I picked up a copy of Ninja Gaiden for the XBox gaming console, so as to keep with my tradition of getting every game pertaining to ninjas and not sucking. And I got three words for you: Holy Crap. What's that? there's only two words? Well the game blew that third one away.
You play as Ryu Hayabusa, who you should be familiar with if you've played the Dead or Alive fighting series. Now you're thinking, "a spin-off of a fighting game? Ryu Hayabusa will be treading on DOA's good name". But no--DOA is now officially treading on his. Even a few of Hayabusa's signatire moves are now in Gaiden, like the awesome double ariel spindle kick. Also, there's cameos by Ayane, one of the chicks form DOA.
As pointed out to Andre, the game has the basic ninja-game story: Your clan has been killed, and you're lookin' for revenge. A simple story, but you won't care about it as soon as you start. There's slicin', dicin' cuttin', stabbin' kickin', clubbin' (as in bludgeoning, not as in what Samo dreams about doing when he's alone eating frosted mini-wheats right out of the box covered in syrup) and a barrage of other verbs that can have the G replaced with an apostrophe.
Your shuriken are infinite. You never fatigue. You can run on water, along and up walls, and through eneimies with your sword drawn. You're sword is awesome, but you're not limited to it at all. You can have nunchucks and hammers, bows and arrows, etc.. There's a insane amount of combos, throws, ariel techniques, and other ass-kickery. The enemies are smart too. They gang up, sneak behind, and if you try to just block everything they grab you and slit your thraot or knee you in the face or some other classy technique. And the cutting! Oh man, it's non-stop. To top it all off, there's an old man who can upgrade your weapons and sell you items. Man, it has everything...
Foremost, this game is hard. There's two modes, normal and hard, and normal seems impossible. But you get better, right? Of course you do, but the enemies that show up double in difficulty every level. Enemies that seemed like insurpassable foes in the early levels seem like nothing later on, but you're too distracted with the new insurpassable foes. So NO level is easy or fast. This ain't no cake-walk in the tea-park, expect to die over and over again. But that high difficulty level is good, because it means that the game will last.
If you own, or are planning to steal an XBox, this game is a must. Like Halo, this game alone is pretty much worth buying an XBox. Sneakiest Ninja (dot) com gives it 10 golden baseball gloves. A game that truely represents the title of ninja.
