True story:
I had spent months to get to beat this game. I had levels 1-1 through 6-1 mastered. Getting past them was a nonissue. 6-2 was hell on earth, 6-3 wasn't as bad, but got completely nuts on the very last board. Beaten by the Masked Devil on 6-4, I was sent back to 6-1. This time, on 6-3 I got the JumpNSlash powerup (on the first board in the level) and kept it with great effort, so I could completely own the Masked Devil. And I did.
Then the Jaquio showed up. With my JumpNSlash taken from me, I died. Then, cos there was a big thunder storm that day, the power went out. To get back to where I was, I would have to go through the entire game again. Then my friend Adrian called.
He'd just beaten the game.
I saw the ending later that day when I went over to his house and had him beat it again. It was years until I did it myself.
Ninja Gaiden 1 is NES punishment. It's one of the most cheap, abusing games ever made. The problem with that is the controls were drum tight, and the cinema sequences (a first in games) told such a compelling tale that thousands of us 12 year olds would destroy ourselves trying to get to the end of it.
It took so much effort I still have parts of the game in my muscle memory.
4 stars
Showing posts with label ninja gaiden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ninja gaiden. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Ninja Gaiden 2
A few notes for Team Ninja and Tomonobu Itagaki:
- More rockets = more annoyance. I was skeptical of people complaining of the rockets in this game, but they are really annoying. Fortunately I got past the last of them last night while I was super drunk (the secret was exploding shurikens).
- The bow is not fun. Ever. Since you have to charge your bow shots to have them do damage, using the bow requires standing about, aiming, waiting and getting hit a lot. Boring and annoying. Whereas the first game balanced it nicely (the tank battles come to mind) all bow sequences suck in this game. Extra bonus: the second to last guy is a bow battle.
- The environments are beatutiful.
- What's with the ninja diaries? Did I miss something interesting? Cos I don't think I did, also, reading blows.
- The lightning guy, with the sword, who looks like Kain from Final Fantasy 4, yeah, I beat him already, him and his "wait for him to do a combo or big move, then attack" pattern, back in the first game, at the end of the first level.
- That said, he's most interesting one to fight, everything else falling victim to a shitty camera and other gimmickry to make the fights hard. Boss of chapter 3 - the camera.
- I like wrecking werewolves
- things without human like shape (the snake bug creatures) aren't as fun cos i never know when I lop dem heads off.
- I'm all about loppin dem heads off.
- Arms too.
- Knock it off with the dick moves. The Landmines after the "Hogan's Alley" sequence, the armadillos that blow up and the lava mines after the 2nd fire fiend battle serve little purpose other than forcing you to redo (ahem, "enjoy again") some of the shittier parts of the game.
- a little less "loading"...."saving"....."Hit A to Proceed"...."loading"....etc... Dying takes like 30 seconds to get back in the action. MAJOR buzkill and probably, other than the magic rocketeers, is the most annoying thing about the game. Put me back in coach!
- Knock it off with the giant waggly tits.
so far (i'm on level 8 of 14) it's a 3 star game. It's more of the first, and that's good, and the carnage is good, the weapons are all tons of fun, but there's just little things that are piling up to a non-4star experience.
I'll re-star it when I beat it. (i'm playing it on the Acolyte mode, which is the easiest mode, cos i'm old and I want to beat it before MGS4 comes out cos we all know i'm not picking it up after that.)
Okay so I beat it (on Acolyte a.k.a "easy") and I think it's still 3 stars, but barely.
The combat is bliss, the boss battles are haphazard, with some feeling real good, some real bad but most feeling exactly the same (lightning fiend, fire fiend, blood lady fiend, lightning sword man and the last boss all play similarly), and the bow is complete crap.
Also the ending is short and stupid. Castlevania 1 has a better ending. NES Ninja Gaiden is in another universe.
While the fighting and melee weapons got improved in the game, nothing else did.
3 stars
- More rockets = more annoyance. I was skeptical of people complaining of the rockets in this game, but they are really annoying. Fortunately I got past the last of them last night while I was super drunk (the secret was exploding shurikens).
- The bow is not fun. Ever. Since you have to charge your bow shots to have them do damage, using the bow requires standing about, aiming, waiting and getting hit a lot. Boring and annoying. Whereas the first game balanced it nicely (the tank battles come to mind) all bow sequences suck in this game. Extra bonus: the second to last guy is a bow battle.
- The environments are beatutiful.
- What's with the ninja diaries? Did I miss something interesting? Cos I don't think I did, also, reading blows.
- The lightning guy, with the sword, who looks like Kain from Final Fantasy 4, yeah, I beat him already, him and his "wait for him to do a combo or big move, then attack" pattern, back in the first game, at the end of the first level.
- That said, he's most interesting one to fight, everything else falling victim to a shitty camera and other gimmickry to make the fights hard. Boss of chapter 3 - the camera.
- I like wrecking werewolves
- things without human like shape (the snake bug creatures) aren't as fun cos i never know when I lop dem heads off.
- I'm all about loppin dem heads off.
- Arms too.
- Knock it off with the dick moves. The Landmines after the "Hogan's Alley" sequence, the armadillos that blow up and the lava mines after the 2nd fire fiend battle serve little purpose other than forcing you to redo (ahem, "enjoy again") some of the shittier parts of the game.
- a little less "loading"...."saving"....."Hit A to Proceed"...."loading"....etc... Dying takes like 30 seconds to get back in the action. MAJOR buzkill and probably, other than the magic rocketeers, is the most annoying thing about the game. Put me back in coach!
- Knock it off with the giant waggly tits.
so far (i'm on level 8 of 14) it's a 3 star game. It's more of the first, and that's good, and the carnage is good, the weapons are all tons of fun, but there's just little things that are piling up to a non-4star experience.
I'll re-star it when I beat it. (i'm playing it on the Acolyte mode, which is the easiest mode, cos i'm old and I want to beat it before MGS4 comes out cos we all know i'm not picking it up after that.)
Okay so I beat it (on Acolyte a.k.a "easy") and I think it's still 3 stars, but barely.
The combat is bliss, the boss battles are haphazard, with some feeling real good, some real bad but most feeling exactly the same (lightning fiend, fire fiend, blood lady fiend, lightning sword man and the last boss all play similarly), and the bow is complete crap.
Also the ending is short and stupid. Castlevania 1 has a better ending. NES Ninja Gaiden is in another universe.
While the fighting and melee weapons got improved in the game, nothing else did.
3 stars
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