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No no, the current Ninja Gaiden II.

That’s the one.

Anyway, the first thing you need to know is that the game is fun.

Ninja Gaiden II gets the combat right. Whatever else may be wrong with it, and there’s a lot wrong with it, getting to the next group of enemies to carve them into demon sashimi will always keep you going.

The problem is, your biggest foe isn’t greater fiends or rogue ninjas. It’s the camera.

If you’ve been catching up on the other reviews of Ninja Gaiden II, you’ll know that everyone is saying pretty much the same thing. You’re not going to hear any different here.

Plenty of games have a terrible camera, but this one particularly suffers from it. These sorts of fighting games are all about reading your opponent’s attack animation, blocking or dodging them accordingly and butchering them in style. If you can’t see the attacks in the first place, you’re pretty much out in the cold.

This is compounded by the fact that nearly every enemy in Ninja Gaiden II seems to have a ranged attack, right down to the lowliest ninjas, and they’re not afraid to use them. I’m getting barraged by projectiles from three or four guys I can’t even see. That’s only a minor thing when it’s piddly shurikens, but when it’s flaming arrows that knock me out of attacks or fireballs that take away a quarter of my life, it’s a bigger issue.

Of course, Ninja Gaiden is supposed to be hard. (Yes, I’m playing on normal difficulty. Easy mode is for suckers.) Suggesting that the game is too hard out loud summons the horrible pockmarked visage of Tomonobu Itagaki to your screen, and he laughs at you. But with a camera like this, it feels less like I’m getting beaten by a tough but fair fight and more like I’m just getting chumped.

On a side note, the plot (if you can call it that) seems to echo the original Ninja Gaiden for the NES. A lady CIA agent shows up at the beginning, though she seems to have ditched Irene Lew’s sensible shirt and coat for a black leather… I don’t even know how to begin describing this outfit. A demon statue serves as the game’s early macguffin, and Ryu’s father Joe (Joe?) Hyabusa makes an appearance. It doesn’t add much to the game per se, but it’s a neat shout-out to the original.

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