HIGH Surfing a missile into a building is rad as hell.

LOW There’s a suboptimal amount of downtime in the stage design.

WTF Joe’s eloquent way with words.

Are videogame bad guys deliberately stupid? It’s a question I’m sure nobody on the planet has ever asked before, but the bad guy in Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Lord Ruse, comes across as a prime example of being a blithering dum-dum.

First, he’s a bad guy gunning for domination in a world where Sega’s premiere bad guy-killing ninja Joe Musashi exists. He then intentionally attacks Joe’s home while he’s chilling with his wife, dog and students, confidently relegating the killing of said super ninja to his most inept followers and leaving before the job’s done — so now Joe has to prioritize killing the bastard in a personal way.

Players will rely on Joe’s trusty katana during this 2D side scrolling quest, as well as a pocket full of throwing knives and an understated ability to dive-kick dudes in the face. Over time he’ll acquire new moves and additional gear, but don’t expect new weapon types. Blowing fire and summoning snake gods are all well and good, but Joe’s ultimately a katana guy through and through.

In his pursuit of vengeance, Joe will discover amulets that improve or modify certain abilities. He can equip some that cause enemies to drop more money or better healing items, while others offer rechargeable barriers that absorb a single attack or give significant damage buffs as his combo meter rises.

Naturally there are a ton of bad guys to meet and defeat along the way, from low level ninja to far more competent ‘elite’ demons, robots and skilled swordsmen.

Most enemies have two damage gauges to keep track of — their basic health and a stun meter that opens them up for an instant execution marker which will see Joe bullet across the screen turning every vulnerable enemy a into bloody mist. It should be mentioned that doing these instakills never, ever gets old and is heavily encouraged by showering players who use it with more resources than normal kills.

To get specific for a moment, there’s an excessive amount of hitstop on attacks, causing the action to briefly freeze as blade meets flesh. Most titles usually reserve this for heavy or perfectly-timed hits, but Shinobi: Art of Vengeance liberally applies it to pretty much everything. It’s a double-edged approach, with many combos feeling weighty and powerful in nature, but this staccato rhythm of sword swipes staggers the flow of combat and lingers just a little too long when the player takes damage from enemies.

With that said, for the most part the action feels solidly enjoyable with plenty of scope for player expression and experimenting with flamboyant combos that brutalize enemies halfway across the screen, their broken corpses flopping around like pincushions full of kunai. However, I’m also curious to see how the same combat engine would fare if the hitstop was completely absent.

Something that’s more of a clear issue is that Joe commits to certain attacks, meaning that he can’t roll or jump to safety until the attack completed. It leads to the master ninja feeling less sprightly than he probably should, tanking hits with his face instead of swiftly sweeping out of range, making performing certain moves more unsafe than they probably should be. Not that enemies are particularly deadly for the most part, many of them putter through their standard attack animations without much regard for what Joe’s up to.

Bosses are the usual motley crew of idiots who think that they can take on Joe Musashi and live, though series veterans will recognize a few returning faces. They’re fine, but rarely standout – most of them are punching bags, honestly. That’s not to say that they don’t have attack patterns that require avoiding, but Joe can absolutely body them for the most part.

In terms of presentation, Shinobi looks great — absolutely fantastic in places, even, with a hand-drawn art style that continually impresses from the first scene in a gorgeously sunlit field, all the way to later stages storming through rain-slick cities, towering mountain passes, underground secret bases and the welcome return of an awesome surfboarding section. That said, I do find the overly angular stage design to detract from things somewhat, though I’m sure the choice was made to make surface areas more easily recognizable.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance takes a psuedo-metroidvania approach to level design. It isn’t all one large interconnected world to explore, but rather a bunch of levels peppered with secrets that can only be fully explored when bringing back tools and skills acquired in later levels — things like walls requiring climbing claws to scale, updrafts that necessitate the use of a glider, or anchor points that Musashi will need a grappling hook to latch onto.

Despite this, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance doesn’t take full advantage of the approach. Players will often return with new gear only to pick up a single item or perform a short platforming sequence instead of uncovering new areas to explore, enemies to kill and bosses to defeat. It’s largely disappointing when compared to other games that utilize the approach well, though there are portals known as Ankou rifts that offer more challenging subrooms filled with enemies or tougher platforming sections.

The puzzles on offer generally exist to slow the proceedings down. Flipping switches to open doors is rarely an exhilarating gameplay mechanic, and pushing heavy objects across a floor to block a laser or power a device doesn’t exactly scream high-speed ninja action. Little of this is significantly additive, instead leading to far more downtime than is desired.

I generally enjoyed Shinobi: Art of Vengeance just fine. On the upside, the combat engine is fluid and satisfying to experiment with, and for the most part Shinobi: Art of Vengeance generally offers a reasonably good time. However, as a longtime series fan I expected an absolutely awesome outing, and it never quite hit the heights I was hoping for.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Lizardcube and published by DotEmu. It is currently available on XBX/S/PS5/Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. The good stuff! The official description reads: This is an action-platformer in which players assume the role of a ninja leader trying to save the world from an evil corporation. From a 2D/sideways perspective, players explore levels while fighting various enemies (e.g., ninjas, soldiers, monsters). Players use swords, throwing stars, and dramatic special moves to kill enemies in frenetic combat; fighting is highlighted by cries of pain, brief slow-motion effects, and frequent blood splatter. One boss fight allows players to dive inside the creature and slash at a giant heart.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. I don’t recall any instances where lack of sound would be a problem. I’d say it’s fully accessible without audio.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

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HIGH Linking seamlessly flamboyant chains of acrobatics and death.

LOW No rapid-fire option for automatic sword swings can wear on the thumb.

WTF Super Express to Hell!

Ninja Gaiden‘s been on vacation for a while at this point. Well, break time’s over, bastards — The Game Kitchen, developers of the highly regarded Blasphemous series, have decided to cook up a delicious new entry in this legendary IP.

Despite Ninja Gaiden typically being known for its bloodsplatteringly vicious 3D combat entries, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound instead hearkens back to the classic NES trilogy with a modernized take on the 2D ninja platforming that got the ball rolling in the first place.

After a short playable prologue, Ragebound’s new protagonist Kenji Mozu scoots through a quick obstacle and tutorial course introducing the most important mechanics and subsequently gets Izuna Dropped on his head by the legendary Ryu Hayabusa as a reward for completing his trial.

Things suddenly kick off in a serious way, Ryu has to leave for America in a hurry, and series veterans will undoubtedly be pleased to hear that the Hayabusa Ninja Village continues its longstanding tradition of being razed to the ground by demons every other week.

Before long, Kenji joins forces with Kumori, a Black Spider Ninja Clan operative with a penchant for hurling razor sharp kunai into the faces of anyone she deems unpleasant. The catch is that they have to literally fuse into a single body to survive, so while Kenji emerges from this joining as the dominant character, Kumori aids him as a powerful spectral sidekick capable of hurling projectiles and using ninpo magic to annihilate any fiends standing in their way.

I found these two new protagonists to be great, playing off one another as mismatched partners facing impossible odds — one full of zeal and righteousness, the other cynical and pragmatic. They may be original characters, but players familiar with the franchise are likely to recognize certain parallels in their design and combat style right away. Kenji is basically a greener, brasher approximation of Ryu Hayabusa and Kumori carries herself as an infinitely cooler version of Ayane from the Dead or Alive series.

As someone who may or may not be dead, Kumori is also able to step into the Demon Realm whenever Kenji comes across demon statues dotted throughout the stages. These tend to be where the toughest platforming challenges take place, but even though Kumori has to complete her tasks on a strict timer before being recalled, she won’t die if she takes too much damage or drops down a pit which allows for as many retries as the player needs to succeed.

Combat is slick, speedy and satisfying thanks to perfectly responsive controls. Kenji can kill many enemies with a single sword slash, cut through incoming projectiles, or kickflip off nearly every enemy or attack in the game using a technique known as the Guillotine Boost — and it isn’t just an optional extra thrown in to spice things up. Players will be required to frequently make use of it to cross yawning chasms filled with airborne baddies or to bounce their way towards secret areas and items tucked just out of reach.

The other major new addition is the ability to Hypercharge Kenji and Kumori’s attacks by killing specific enemies in sequence or sacrificing a little health, allowing them to slice through most enemies’ defenses to dispatch them in one murderously powerful blow. It’s exceptionally useful, and in order to fully leverage it, players will have to think quickly about the optimal approach to many situations.

It’s important to note that Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound isn’t a metroidvania or a roguelike — it’s a traditional stage-based action-platformer in the vein of the original NES titles. Nearly every stage looks fantastic in a chunky pixel art manner, with plenty of detail and great animation throughout as players follow Kenji and Kumori’s journey through burning temples, mountain pathways, across the tops of high-speed trains and more. I only disliked the design of one stage, a sickly and unpleasant biolab which simply didn’t hold up to the quality of the others.

Also of note is the amount of variations throughout each stage to help spice gameplay up. Whether fleeing from a demon who somehow learned how to operate a bulldozer, speeding across the countryside on a motorbike or having to take cover from powerful explosions in the background of an unfinished construction yard, there are plenty of neat setpieces to help keep things interesting.

The journey may not always be an easy one, but I absolutely loved it. It’s just… Goddamn, my thumb really hurts now.

Given that Kenji and Kumori have fixed stats, players can’t simply level up by killing minions to overcome challenges through brute force. That said, there are numerous Golden Scarabs and Crystal Skulls tucked away in each stage which can be used to purchase items from a shop between stages. Obtaining new projectiles and super arts, and equipping up to two talismans that help or hamper their chances of succeeding in each level can make a real difference.

Positive effects can include healing on chain kills and obtaining Hypercharge attacks from linking multiple Guillotine Boosts together, whereas negative ones may involve not healing at checkpoints or restarting the entire stage upon death in exchange for higher completion ranks at the end. Every stage has a rank associated with it, and challenges can range from trivialities such as deflecting a few projectiles to more challenging ones such as beating Ryu Hayabusa in a duel fresh out of the tutorial.

Make no mistake, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound can be a tricky game, even on the Normal difficulty setting. However, it also allows players to make the experience as easy or as hard as they like, whether through unlockable weapons and talismans or by using an in-game accessibility menu that can slow down overall speed, reduce taken damage or even make players invincible to pretty much anything other than falling off the map — so while it’s a tough game by default, pretty much anyone should be able to succeed through tweaking various settings. There’s also no antiquated ‘lives’ system looming overhead, and plenty of checkpoints to quickly return to.

In fact, about the only real complaint I have about Ragebound is that there’s no rapid-fire option in the menus for repeated sword slashes. Some of these bosses can take a real pounding, so after a few deaths and hammering away at the melee button like a madman each time, my thumb started to feel somewhat abused. It’s not typically a concern while making headway through each stage, but some bosses have massive health pools to be whittled down, leading to serious physical fatigue.

Aside from that one issue, it’s hard to fault anything about Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. It’s damn near perfect, and offers an immensely satisfying experience with plenty of replayability — it’s so good, in fact, that after completing it for the first time, I sat down and immediately completed it again on Hard Mode.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by The Game Kitchen and published by DotEmu. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S/PS4/PS5/Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed twice with all achievements earned. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Gore, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Violence. The official description reads: This is a 2D action-platformer based on levels and characters from the Ninja Gaiden universe. Players control small ninjas as they battle enemies (e.g., human commandos, ninjas, demons) in fast-paced combat. Players use swords, thrown weapons, and magic skills to kill enemies. Combat is highlighted by impact sounds, cries of pain, and blood-splatter effects. Some attacks allow players to dismember or behead enemies, and a handful of boss creatures are depicted with exposed organs and/or skinless, flesh/sinewy bodies. Some female enemies are designed with revealing outfits (e.g., low-cut tops, a lot of cleavage). The word “a*s” appears in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. All dialogue is delivered through text. The subtitles can be altered and/ or resized, though seemingly not enlarged. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

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HIGH An exceptional narrative and combat system that builds upon years of experience.

LOW Some slowdown and visual quirks.

WTF I urge all readers to watch Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai before playing this game

For almost two decades, gamers have been well-acquainted with Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series. 

The first nine mainline releases saw players inhabit virtual recreations of historical settings in small-scale, open-ended environments that focused on stealth-based gameplay and stories that involve Dan Brown-esque shadow societies and conspiracies.

In 2017, Ubisoft changed directions and the series has since shifted into an open-world, action role-playing style, rivaling modern juggernauts such as The Witcher III and Red Dead Redemption II. As a longtime fan of the series, the current iteration is one I’ve grown fond of, with my own review of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla praising its deeper focus on exploration and strong combat suite. However, even after putting over 100 hours into Valhalla, I still felt that it (and the series as a whole) needed a little more to push itself into greatness and Shadows is that attempt.

Played from a third-person perspective, Shadows is an action-RPG set in feudal Japan. During this time (the end of the Sengoku period), conflicts have broken out while major advancements in wartime technology (like the introduction of guns) have turned the tide of battle. Players are introduced to the two protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke. The former is a ninja who’s been training her whole life among her people in the Iga Province. The latter, based on the real historical figure of the same name, is an African who was granted the title of Samurai. Without revealing too many narrative details, both characters meet in dire circumstances and form an allyship to liberate Japan from a wave of oppressors. 

The storytelling in Shadows is one of its strongest suits, providing a much darker and deeper narrative the series has seen in years. This era in Japan was known for death and destruction, and the story covers that with a gravity I wasn’t expecting. Themes center around the aftermath of war, the tolls that vengeance takes on people and how race and class affect worldview are all prevalent and handled well. It also helps that the two main characters are charming and fleshed out — Naoe’s brash attitude clashes with Yasuke’s more thoughtful personality, making their dynamic work.  

The grand scope and wonderful character of this piece recalls the likes of Akira Kurosawa’s oeuvre of samurai films (Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, etc.) while the over-the-top violence reminded me of Kenji Misumi’s classic Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance or Takashi Miike’s excellent remake of 13 Assassins. Those cinematic allusions also play a huge part in the story’s presentation, as every cutscene is well-directed and featuring solid cinematography and the inclusion of black bars above and below the screen to add some flair, giving that “widescreen” look.

With the story being the best the series has seen in ages, I’m also happy to report that the gameplay is exceptional, with innovations and changes made to combat and stealth.

Players control both Naoe and Yasuke in their journey through Japan and are able to switch between them freely after an extended period with Naoe at the beginning. Rather than each character being a simple aesthetic choice, each provides a different style, different skill trees and different approaches to combat, allowing players to build Naoe and Yasuke how they want. 

For example, I decided that Naoe should be an excellent assassin and focused on those skills in her tree. She was able to perform a double assassination with a hidden blade, had an arsenal of tools like kunai (a small blade) that could be thrown to dispose of enemies quickly and quietly, and a smoke bomb to get out of dangerous situations. At one point, I even found armor that allowed me to inflict more damage at night, adding to my plan of sticking to the shadows. Naoe can also go prone and crawl on the floor, sneaking through bushes and under structures to catch enemies off guard.

If I did have to get loud using Naoe, I made sure she was an adept fighter and upgraded her katana skills. Combat as a shinobi is a fast dance of careful dodges, parries and quick sword attacks. The stamina meter from Valhalla is gone, allowing players to attack without the cumbersome feeling of managing a meter. 

Yasuke isn’t so graceful, but he brings a more brutal style of play. A trained samurai, Yasuke mostly uses weapons like katanas or kanabō (spiked clubs) in fights to delivers slower, yet more powerful attacks. His abilities include a kick that can send opponents flying or knocking them down after running into them. Despite not being able to sneak as easily as Naoe, I enjoyed walking into an enemy outpost and taking on a large group of enemies. This boldness pairs excellently with gnarly finisher moves, with plenty of heads and limbs being chopped off. 

Other major upgrades to combat include the importance of lights and sounds, as players are able to extinguish candles to conceal themselves in the dark and being careful when sneaking around to avoid creaky floorboards. After the last few entries in the AC series deemphasizing stealth in exchange for action, being able to play Shadows as a full-blown stealth title is a treat. Supporting this is that quests are dynamic, with many ways to complete them. For example, Naoe had to assassinate someone in a house. I managed to successfully sneak past the guards, find a suitable vantage point and threw a knife from a safe distance before anyone had seen me. I completed the quest and faced no alarms or opposition. 

As mentioned, Shadows does an excellent job in storytelling and presentation to make the experience feel cinematic, and it also helps that the visuals are gorgeous, with character models and facial animations looking good. However, the real star of the show is Japan itself.

Riding through winding hills on horseback is a treat, as mountains on the horizon paint a gorgeous picture. The same goes for standing in a dense forest full of bamboo. Shadows’ Japan is smaller than Valhalla’s England, which in turn makes it more dense with detail. The overall presentation is amazing and during my time, I only encountered minor moments of slowdown and a few weird clipping instances.  

Assassin’s Creed Shadows feels like the culmination of years of reworking the series into a full-fledged RPG. With smart changes to the overall flow of combat and a narrative that rivals some of the best triple-AAA experiences available today, Shadows is not only the best AC in well over a decade, but arguably one of the finest action-RPGs of the decade so far.

Fans and doubters alike owe it to themselves to take this trip to Japan.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 

Buy Assassin’s Creed Shadows: PS5 – Xbox – PC

Disclosures: This game is published and developed by Ubisoft. It is available on PC, PS5, and XBX/S. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 30 hours were spent in single-player and the game was not completed (still playing). There is no multiplayer.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language. The site reads: This is an action-adventure game in which players follow the stories of a shinobi assassin (Naoe) and a samurai (Yasuke) as they navigate turbulent clan wars during Sengoku-era Japan. Players explore open-world environments while performing missions (e.g., searching for items, infiltrating enemy compounds) and using stealth to kill human targets. Players use swords, throwing/concealed blades, and occasional guns to kill various enemies (e.g., ninja, guards, soldiers, samurai) in melee-style combat. Battles are highlighted by screams of pain and frequent blood-splatter effects. Some finishing moves allow players to decapitate or dismember enemies, with brief slow-motion effects. Cutscenes depict further instances of violence: captives beheaded; characters shot at close range. The words “sh*t” and “a*shole” appear in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles and visual options available in the game, all of which can be adjusted. This game is fully accessible. More on the accessibility can be read here.

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped.

The post Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Disclosure: This is an article written and released by Ubisoft, and sent to GameCritics via Ubisoft PR. While we don’t usually run PR releases, given its focus on accessibility and our lifelong dedication to same, we’re happy to share this information. The article can be seen in its original format here.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, Macs with Apple silicon via the Mac App Store, and Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store. Set during the late Sengoku era in Japan, players will play as both the stealthy shinobi Naoe and the formidable samurai Yasuke. No matter who you’re playing as, the development team wanted to ensure that as many people as possible are able to enjoy everything that Assassin’s Creed Shadows has to offer. To learn more about the team’s approach to accessible design, we spoke with UX Director Jonathan Bedard.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an evolution for the franchise, with many elements being rebuilt from the ground up. In what ways did that allow you to change your approach to accessibility?

Jonathan Bedard: Having changed the way we built the game, we had to redo many things, and it allowed us to revisit some elements that weren’t working as well as we’d hoped. Certain features benefited from this by being retooled or by simply changing the interface itself – or in some cases, the functionalities – to elevate our offer and our experience to higher standards. One example of that is our input remapping. Not only can you adjust the inputs of any of the buttons, but you can adjust the action of that input, whether you want it to be a hold or a press.

What was the collaboration like with the development team at Ubisoft Quebec?

JB: With every project, we have more and more people interested and invested in the different topics related to accessibility. This was especially true for Shadows; for instance, the audio team was really invested and proposed ways to innovate and push the boundaries of what we do in accessibility.

The unflinching involvement of our dedicated accessibility teams in Ukraine, mixed with the enthusiasm in our different studios, made it so we were able to propose new innovative features like audio descriptions for in-game cinematics, which is something not often seen in games.

Are there any new features you’re particularly proud of? Or that the community has been requesting for a while?

JB: Audio descriptions for cinematics is something that really made me happy to see come to the game.

Fun fact, while in a director meeting, reviewing the game, we ended up encountering that feature, in a scene that was used as a benchmark for this. It was not supposed to be enabled for that meeting, but we ended up really impressed by how many emotions and actions were transposed through it. It helped me project how this could change the perception of many motivational levers for many of our players needing this because of how well it came out, and how good of a job it did to express the events in the game in a way that really conveys the emotions and subtleties of our scenes.

It also made me happy to see an initiative coming from the team’s passion and making its way into the game. This shows how far we’ve come along in the last few years, in terms of people being aware of and caring about accessibility at Ubisoft. I am proud to see this evolution, awareness, and care spreading and making our games more accessible every time.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES LIST

Visual

• Colorblind options – Ability to change colors for certain gameplay elements from a list of presets
• Screen Narration – Not only most menu items, but also many HUD modules and time-sensitive elements can be narrated
• HUD Customization – Ability to turn all HUD elements on or off either all at once, or individually, either with shortcut or using presets – increase opacity, resize text, resize Icons or add background to increase readability
• Screen shake on/off toggle

Audio

• Subtitles – Better color modifications, speaker directions and speaker emotions
• Gameplay Captions – Surfacing stimuli and points to their origins
• Audio Description for Cinematics – Cinematic will be audio descripted
• Audio Cues/Audio Glossary – New signs and feedback allowing navigation and path finding with non-visual cues
• Separate, isolated audio sliders

Navigation and Guidance

• FTUE – First time user experience flow is back, offering first-access critical options
• Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
• Tutorials Section – Tutorials can be found in the Codex section at any time
• Menu Tutorials – Always alerts when there are new menu functions
• Conversation Log – Every line can be perused from the start to the end of a dialogue

Controls

• Control Remapping – Remap gameplay inputs, and their action (hold, press, double-press)
• Many inputs devices – Mouse and keyboard, controllers, combinations
• Lock-On Camera – Lock the camera on an enemy
• X and Y axis inversion – Ability to invert the axis for aiming actions
• Stick inversion – Invert the analog-stick behavior

Gameplay

• Stealth and combat each have four separate difficulty settings
• Guided Mode – Offer streamlined systems and remove part of the gameplay to alleviate the requirement for player engagement in exploration and finding content
• Canon Mode – Enable automatic selection of narrative decisions for the “canon” story to unfold
• Melee Attack Mode – Simplifies the combat by using a single input instead of multiple buttons or complex combinations
• Quick Timed Events – Type of input required to complete Quick Time Events can be simplified, or skipped entirely
• Aim Assistance – Four levels of aim assistance are offered (off, light, moderate, full)

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available for preorder now and launches on March 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, Macs with Apple silicon via the Mac App Store, and Windows PC through the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. The game will also come to iPad at a later date.

— Youssef Garcia-Maguid

The post Assassin’s Creed Shadows Accessibility Spotlight appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Brutal artisanal arcade action. Dense, lush pixel art.

LOW Desperately needs a proper practice mode.

WTF A ninja with a shotgun just feels wrong (but also kinda right?)

Tengo Project is a team of three industry veterans devoted to keeping arcade culture alive in a world that has mostly forgotten it, but they occupy a wholly unique place even within that niche — they’re not restoring and preserving classics like the arch-archivists at M2, nor are they general workmanlike preservationists a la Hamster. Instead, Tengo Project returns to old arcade or console titles and completely re-envisions them.

As such, it’s easy to reach for the term “remake,” but Tengo’s title are remakes only in the sense that a butterfly is a remake of a caterpillar. Each piece from them carries forward the life force of its inspiration, but transformed into something new and striking. Their latest, Shadow of the Ninja: Reborn, may be the most ornate expression of their process yet.

Reborn has its roots in an NES title called — you guessed it — Shadow of the Ninja, a late-era 2D NES action-platformer in the vein of classics like Ninja Gaiden, and Reborn could still be described as such. You can sense the NES texture underneath, now enriched with an elegant suite of deepened mechanics, all of which are honed to fine points that the game will happily skewer players on. The difficulty here? Well it’s pungent, intense, and bracing — it’s an heir to (and evolution of) the kind of brutal things that Ghosts ‘n Goblins and the early Castlevanias were doing.

Player characters Hayate and Kaede are ninja, so they’re not as stiff-jointed as Arthur or the Belmonts, but neither are they lightning-fast. Their moveset is nuanced and powerful, but also laden with recovery frames and balancing drawbacks. As is always the case with experiences of this ilk, engaging with the possibilities and limitations of the moveset is the first step on the long road to mastery. The two core verbs are a sword attack which fans out in front of the character and can destroy some projectiles, and a long-range kusarigama attack, which can be aimed in both orthogonal and diagonal directions.

Then there’s the item system, which is baroque, wild, and wooly. Crates throughout each level contain items that can be swapped between and used like sub-weapons. There are a gobsmacking 53 different items altogether, including a tea kettle, a butcher saw, a pirate ship cannon, a tonfa, and even a suite of decidedly un-ninjalike military hardware like a minigun or a pump-action shotgun. There’s a lot of functional overlap between items in a general sense (lots of big clubs, lots of projectile weapons, etc.) but there’s nuance too — the blunderbuss fires a wild mess of pellets, for instance, while the pump-action keeps its spread much tighter.

Superplayers will probably establish a meta for which items are best, but all the ones I’ve found have felt extremely powerful and are a satisfying way to tip the odds in the player’s favor. A good thing, because there’s a bristling bestiary standing between these little ninja and the credits. There are hench-gorillas, onmyoji riding magical waterspouts, gun-toting mecha, lava monsters… and that’s before taking the bosses into account, each of which is a rich course of brutality on its own, with complex, demanding attack patterns.

It’s a testament to the mechanical richness on display in Reborn that I have gone this long without discussing the incredible visuals. This is pixel work from true artists, and I love the Tengo Project house style — it’s multilayered and lush, with a particular eye to color and shadow to create depth, backgrounds that teem with movement, and buttery-smooth animations that are detailed, but never cumbersome. Reborn may be Tengo’s most impressive work to date purely from a visual perspective, and just being able to see what the next screen looks like, the next enemy, the next boss, is as much a reward as the conquering of the obstacles themselves.

In a larger sense, Reborn is fashioned from arcade-style philosophies. It’s meant to be played over and over… to be mastered, cleared from start to finish without dying, and played for speed. That’s going to take some time for all but the Chosen Ones. I’m a long-time arcade player (I have 1ccs under my belt) but I still haven’t finished Reborn’s six stages. It’s a beast from the start, and by the time players reach stage three the gloves are off — and there wasn’t much glove to begin with. Practice is key.

Sadly, that process is made more difficult than it needs to be due to the lack of a proper practice mode. This is something that dogs other Tengo Project releases, but it’s an even bigger problem with Reborn because each sub-section of a stage is really a level unto itself — there’s no way to jump into a specific section without playing through the portions of the level that precede it. Reborn is a test for serious arcade players, and Tengo Project surely knows that. Seeing them continue to hold back on features that are quickly becoming standard in this style of game is disappointing to say the least.

Each Tengo Project release is a handcrafted monument to a type of experience and particular strain of gaming culture that is mostly forgotten by the mainstream. This is not “Retro Gaming” as marketed to us for the last 20 years, but a type of design that fully embodies the specific, timeless, vibrant virtues of the ’80s and ’90s in new and exciting forms. Reborn is for sickos, by sickos. For those that have love in their heart for arcade culture, and for muscular, uncompromising, full-blooded action built on a system of beautifully-tuned mechanics, Shadow of the Ninja: Reborn will be one of the best things they can buy this year.

8.5 out of 10

— Ben Schwartz

Disclosures: This game is developed by Tengo Project and published by Natsume Atari. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, Switch, and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 7 hours were devoted to the game, and it was not completed (yet!). 0 hours were spent in the two-player mode.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood. The official rating states: “This is an action platformer in which players assume the role of ninjas attempting to stop a demon invasion. Players traverse side-scrolling levels to defeat human and fantastical enemies (e.g., robots, monkeys, ninjas) in melee-style combat. Players use swords, chains, guns, and cannonballs to attack and kill enemies. Combat is highlighted by impact sounds, colorful light effects, and brief blood-splatter effects.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no dialogue in the game itself, but the attract mode does have subtitles for the Japanese text crawl. They cannot be altered or resized but the text doesn’t appear in the game proper at all. All enemy attacks are telegraphed visually, none appear to rely on sound cues alone. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Shadow Of The Ninja: Reborn Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Picking up zombies and using them as a club to smash other zombies.

LOW The boss whose whole mechanic simply doesn’t work.

WTF I just got that boss so drunk he had to spend ten seconds vomiting all over the arena.

Set in an alternate-history Japan in which Admiral Perry’s black ships brought a zombie plague, Ed-0 Zombie Uprising traps a samurai inside a magical time loop, forcing the player to venture ceaselessly out into a world overrun with the undead, hoping to find a way to save the world from this horrible curse.

A mixture of Tenchu and Bikini Zombie Slayers with a roguelike structure, Ed-0 Zombie Uprising‘s third-person realtime combat gameplay is every bit as confusing and muddled as its influences would suggest.

Players start a run by picking from a set of unlocked areas, including a haunted forest, zombie-filled mansion and rural farmland, then drop into the zombie-packed zones completely unprepared for what they’re going to face. Proudly functioning as a true roguelike, the player goes into each new run woefully underpowered, barely able to take on even a handful of zombies at a time, and success will be determined almost entirely by which skills they luck into finding.

Special abilities are the bread and butter of the combat mechanics. While each of the three classes — Samurai, Sumo, and Ninja — each have perfectly functional basic, strong, and leaping attacks, enemies are so numerous and powerful that even the most skilled player will falter quickly under their onslaught. Progress is only possible when leaning heavily on special attacks, four of which can be used at a time, but they can’t be swapped – once a skill is equipped it must be destroyed to be replaced. There’s no moving powers back to the satchel for later use, no matter how helpful that would be.

These found skills heighten each character’s abilities to an impressive extent, transforming them into brutal monstrosities that can decimate zombie hordes in an instant… or at least, some skills can. Sadly, many of them are duds, some are useful only in extremely rare situations, and some have no obvious use at all, like bowing respectfully to enemies. (It’s possible there’s a time and a place for that one, but the only thing it ever got me was bitten.)

Each of the classes is focused on a different specialty. The samurai is best at one-on-one duels with powerful single enemies, turning aside their attacks and punishing them for the attempt. The sumo can absolutely wreck hordes, wiping out huge numbers simultaneously with devastating throws. The ninja is great at avoiding damage while utilizing powerful magic to stun and trap enemies, leaving them open for execution. Ed-0‘s problem is that the player isn’t able to swap between these characters freely, instead committing to one at the start of each run.

Since each run features situations that all three classes specialize in, character selection becomes a game of triage — choose the specialty the player is best at and hope that the situations fall in their favor, or pick one that makes up for their shortcomings and try to cover their bases? There’s no good answer here, and I spent dozens of hours trying to find one.

In addition to the skills that appear randomly, players can power up by equipping talismans that offer specific effects, from the mundane (500 extra hit points) to the exotic (the player is constantly drunk or on fire). These function similarly to the scrolls and potions that are found in classic roguelikes and -lites, to the point that if the player increases the game’s difficulty past Normal, the talismans will suddenly become unlabeled, forcing the player to either search for an identify scroll or blindly hope that they found something that boosts attack power, and not one that halves their movement speed.

Levels are also littered with consumable items to be used at the player’s discretion, and it’s in these items that Ed-0 really embraces the experimental fun of its roguelite roots. The hook? Any item that effects the player will have the same effect on non-boss enemies if thrown at them. A jug of sake will get an enemy just as drunk as it will the sumo, and a weakening talisman will sap as much strength from a giant zombie as it will from the heroic samurai.

There are also clever combinations available — rice balls and cuts of meat are more nourishing when cooked, so normally the player will be forced to go searching for an open flame. Unless, of course, they run into a terrifying flaming zombie! Simply toss the food at them and it will immediately increase in nutritional value — then, when cooking is done, douse them with a jar of water, transforming them back into a regular zombie that’s easy to cut down. It’s rare to see this kind of breadth of interactivity in what’s otherwise a fairly standard brawler, and this kind of genre innovation is very welcome.

Another place where Ed-0 innovates is level design. Things start with an unimpressive setting — a claustrophobic forest followed by a claustrophobic mansion followed by a claustrophobic castle, with the player running through identical hallways into fairly similar open rooms before the next hallway. Once they reach level 4, however, the stages massively open up and offer huge fields absolutely swarming with zombies, followed by burning cityscapes and a harshly windy chasm full of deadly drops. I was blown away not only by the variety on offer, but by the huge impacts they had on my strategy. such as?

Unfortunately, I had to stop at the chasm cliffside because of Ed-0‘s fatal flaw — it has some of the most poorly-designed boss fights I’ve encountered in recent memory.

They start out decently enough with a large, strong zombie, followed by a zombie that can scream and summon other zombies. Pretty standard stuff. Then things get bad, fast, with a steampunk zombie giant that’s impervious to damage. All of the skills the player has spent the whole run collecting and upgrading? Suddenly they’re worthless, as the only way to inflict damage is by throwing bombs at his head, and these bombs can only be acquired by letting zombies throw them at the player, then picking them up in the brief window before they explode. Also, due to a quirk of the hitboxes, the bombs only damage him about a third of the time. It’s terrible. his is followed by a flying zombie who only attacks with dropped bombs that are super-easy to dodge, or a particle beam that can be defeated by standing behind a rock.

After that is an ill-advised base defense sequence where the player has to stop too many zombies from crossing a bridge. The combat mechanics simply aren’t built with this kind of area control in mind, and I was only able to defeat this one by redoing the run until I’d lucked into collecting a bunch of portable whirlwinds to cheese my way through all the wave.

I’d actually considered giving up on Ed-0 at that point, but what finally drove away was the next boss, a giant poison tiger which is basically a Monster Hunter enemy. The camera can’t track fast enough to follow its movements, and the dodge function doesn’t send the player far enough to avoid its many unblockable attacks. After multiple attempts at facing it with different characters and strategies, I came to the conclusion that I simply wasn’t ever going to get past it, and began to suspect that the failure wasn’t entirely my fault.

These rough spots are a real shame, as there’s otherwise so much to recommend about Ed-0 Zombie Uprising. It’s an unusually well-paced roguelite that offers hour-long runs with enough skill involved so that it never feels like randomness is blocking a player from having a good experience. Without those terrible bosses, I’d consider Ed-0 a bold experiment that paid off impressively — but it does have those bosses, so I can’t think of it as anything other than a tragic failure.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by LANCARSE and published by D3 Publisher. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 40 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated M by the ESRB. It features Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Use of Alcohol. No kids allowed, obviously — this is a game largely about disassembling zombies with swords or brute force. The alcohol label is also is accurate. Both the player and enemies can become intoxicated using items, which makes them walk unevenly and regularly fall down.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without audio and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled and all vital information is provided visually. Subtitles cannot be resized. This game is fully remappable.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Ed-0 Zombie Uprising Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH My second playthrough, geeking out over everything with friends.

LOW Already itching for a third playthrough.

WTF Can we get a revival of The Simpsons arcade game in this style? 

A lot of ’80s pop culture is lost on me since that decade started about 17 years before I was born — the boom of IPs like Transformers, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, and GI-Joe mean nothing to me. I became more of a superhero kid playing with Spider-Man and Power Rangers, though the thing that really stuck with me from back then is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

What started out as a comic book parody by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird ended up becoming one of the biggest pop culture powerhouses ever, spawning decades of toys, movies, and games. I grew up during the era of the 2003 animated series, its toys, and the 2005 animated film, and I have a deep love for it. I’ve been reading the original comics too, and appreciating how dark and strange they are. My two major blind spots for the franchise, however, are the original ’87 cartoon and a slew of video games released in the 80s and 90s. Thankfully, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is making up for that lost time. 

TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is an old-school style brawler based on the original cartoon series that can be played solo, four-player local or online co-op, and can even accommodate six-players in online co-op.

Players control 2D characters in straightforward side-scrolling levels full of fights that eventually lead to boss encounters with baddies like Bebop, Rocksteady, and more. The Turtles have history in this beat-’em-up genre, with titles like Turtles in Time and The Manhattan Project. This latest plays to that formula with some solid refinements.

For example, there are two main modes — arcade and story. The arcade mode is a harder one echoing games from the past, forcing players to contend with limited lives and trying to beat the game in one sitting. Story mode is a little easier, with more chances to earn extra lives, extra power-ups, and even a chance to take breaks from playing. Story mode has a set of difficulty options as well, and these choices are great. 

The gameplay itself will feel familiar to anyone who’s played any kind of beat-’em-up. Players control one of six characters from the start– Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, April O’ Neil, and Master Splinter– each with varying attributes and abilities. They’re out to stop the likes of Krang and Shredder from terrorizing New York City.

Combat is fast and furious, with each character feeling unique. My first time was as Master Splinter, using his cane to attack and employing a flurry of slashes as a super move. Every attack has a different property when used in tandem with a direction of the d-pad or when jumping/dashing. There’s a lot of variety in the attacks and an extensive move list that adds depth to what could have been a very simple game. 

Of course, even with these moves it’s not the most complex experience out there, and most enemies can be taken down with simple button-mashing, but there’s a real sense of progression that comes with unlocking new moves during play like new super attacks, an extra lives slot, a larger health bar, and more super meters. 

I played through the game once by myself before release and was rewarded with Casey Jones as a playable character. Casey is my absolute favorite in any form of Turtles media, so I used him during my second playthrough in co-op, and this is where Shredder’s Revenge really shines thanks to mechanics that change things up. For example, there are a few attacks that two players can do together, as well as a “high-five” ability that allows one player to give a bit of their own health to another. These are neat ideas that encourage teamwork.

The real treat of co-op, however, is playing with a fellow TMNT superfan and geeking out over everything. Hearing my friends call out references, hearing about the toys they had growing up, and even catching a specific (and surprising) nod to the 1991 film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze made this the multiplayer highlight of the year so far.

While Shredder’s Revenge is a short experience, it can be expanded upon by completing a few side missions involving collectibles or going through the game again while trying to attain a series of achievements, like beating certain levels without getting hurt or not using a super. The music also kicks ass, with the likes of Faith No More’s Mike Patton, the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, and rapper Mega Ran contributing great tracks while composer Tee Lopes provides a killer score.

As a Turtles fan, I’m happy with Shredder’s Revenge as it captures the spirit of the franchise so damn well, thanks to a load of fan service and a strong style. As someone who’s played a few great brawlers (some martial arts-themed ones and even licensed ones) this is the absolute peak of the genre for me thanks to the incredible combat and a wealth of fanservice. It’s great to see these turtles back in the spotlight, and anyone who’s a fan of TMNT or a lover of old-school arcade games owes it to themselves to order some pizza and head to the sewers because this is something special. 

Disclosures: This game is published by Dotemu and developed by Tribute Games. It is available on PS4\PS5, PC, XBO/X/S, and Switch. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 6 hours were spent in both single-player multiplayer, with the game finished twice across both modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10 for Fantasy Violence. The violence here is incredibly tame and slapstick. The pixel art is very light-hearted and over-the-top. it’s definitely okay for young kids.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are subtitles for character dialogue and plenty of visual cues, though they cannot be adjusted. No audio cues are needed for successful play. In my view, the game is fully accessible. 

Remappable Controls: The controls can be remapped. 

The post Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The main villain’s style is beyond compare.

LOW The lack of danger indicators makes boss fights a slog.

WTF “In this game, we’re ninjas instead of videogame goddesses!”

It was only a matter of time before before the Neptunia and Senran Kagura franchises crossed over.

They’re both about transforming superhero girls that battle monsters, and each one has a main character who’s less interesting than the rest of the cast, but makes up for it by making meta-jokes. The Neptunia series has given up on any semblance of continuity by offering stranger and stranger premises, while Senran is so desperate to avoid moving its narrative forward that the devs would rather turn out countless remakes and spinoffs instead of reaching a conclusion.

It’s a match made in heaven.

Functioning as the exact midpoint of the two franchises, Neptunia X Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars cribs structure from the first half of its title, and gameplay from the second.

Players pick locations from a world map and either take on story missions or complete enemy-elimination requests, but when they arrive in the field, instead of the turn-based battles Neptunia is known for, players will find themselves brawling videogame baddies in real time, as if they were in an SK game.

As is traditional for the Neptunia franchise, almost no explanation is offered for the completely transformed context the characters live in. Players are asked to simply roll with the new status quo and the writing does a great job of weaving beloved franchise characters into a ninja-themed world. The villains are a group of cyborgs who are traveling throughout the Game Industry archipelago, recruiting ninjas left and right so they have a monopoly. They’re themed after PC storefront Steam, making the whole thing a fairly obvious metaphor — is it an attack on companies that let their console exclusives come out on PC? Absolutely! — but it’s all presented with such a charmingly light touch that I can’t imagine anyone finding the attacks too offensive.

Speaking of possibly offensive content, the lascivious barometer is at the level of Neptuinia, rather than the more risqué Senran Kagura. The ninja girls all wear skimpy costumes, of course, but there’s none of the ogling inherent to SK experience — no nude transformations, no clothes destroyed as characters take damage, and no finishing moves designed to suspend naked women in salacious poses. It’s still spicy, of course, but while the combat skews heavily in the Senran Kagura direction, the plotting and comedy is all Neptunia.

Speaking of which, NxSK‘s combat is fantastic. Players select two ninjas for each mission from a roster of up to ten that they’ll recruit over the course of the game. In addition to charms and sub-weapons that can be swapped out for various effects, the ninja girls can equip stat-boosting gems to prep themselves for certain enemy types or resource farming, adding some surprisingly deep customization. Add that the fact that each character has their own exclusive movesets that can be rearranged as necessary, and the result is the most customizable characters either franchise has ever offered.

If Neptunia x Senran has a drawback, it’s the relatively tiny size of levels. Not only are they smaller than the RPG fields Neptunia is generally based around, they’re even smaller than the arenas where SK’s musou combat is set. I suspect that this is a concession to the combat — instead of battling hordes of enemies that collapse in a hit or two before the miniboss turns up, every enemy encounter involves 3-5 tough Neptunia-style enemies, as if this were a turn-based RPG. The game is an impressive melding of the two franchises overall, but this is one area where the merging feels unnatural. Removing the weak musou-style mobs takes away the feeling of power that SK offers, and switching from turn-based to realtime removes players’ ability to strategize how to defeat tougher foes. I got used to the new combat flow, but it’s the one part of the experience that doesn’t feel immediately satisfying.

On one level, I feel a little cheated by Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars — generally we can expect a new Senran Kagura and a new Neptunia every year, so it’s a bit of a disappointment that in 2021 audiences are getting a single game from both franchises. Fortunately it’s an exceptional piece of work. It won’t give players everything they’d expect from either franchise, it has satisfying systems and some of the funniest writing either series has seen in years. This is a good action-adventure, but for fans of either series, it’s absolutely essential.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Compile Heart, Tamsoft, and Acquire and published by Idea Factory and Marvelous. It is currently available on PS4. Copies of the game were obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 35 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. There are no mutiplayer modes.

Parents: This was rated T by the ESRB, and it contains Language, Suggestive Themes, and Violence. As I mentioned, this is much closer to a Neptunia game than an SK — yes, busty women are squeezed into way-too-small costumes and cleavage is omnipresent, but beyond endless innuendo-laden jokes, it’s absolutely teen-safe. The violence is so cartoony as to be completely non-threatening. There is a creepy, sexually aggressive guy who chases after a young princess, but that’s as questionable as the material gets.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled, subtitles cannot be resized. There is no audio needed for successful gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Neptunia X SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The Ninja Gaiden series is finally available on PC!

LOW It’s a barebones port offering few additional features or graphic options.

WTF It seems a little suspicious that only the source code for the original Itagaki versions were lost…

Ryu and Rachel are back to kill again! Not content with slaughtering thousands of evildoers since the series was initially revamped in 2004, they’re back to murder on PC after more than fifteen years of console exclusivity. There have been a few notable speed bumps along the way, but the core experience still stands as some of the finest action ever crafted.

There are three games in this collection — Ninja Gaiden Sigma (2007), Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 (2009), and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge (2013) and right out the gate, players are going to argue about which versions should have been included. More on that later.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma is a strong start for the collection — it’s a graphically overhauled version of Ninja Gaiden Black (2005) with new and retuned content including new enemies, costumes and a fully-playable Rachel with her own missions. There’s a lot of great content here. Combat is more precise and measured than later entries in the series, and the semi-open world approach is a joy to explore. It’s challenging, but rarely unfair outside of the occasional dodgy camera angle. (PROTIP: if this happens, just block and roll!)

While some may regard Sigma as slightly inferior when compared to Ninja Gaiden Black, in my view there’s not much of a gulf in quality between them. A few easy puzzles have been removed, some of the new enemies aren’t great and certain challenges have been reworked, but I certainly won’t be hurling bricks at Team Ninja’s offices protesting over any of this. It’s unfortunate that side character Rachel’s missions are mandatory given that her combat style isn’t as fleshed out as protagonist Ryu’s, but I still enjoy using her, and her Biker outfit from the Vita version Sigma Plus is a nice little unexpected bonus.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, however, is a less successful reimagining of its source material. Ninja Gaiden 2 (2008) was known for its brutality and excess, throwing waves upon waves of enemy soldiers at Ryu with reckless abandon. Enemy limbs could be amputated during combat, opening them up to a swift, bloody and beautiful execution known as an ‘Obliteration Technique’.

It was bloody, it was brilliant, and absolute masterclass in combat design. However, Sigma 2‘s approach drastically dilutes the original concept. Enemy numbers for each encounter became a fraction of what they once were, the proceedings were overall easier, cutting an enemy apart would spray out a mist of purple smoke rather than blood, and the whole thing was censored and toned down to a ludicrous degree.

There were some additions — new giant-sized bosses, more (mandatory) playable female characters in the form of Rachel, Momiji and Ayane, and a few of the rough edges were sanded down, but the result was that it was simply a less interesting game at its core. Not a bad one, though — it still holds its own against its contemporaries thanks to slick and weighty combat. However, it’s still in the unfortunate position of being an inferior copy of the stunningly violent and satisfying original.

Then comes Razor’s Edge. This one is in the unique position of being superior to its original incarnation — a good thing, because Ninja Gaiden 3 was the weakest entry in the series thanks to a massive step down in bloodshed, difficulty, available weapons, general control and other issues apparently aimed at making the game more palatable to a larger audience.

Razor’s Edge did a surprisingly good job of taking that original mediocre work and buffing it back to respectability. The gore’s back, there are a ton more weapons and magical attacks, and the difficulty/general balancing has been boosted and given an overhaul in response to complaints from series veterans. It’s not perfect game, but it is a huge improvement. However, the additional focus on ‘cinematic’ kill sequences means that there’s a slight (but annoying) loss of control while Ryu chases enemies across the screen, and he’ll occasionally attack the wrong enemy.

Still, I enjoyed Razor’s Edge more than I expected. It has some weak boss design (the Dinosaur and Goddess boss fights are excruciatingly terrible) and enemies have too much health and can escape combos after being hit, but it also feels genuinely great when the action flows and limbs and heads go flying all over the place. The bottom line is that regardless of any issues it has, it’s a marked improvement over the original Ninja Gaiden 3.

A couple of things worth mentioning about this collection as a whole is that though most of the content is faithfully replicated, certain modes online modes such as the tag team challenges in Sigma 2 and the adversarial battles from 3 are missing. Not a huge deal, but worth noting. Also, I hate to say it but this PC port is weak — it feels like emulation, there are no graphical options whatsoever, the resolution can’t be changed, and an SSD won’t help with content streaming or loading times as they’re ‘accurately’ emulating the Playstation 3 version. Hell, it can’t even be exited with Alt+F4 like a normal PC program. It opens in its own window and can be resized to full screen where it’ll adopt the resolution to the current setting — that’s it.

As a result, there are two ways to look at this collection. One is that it’s an undercooked, thin offering that does the bare minimum necessary to resell three legendary action games to a new generation of buyers. The other perspective is that these titles are still some of the best action games ever created, and still worth an action fan’s time despite not having many bells and whistles.

Sure, it’s a shame Bluepoint Games weren’t drafted to take care of this collection of and give it some real love, but what the hell. I still had a great time revisiting them, and my only real criticism is that Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 was a poor pick in a world where Ninja Gaiden 2 exists. It’s a shame that more of an effort wasn’t made to jazz these up, but it’s still great that the classics are finally on PC.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Team Ninja and published by Koei-Tecmo. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S/PS4/PS5/Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the games were completed. Additionally, I’ve put thousands of hours in the series to date. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language and Suggestive Themes. The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is a compilation of three action games in which players assume the roles of Ryu Hayabusa and his companions through a series of adventures. As players traverse various locations (e.g., a ninja village, ancient ruins, modern day cities), they use swords, axes, scythes, and throwing stars to kill human enemies and fantastical creatures (e.g., demons, dragons, skeletons) in frenetic melee-style combat. Some attacks result in decapitation and/or dismemberment of enemies, often from a close-up perspective. Large bloodstains and severed torsos can be seen on the ground. A handful of sequences depict additional acts of intense violence: characters impaled through the chest with swords and spikes; slow-motion depictions of characters getting dismembered; a character decapitating a human minion, resulting in large blood-splatter effects. Female characters are usually depicted wearing outfits that expose deep cleavage; some characters’ breasts jiggle in an exaggerated manner during combat and cutscenes. In one cutscene, a female character emerges from a dark pool with streaks of blood on her body; her breasts and buttocks are briefly visible before she transforms into a boss demon. The word “f**k” can be heard in the dialogue. (Rachel’s great.)

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. It’s playable without being able to hear the sound, but there are going to be issues when offscreen enemies are attacking. The sound cues help players realize that projectiles might be heading their way, and the lack of visual cues will lead to a few cheap hits.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. FYI, it cannot be played with a keyboard and mouse.

The post Ninja Gaiden Master Collection Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

If you’ve experienced FromSoft’s blood-boiling, hardcore RPGs, you’ll know that the company managed to establish a sub-genre focused on experiencing defeat over and over to achieve victory in the end. Reception is generally split — players either love its delicate design or hate the unforgiving nature of its world and combat.

The latest FromSoftware title, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, turned over a new leaf and changed many of the core elements that shaped the Souls series.

One of the first things the word “soulslike” brings to the mind is the stamina bar. Although many gamers track the origins of the stamina bar back to Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware first used it in their 1994 first-person action-adventure title King’s Field.

The stamina bar is the most impactful element of soulslike games — it controls the flow of the combat, as well as the rate at which the player explores the world. Due to the impact of this mechanic, combat in soulslikes is often comprised of constant attack/retreat phases.

FromSoftware continued to use the stamina bar without any significant changes for more than two decades. It seemed that both the company and its players had grown to appreciate the well-calculated nature it brought, but Sekiro changed the rules by completely ditching it!

The combat in Sekiro, unlike the Souls series, is more aggressive and fast-paced. FromSoftware first introduced this new approach to combat in Bloodborne. In addition to faster combat, Bloodborne introduced a ‘rally’ mechanic that allowed players to recover lost health by quickly attacking the enemies that hit them. This element encouraged an aggressive playstyle, but the flow of each fight was still controlled (and limited) by the stamina bar. The fast-paced combat of Bloodborne has ultimately evolved into a system that uses “posture” in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

The posture bar fills gradually when both enemies and players take damage, or when incoming attacks are blocked. This new-to-Fromsoft element required the attention of the player during combat (just like the stamina bar) but didn’t break the flow of battle. Players could still attack and engage if they acted carefully because posture damage is gradually recovered. As such, the attack/retreat nature of classic Souls combat became a more skill-based element.

To balance this out, From gave double health bars to most Sekiro bosses. Now, if players wanted to end a boss fight efficiently, they had to continuously attack and fill their opponent’s posture bar to finish them off. In short, although the combat in Sekiro remained action-oriented, it  required a new set of skills, while not being simplified.

The story in Sekiro is another element that experienced radical changes in comparison with earlier Soulsborne entries.

The plots of From’s work generally revolve around saving the world from total annihilation. In Demon’s Souls, the player should destroy an ancient demon and stop the world from being consumed by a magical fog. The plot of Dark Souls is based on the same basic concept, but this time you should save the “First Flame” and prevent the word from descending into eternal darkness. Even the revolutionary Bloodborne follows the same principles in storytelling — the concepts of Cursed Protagonists Seeking Redemption, A World On The Verge Of Obliteration and Ancient Evil Antagonists are all recurring elements. However, if you dig a little deeper into the storytelling in Sekiro, you’ll find it quite different from the rest.

In From’s earlier work, the stories are focused on saving the world, and the potential salvation of the player character is actually a byproduct of that action. In other words, the focus of the story is on the world in which the game takes place (and its history) but not the protagonist. The protagonists of soulsbornes never speak. These ‘strong, silent type’ characters never develop during the course of a game — they’re just shells to be occupied by us, the player.

 Unlike its predecessors, Sekiro offers a character, The Wolf, who experiences a full arc. He’s a disgraced shinobi who seeks to regain his honor. He has a past and a family — in a manner of speaking — which ties him to the world. Last but not least, Wolf speaks and has personal relationships with NPCs in the game. Wolf is a well-developed character, and this time, the player takes up his role — not the other way around!

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice also introduces other elements that no other FromSoft games have, the stealth mechanics and skill tree being two of the most important ones.

While the stealth elements in Sekiro are pretty basic and mostly unpolished, they still offer players new (to Souls) ways of experiencing the world while introducing new combat scenarios.

Much of the stealth comes from the verticality of the world made accessible to Wolf thanks to his grappling hook. Soulsbornes traditionally had their characters stick to the ground, and because of that, the exploration side of those games was focused on opening new doors and connecting different areas to the hubs of each game. In Sekiro, verticality takes some aspects of exploration and combat to a (literal) other level. Now, players could use rooftops to get behind enemies and minibosses to finish them off silently. The hook also gives the player the ability to get around the map faster and zip past obstacles and walls.

The skill tree is another evolution introduced in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. This time around, the power of our character is not simply represented by a bunch of increasing numbers. The skill tree present here provides players with ability customization and lets them choose what types of martial arts they’re going to learn. Choosing a character type at the beginning of Souls games usually limited the use of different weapons and skills later on, but the skill tree in Sekiro allowed the players to be a shinobi, a samurai and a Kung-Fu fighter, all at the same time. This innovation provided a more dynamic, free approach to the combat.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice received critical acclaim, but it’s not flawless and doesn’t define any new technical standards in the industry. No, Sekiro is great because it evolves a sub-genre that had remained fairly static for more than a decade and proves that reconstructing the fundamentals of a series or genre holds value and cements the courage and genius of the developers working at FromSoftware.  

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