Thursday, November 17, 2005
Ninja Gaiden Black
Okay, I waited long enough and got up enough content to post a main-blog entry about Ninja Gaiden Black.
Ninja Gaiden Black, for the XBOX, is a “remastered” version of Ninja Gaiden for the XBOX, one of the best xbox games ever, but now with more options and better controls and the xbox-live updates and all that. I bought it recently from Amazon.ca and just started playing it about a week ago.
Rumours were that Ninja Gaiden was a very hard game. The rumours were true. In a way.
It is a definitely hard game, but in a good kind of way. The enemies may seem hard, but eventually with practice and experience you learn techniques of beating them, and then you feel better. So some enemies may be hard at first, but then they become easier, until they’re no longer a real problem. Well, that’s not entirely true. You can still die to them if you’re careless, so it’s pretty unforgiving that way.
I guess you could compare NGB best with Devil May Cry – they seem to have the same style, even the loading screens feel a bit reminiscent of DMC. The camera is focused on you though, and you can do more combos and stuff in NGB. You can also run on walls, which reminds you of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. (It’s really annoying when you don’t want your guy to run on walls but he does, and vice versa).
At first, when I started the game it was really hard. It is a lot like Devil May Cry, except with one major difference: You can block, and blocking is the key to victory, which made everything a bit easier.
The game feels unrelenting – the enemies keep coming and coming. Sometimes you can clear rooms and enemies disappear forever. Sometimes you can be fighting two guys at the same time, and after you kill one, another one spawns in his place until you’ve killed 5 of them and then you get to continue. Sometimes enemies will respawn after you’ve left the area for a while.
In that way it’s kinda annoying – you might be looking at 3 people, so you tell yourself, the room will be empty after I kill those 3; so you set yourself a goal, but then the game ninjas you in the back and have more enemies respawn until you’ve killed 6.
You know what’s annoying? When you save, and then you realize you have no life left and no potions left. You then have to be extra careful about what you do. Also, the distance between save points…ehh… well, early game it’s pretty annoying, later (where I am now) the save points are a bit closer together, but still not something to write home about.
Anyway, after a while those rooms where enemies respawn after you left the area started annoying me, but then I did what a lot of people would do in that situation. It’s a pretty cowardly tactic, but it must be done in such a hard game.
You farm.
You farm gold so you can upgrade weapons and (most importantly) buy potions to keep you alive. Anyway, I’ve only farmed a couple times, but it can still piss you off, especially if you die while farming. Again, the enemies are pretty easy, but there’s a lot of them and only one of you, and it’s not unlikely that you might let your guard down for a while, and then all three gang up on you and kick your ass.
So overall, I like the game, but it’s really hard. I’m on normal mode – no, I didn’t die enough times on the first level to be allowed into easy mode – so I’m still on normal, going really slowly, and spending 90% of my money on potions. Anyway, this looks like a good place to end the entry, but I already wrote a few more paragraphs below about other things I hate in some games, so I might as well post them now instead of later…
Six Kinds of Doors
There are six general types of doors in Ninja Gaiden Black. The first is an unlocked door, which can be opened all the time. The second is a locked door that requires a key. The 3rd is a locked door, where you’ll have to find a switch somewhere else that will open the door; sometimes it’s a door that’s locked from one side, but can be unlocked from the other and then will be unlocked always. The 4th is a door that is locked until the enemies in the room are defeated. The 5th is a door that will be unlocked in a later mission.
And then there’s the 6th door, the one that makes you waste 2 hours looking for the key or switch or trigger. It’s the type of door which is locked, but has the unlocking mechanism beside the door. Now that’s a horrible type of door, because it’s like an unlocked door, except it’s locked and unlocking requires as much effort as unlocking an unlocked door.
First Luck
Another thing I hate in games is… well, this happens in a few games, most recent in memory are Metroid Prime and of course, Ninja Gaiden Black. I call it the First Luck phenomenon, which can really piss you off.
Let’s say you encounter an obstacle for the first time. Maybe you have to do a few wall jumps and jump at a certain angle and defeat a few enemies. So the first time you do it, you accomplish it really well with no problems. And then eventually you die, you come back to the save point, and then you meet this obstacle again… and for some reason… you can’t do it.
You just can’t do it. It might take you twenty tries to do the wall-jump or jump correctly, or for some reason you don’t remember what you did but you can’t seem to unlock the door.
So this happened in Ninja Gaiden twice, and in Metroid Prime once. The Metroid Prime one was annoying because the save point was a few seconds back, but I decided not to save it once I opened the door because it was so easy to do it the first time – then it annoyed the hell out of me for the next few attempts of opening the door.
Unrelenting
I already said the game was unrelenting, never running out of enemies. So this is what happened today.
Today I played for a few hours, and it was haaard. Anyway, now I’m at a point where there’s a door that requires two switches to open, each switch in a different room. The different rooms are pretty close, but each room is pretty difficult… a few long-range archers and some swinging axes and catwalks and traps and stuff. It’s like an obstacle room… so anyway, I spent about 20 minutes and 4 potions in one room, and 10 minutes and 1 potion in another room.
There’s no save point around, so right now I’m pretty much dying and just waiting for a save point. So of course, in a lot of games, I guess after doing two separate rooms without a save point, you’d expect a save point when you open the door that requires two switches, right?
Nope, not this game. You open the door, expecting a save point, and instead you get a boss.
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Ninja Gaiden Black, for the XBOX, is a “remastered” version of Ninja Gaiden for the XBOX, one of the best xbox games ever, but now with more options and better controls and the xbox-live updates and all that. I bought it recently from Amazon.ca and just started playing it about a week ago.
Rumours were that Ninja Gaiden was a very hard game. The rumours were true. In a way.
It is a definitely hard game, but in a good kind of way. The enemies may seem hard, but eventually with practice and experience you learn techniques of beating them, and then you feel better. So some enemies may be hard at first, but then they become easier, until they’re no longer a real problem. Well, that’s not entirely true. You can still die to them if you’re careless, so it’s pretty unforgiving that way.
I guess you could compare NGB best with Devil May Cry – they seem to have the same style, even the loading screens feel a bit reminiscent of DMC. The camera is focused on you though, and you can do more combos and stuff in NGB. You can also run on walls, which reminds you of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. (It’s really annoying when you don’t want your guy to run on walls but he does, and vice versa).
At first, when I started the game it was really hard. It is a lot like Devil May Cry, except with one major difference: You can block, and blocking is the key to victory, which made everything a bit easier.
The game feels unrelenting – the enemies keep coming and coming. Sometimes you can clear rooms and enemies disappear forever. Sometimes you can be fighting two guys at the same time, and after you kill one, another one spawns in his place until you’ve killed 5 of them and then you get to continue. Sometimes enemies will respawn after you’ve left the area for a while.
In that way it’s kinda annoying – you might be looking at 3 people, so you tell yourself, the room will be empty after I kill those 3; so you set yourself a goal, but then the game ninjas you in the back and have more enemies respawn until you’ve killed 6.
You know what’s annoying? When you save, and then you realize you have no life left and no potions left. You then have to be extra careful about what you do. Also, the distance between save points…ehh… well, early game it’s pretty annoying, later (where I am now) the save points are a bit closer together, but still not something to write home about.
Anyway, after a while those rooms where enemies respawn after you left the area started annoying me, but then I did what a lot of people would do in that situation. It’s a pretty cowardly tactic, but it must be done in such a hard game.
You farm.
You farm gold so you can upgrade weapons and (most importantly) buy potions to keep you alive. Anyway, I’ve only farmed a couple times, but it can still piss you off, especially if you die while farming. Again, the enemies are pretty easy, but there’s a lot of them and only one of you, and it’s not unlikely that you might let your guard down for a while, and then all three gang up on you and kick your ass.
So overall, I like the game, but it’s really hard. I’m on normal mode – no, I didn’t die enough times on the first level to be allowed into easy mode – so I’m still on normal, going really slowly, and spending 90% of my money on potions. Anyway, this looks like a good place to end the entry, but I already wrote a few more paragraphs below about other things I hate in some games, so I might as well post them now instead of later…
Six Kinds of Doors
There are six general types of doors in Ninja Gaiden Black. The first is an unlocked door, which can be opened all the time. The second is a locked door that requires a key. The 3rd is a locked door, where you’ll have to find a switch somewhere else that will open the door; sometimes it’s a door that’s locked from one side, but can be unlocked from the other and then will be unlocked always. The 4th is a door that is locked until the enemies in the room are defeated. The 5th is a door that will be unlocked in a later mission.
And then there’s the 6th door, the one that makes you waste 2 hours looking for the key or switch or trigger. It’s the type of door which is locked, but has the unlocking mechanism beside the door. Now that’s a horrible type of door, because it’s like an unlocked door, except it’s locked and unlocking requires as much effort as unlocking an unlocked door.
First Luck
Another thing I hate in games is… well, this happens in a few games, most recent in memory are Metroid Prime and of course, Ninja Gaiden Black. I call it the First Luck phenomenon, which can really piss you off.
Let’s say you encounter an obstacle for the first time. Maybe you have to do a few wall jumps and jump at a certain angle and defeat a few enemies. So the first time you do it, you accomplish it really well with no problems. And then eventually you die, you come back to the save point, and then you meet this obstacle again… and for some reason… you can’t do it.
You just can’t do it. It might take you twenty tries to do the wall-jump or jump correctly, or for some reason you don’t remember what you did but you can’t seem to unlock the door.
So this happened in Ninja Gaiden twice, and in Metroid Prime once. The Metroid Prime one was annoying because the save point was a few seconds back, but I decided not to save it once I opened the door because it was so easy to do it the first time – then it annoyed the hell out of me for the next few attempts of opening the door.
Unrelenting
I already said the game was unrelenting, never running out of enemies. So this is what happened today.
Today I played for a few hours, and it was haaard. Anyway, now I’m at a point where there’s a door that requires two switches to open, each switch in a different room. The different rooms are pretty close, but each room is pretty difficult… a few long-range archers and some swinging axes and catwalks and traps and stuff. It’s like an obstacle room… so anyway, I spent about 20 minutes and 4 potions in one room, and 10 minutes and 1 potion in another room.
There’s no save point around, so right now I’m pretty much dying and just waiting for a save point. So of course, in a lot of games, I guess after doing two separate rooms without a save point, you’d expect a save point when you open the door that requires two switches, right?
Nope, not this game. You open the door, expecting a save point, and instead you get a boss.