Ninja Blade

Ninja Blade

If you’re looking for something spectacular to help show off your 360, making you look like some kind of ambidextrous videogaming deity in the process, Ninja Blade might just be what you’re looking for. If, on the other hand, you’re in the market for a deep, meaningful or even fair gaming experience, well…

But before we get to our grumbles - and we’ve got a few - there’s much to celebrate in From Software’s chopsocky action ‘em up. Not least of which its keenness to get straight into the job at hand. Just a short (and gruesome) cinematic intro and the briefest of paragraphs telling how parasitic ‘Alpha Worms’ have infected a near-future Tokyo, mutating the local populace and turning everyday creatures and machines into monstrous abominations of their former selves, and you’re away.

Players are cast as Ken, a member of an elite ninja unit tasked with “sterilising” this encroaching menace. This enigmatic fella comes ready-equipped with the eponymous Ninja Blade, an everyday slasher that is useful in most scenarios. Very quickly, though, Ken picks up the powerful but cumbersome Stonerender sword and the speedy Twin Falcon knives which, handily, also sprout wires aiding the crossing of wide chasms. There’s a nifty shuriken too, which has three elemental abilities and can be used to create a local whirlwind or aimed more precisely at distant targets. Aside from any earned weapon upgrades and Ken’s own close or ranged attacks, that is pretty much your lot.

And so, suitably tooled up, it’s straight into the fray as Ken skydives to meet the first of many fearsome foes (the Pox Giant!) and we’re introduced to Ninja Blade’s signature feature - Quick Time Events. Ninja Blade is veritably chocka with ‘em; key moments in tricky situations where players are required to respond to onscreen prompts - generally quick button presses or Left stick movements. The most outrageous, audience pleasing stunts are performed this way - Ken leaping from a burning helicopter onto the back of a ocean liner-sized mutoid worm and through the windows atop the nearest skyscraper, and so on. If you don’t act quickly enough the game rewinds to the start of the sequence and you’re able to repeat it. Very cool!

Such frolics come thick and fast in Ninja Blade. In fact we’re struggling to think of another game that’s anything like it, in its unrelenting pace. Each of the large missions is an action-packed prelude to an epic battle with an unfeasibly massive boss that, more often than not, is a whole level in itself requiring multiple assaults. Standard action game clichés abound with certain crates or fallen enemies yielding life-giving energy, chi pieces or blood crystals that can be spent on weapon upgrades. Ken’s Ninja-Vision (accessed via the L button) reveals where the goodies are hidden and highlights enemies’ weak points or secret attacks. There’s a pleasing Prince of Persia-style element to the action too, as Ken runs up or along vertical walls, leaps and somersaults from poles with merry abandon.

In fact Ninja Blade is a lot like plenty of other games besides - God of War or Devil May Cry with its humongous bosses, Dragon’s Lair with its reliance on timely button presses and Ninja Gaiden for obvious reasons. It’s often less than the sum of its inspired parts, though, and is riven with irritations that’ll have you gnawing the pad on a few too many occasions. Unavoidable attacks, being stunned by a boss just long enough for the creature to move out of range, a clumsy menu/upgrade system (it takes five button presses to apply the health spray), being knocked off ledges that you can’t yourself jump from, the blurring when coming out of the Ninja Vision view, a crap-ola save system that forgets the checkpoints you’ve reached if you quit mid-level and others equally irksome.

But, for all such shortcomings, it’s easy to forgive a game that is so noisy, brash, unfettered by complicated controls or superfluous storylines and joyously, riotously NUTS. Ninja Blade is certainly no classic of its genre and it lacks polish in places, but it is rarely less than full-on and is hugely entertaining throughout. Learn where all your joypad’s face buttons are and you’ll look like an absolute superhero in front of your peers too. In which case, job done!

3 out of 5