Ninja Gaiden II Needs to Level Up the Camera Work

The team that brought you one of the more difficult games of all time (according to some) has come back for another round. According to one review Ninja Gaiden II serves up what looks to be an amazing addition to the franchise, at least what you can see of it through the very counter-intuitive camera work. "The hybrid aesthetic - high-tech Technicolor Japan mixed with muted feudalist Japan - might sound dissonant but looks sharply coherent. In fact, in the hands of a skilled player NGII looks nothing less than exhilarating, and occasionally surpasses any martial arts movie you might care to name. And this is why the camera is such a surprisingly big issue. This isn't a problem with it getting caught on a corner occasionally, nor the odd confusing switch of perspective. It is a constant problem: obscuring foes, breaking up combos, losing track of Ryu, and flicking back and forth between positions."

Yawn

There was a video of a developer playing through NGII that became available on Xbox Live not to long ago.

I'm a big fan of the NG series as well as Tecmo's other stuff but to be perfectly honest I was bored to tears.

A number of other games in the genr

Re:

Yeah, I agree that the video was boring, but the game was never really about great graphics, plot, or a sandbox world. It basically optimized the first for framerate and for artistry and swept the other two largely aside. The game was 100% about gameplay:

Re:

Ninja Gaiden doesn't need to go down the open-ended route. I think criticizing a game because of a lack of open-ended gameplay isn't really fair because open-ended gameplay doesn't magically improve the game. Look at a Assassin's Creed, while the game i

Re:

There IS a story, but the gameplay is not story-driven. You can basically test this like so: ignore all of the story scenes and check if you know what to do next regardless. If you do, the gameplay isn't story-driven in the sense that I used the term. An e

xbox only

It is an XBox 360 game only, so we can only expect it to be 'full featured' and on par with what consumers 'really want'.

In other news, the Wii is about to outsell the xbox, while the xbox360 has been available for twice the time.

Re:

Are you asking for a Wii port, or just being snarky for snarky's sake?

Re:

Uh, how is this relevant? I'm as much of a Wii believer as anyone, and it's the only next-gen console I currently own, but that just has nothing to do with anything.

The issue of the camera cuts across systems and video game genres (though some are more de

thats what I was expecting

In the previous one whenever you go through a door, once on the other side the camera is no longer behind you. The camera now faces you with the door behind you. Really wonderful if you enter a room full of enemies that you can't see.

Crap like that makes

Re:thats what I was expecting

Crap like that makes me want to kill a kitten.
Not sure that means what you think it means: definition [urbandictionary.com]. Unless camera angles turn you on ;-)

Old complaint

Reviewers hated the camera in the first xbox Ninja Gaiden game too. Its not particularly helpful if left to do its thing, but NG1 had a button that snapped the camera directly behind you. Manipulating the camera was second nature by the time level 2 roll

Stop Polluting the Namespace!

This is Ninja Gaiden II [wikipedia.org]!

Yeesh. Didn't we learn our lesson [wikipedia.org] over decade ago?

Re:

The only lesson that we've learned over the years is that the Japanese can't count worth a fuck.

Xbox Ninja Gaiden is a reboot.

As far as Team Ninja is concerned, the NES Ninja Gaiden games are a separate series. Why do you think Irene Lew wasn't in the first Xbox Ninja Gaiden?

Re:

I made it to the later pterodactyl thing before eventually giving up. That game was really very cool but was definitely the hardest game I ever played for any extended period of time on the original XBox. (The zombie archers were created by Satan to remind

Re:

Actually the final boss is comparatively easy, especially if you've saved up some magic bottles. Spamming Ninpo (fire on the first form, lightning on the second) pretty much does it.

The toughest enemy in the game is, oddly enough, tiny little ghostly fish

Re:

The ghost pirahnas are pure evil, BUT YOU CAN FARM THEM FOR $$$$ so I forgive them and honestly they're a joke if you just do air attacks non-stop.

The most annoying enemies in the game are probably the cat warriors in Ninja Gaiden Black, and the Black Spid

Re:

True -- but by that point, if you're into farming, you should already have done it with the bats in the sewer entrance. Alma #1: definitely. The Dokus I never had much trouble with. Murai Master Ninja is indeed a very tough fight, but then, what isn't. The

Re:

Most games nowadays baby everyone. Old-school games were nigh-unbeatable. The NES Ninja Gaidens were ridiculously hard, far harder than the XBox Ninja Gaiden on anything but Ninja Master difficulty. It's a good thing the new Ninja Gaiden games aren't total

Re:

Most games nowadays baby everyone. Old-school games were nigh-unbeatable.

We have a term for this. It's called "being a fun game", as opposed to "a clusterfuck of difficulty which is there just so that a chosen few can stroke their e-peens". The punishing difficulty of the old days is gone for a very good reason, and good ridda

Re:

Really? I played through the game several times, and then several times again when they released Ninja Gaiden Black, and I never found the camera irritating. Maybe part of it is that Ryu is such a defensive powerhouse that you can typically roll into a roo

Re:

Three years into a console's life and you would normally be seeing graphical masterpiece with incredibly polished gameplay.

Grand Theft Auto?

Re:

Ah, true. In that case, I'd say both Halo 3 and Oblivion were pretty solid, though admittedly not revolutionary.

Re:

Oh yeah -- forgot about that. Fair enough.

Re:

Listen PS3 fanboy. I own a PS3 and a 360, and I can tell you that the 360 has some absolutely beautiful games that blow away anything on the PS3 in terms of graphics, story, and fun. Drake's Fortune is about the only decent exclusive I've seen on my PS3, a

Re:

Bioshock was never an exclusive, and Gears of War/Mass Effect are no longer exclusives. The 360 is fine, but it doesn't have the huge exclusive edge everyone says it does.