or other third person hack and slash for that matter. It's worth renting or purchasing for a very, very cheap price, but it does so little to elevate itself beyond a lacklustre experience that buyers won't miss out on much if they gave this game a miss. At least when it comes to the pc version.
5/10