Ninja Gaiden 3

[DomitorInvictus]

I couldn't find a specific thread for this, so here we go.

After watching video after video of this game, I am beginning to lose hope. With the loss of Itagaki, the Ninja Gaiden series has disregarded just about all fan service in favor for mainstream appeal. Team Ninja seems to have went all-out in trying to turn this game into a blockbuster hit like Uncharted or something. They claim that there will be something for hardcore fans of the series to enjoy, but I don't see how I could NOT be disappointed by this game.

To be fair, I was on the fence with this sequel for a while. I thought to myself, "It can't be that bad, a little change could be good," but examining the gameplay videos and trailers I found that this game is not one that I will want to play. Firstly, it seems to be unlike anything you'd expect from a Ninja Gaiden game (not in a good way), Ryu seems to now just be a generic action hero with a glowing red arm gimmick, and he talks way too much. There is too much focus on the story-line, You fight mostly humans and "alchemists" now, which I find to be quite uninteresting - when I play Ninja Gaiden, I want to kill demons and crazy bosses! It is no longer the Ninja Gaiden I came to love.

As for the game mechanics, it seems to be a lot less skill based and more about mashing the X and Y buttons, the roll is now a slide, the ultimate technique is WAY too powerful as it kills everyone near you. There's a "hero mode" which allows anyone to breeze through the game just by - you guessed it, mashing buttons! The purpose of this is to allow people who can't put the effort into actually learning the game enjoy the story-line. If you only care about the story-line, why not just watch a movie instead?

And I can't even begin to fathom how awful the new multiplayer mode is. Just look at it!!



At first, this doesn't seem like too bad of an idea, but that quickly changes when you see more than 2 players encounter each other. It is hard for me to imagine that this could be anything more than a clusterfuck. This is probably the most ill-advised add-on to this game yet. Why do it?! Because you can't make enough in sales without a terrible multiplayer tacked on? I wonder if there will be killstreaks...

Team Ninja traded their old fan-base in for casual gamers, and they know it.

[Gamerforlife]

Wow, another single player series getting a crappy, pointless, multi-player mode, imagine that

I really want to shove a steak straight through the heart of multi-player gaming and spit in its face as it slowly, painfully dies....

Anyway, NG games ALWAYS had uber powerful ultimate techniques. Hell, you could destroy just about everything in NG II by spamming ultimates with the upgraded Lunar Staff on Master Ninja difficulty

Still, you're probably right. I don't expect this to be great, or the new Devil May Cry game either. I passed on the NG Sigma games on the PS 3 due to all the censoring and inclusion of unnecessary new, playable characters by the Itagaki-less, new Team Ninja.

I kind of don't care though. I'm sort of tired of seeing the original Devil May Cry style of combat recycled over and over again by games like Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta and the DMC series itself. I'm more interested in seeing new styles of combat like the one in Batman Arkham City and I'd like to see what combat in Lollipop Chainsaw will be like

I'll be keeping my ear to the ground about this release though, for curiosity's sake. If it does turn out good, it'll be worth a rental

[brunoafh]

There was multiplayer in NG 2...

But yeah, this game doesn't interest me at all. The original Xbox game was amazing, I loved the PS3 port too, gave the game a great look. NG 2 was a bit boring, far less impressive than the first one. I've only played the PS3 port unfortunately, but it didn't impress me enough to go back and play the proper 360 version anyway.

I kind of don't care though. I'm sort of tired of seeing the original Devil May Cry style of combat recycled over and over again by games like Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta and the DMC series itself.

I was on board with pretty much all of your points until you said that you were sick of DMC ripping itself off. That doesn't make sense. Unless you mean DmC, which shouldn't even be considered an actual Devil May Cry game at all in my eyes.

[Gamerforlife]

There was multiplayer in NG 2...

But yeah, this game doesn't interest me at all. The original Xbox game was amazing, I loved the PS3 port too, gave the game a great look. NG 2 was a bit boring, far less impressive than the first one. I've only played the PS3 port unfortunately, but it didn't impress me enough to go back and play the proper 360 version anyway.

I kind of don't care though. I'm sort of tired of seeing the original Devil May Cry style of combat recycled over and over again by games like Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta and the DMC series itself.

I was on board with pretty much all of your points until you said that you were sick of DMC ripping itself off. That doesn't make sense. Unless you mean DmC, which shouldn't even be considered an actual Devil May Cry game at all in my eyes.

I was saying that I'm tired of this style of combat being done over and over again. The original DMC kind of introduced a new type of beat'em up/hack n slash formula and in addition to that series recycling it constantly, we've had other games do it to. I'm just sort of bored with it. You walk into an area, some weird, colored wall pops up(which has become this weird, genre convention now), you kill a bunch of guys with fighting game-like combos, absorb a bunch of orbs(because it just HAS to ALWAYS be orbs), colored wall goes down, you grab some pointless item to open some stupid door to remind us that Devil May Cry was born out of a Resident Evil game, you do some crappy, subpar platform sequence(because action games in 2011 can't just be action games), you enter another area where a colored wall pops up, etc, etc, etc.

It's just all so familiar now that I'm bored with it.

That being said, if you liked the first NG, you'd probably enjoy the Xbox 360 version of NG II better than the PS 3 one. It's bloodier and more violent(feels like a bloody samurai flick), and probably truer to Itagaki's vision. On the negative side, it's really, really cheap at times and doesn't feel like a finished product with lots of bugs, glitches, exploits and bizarre level design choices. There were issues with Itagaki and Tecmo at the time I think, so maybe that affected development

[brunoafh]

I'm bored with it too, but I thank the gods of gaming for Devil May Cry 3. Yes, it ultimately follows the formula of it's predecessors, but it does everything so incredibly well that it's just one of those cases where sequel-itis was a good thing for once.

I might try the 360 version some day to form a more well rounded opinion of the game, but the PS3 version pretty much turned me off of it. It was okay, but just felt really average is about every field. Apart from not really liking the game much, I absolutely hated being forced to play as the other characters, and censorship does not sit well with me.

Have you played the Otogi games? Very different take on the 3D hack n slash genre.

[Hobie-wan]

What's with all the lagtacular pauses in the action? I couldn't tell if that was actual lag, or some sort of pause for activating an ability.

[DomitorInvictus]

I was saying that I'm tired of this style of combat being done over and over again. The original DMC kind of introduced a new type of beat'em up/hack n slash formula and in addition to that series recycling it constantly, we've had other games do it to. I'm just sort of bored with it. You walk into an area, some weird, colored wall pops up(which has become this weird, genre convention now), you kill a bunch of guys with fighting game-like combos, absorb a bunch of orbs(because it just HAS to ALWAYS be orbs), colored wall goes down, you grab some pointless item to open some stupid door to remind us that Devil May Cry was born out of a Resident Evil game, you do some crappy, subpar platform sequence(because action games in 2011 can't just be action games), you enter another area where a colored wall pops up, etc, etc, etc.

It's just all so familiar now that I'm bored with it.

I see no problem with the formula, if it works, don't fix it, right? But I agree that too much of anything will become boring after a while. Devil May Cry could do much better without the "adventure" elements too.

I don't think the solution is to change the formula as much as improve the actual gameplay. A good example of that is Bayonetta, which, in my opinion, took the Devil May Cry series and improved upon it greatly with a deeper and more fluid combat system. It should be considered the standard of hack 'n slash/beat 'em up games because it set the bar higher than any other game in the genre.

I would be pretty satisfied if more games tried to emulate Bayonetta.

[swiftzx]

Team Ninja said that this is going to be a launch game for the Wii U.

[Breetai]

Ninja Gaiden III?

[Xeogred]

I'm glad I didn't like NG2 at all, so I could completely careless about this. Seriously. *shrugs*

NG1 (Xbox) was one of my favorite games last gen hands down, I beat it on Very Hard and got really far on the second tournament, whichever the one was that replaced all the enemies. I'm pretty sure the first level had Black Ninja's already. I really wish there was a way to access this content again, as I don't think it's possible anymore. Fuck those cat enemies though. I couldn't manage to finish this redux though.

Also I have the DMC HD Trilogy to look forward to. I never beat DMC1, hardly played DMC2/DMC3 but I know I'll probably love the third game, so I can't wait. That'll tide over my love for Japanese action game awesomeness.

This genre was off the hook last gen, but it's completely dead now. And with how Capcom are nowadays, it's probably best that they pretty much buried Onimusha.