Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Let's get this over with.

Taking place some time after the events of Ninja Gaiden 3, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z follows the story of Yaiba Kamikaze, a villainous shinobi who is cut down by series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa two weeks before the events of the game. A mysterious organization led by a shady capitalist named Del Gonzo brings Yaiba back to life using advanced cybernetic technology developed by Del Gonzo's head scientist Miss Monday. Yaiba learns that a viral outbreak has turned the masses into zombies and the world has been thrown into chaos. However, the only thing Yaiba cares about is getting revenge on Ryu Hayabusa and he'll maim and cut his way through hoards of the undead if he has to. Maybe, if the world is lucky he'll find time to save it along the way.

From a plot standpoint Team Ninja does deserve credit for shaking up the narrative direction of the series. While the canon of Ninja Gaiden has always been a bit obscure, Team Ninja did a good job introducing a new character in a story of his own which isn't actually that bad. While the zombie apocalypse is a plot device which has been done to death [and really needs to go away] I don't mind it here in part because the game is self-aware of its absurd narrative. Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z balances its tongue-in-cheek tone, with some off-kilter humor, and occasionally more serious plot developments. The game isn't trying to be meta or deep and while the characters aren't breaking the fourth wall Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z knows it's a video game and it's not aiming to be anything deeper than that.

Yaiba Kamikaze vs Ryu Hayabusa

Another point in the game's favor is Yaiba himself. I appreciate Yaiba as a character because he's so different from the typical video game hero. In fact Yaiba is not a hero at all or even an anti-hero. Yaiba is a villain protagonist whose back-story consists of him murdering his own sister (crime of passion thing), killing several elders of his own clan, becoming a ningen, and delving into all manner of shady dealings as a mercenary. Also of note is that Yaiba isn't just thrown into this narrative without a good reason. The animosity between the Kamikaze and Hayabusa clan is older than Yaiba and Ryu themselves and even if Yaiba didn't abandon his clan he would have gone after Ryu at some point. Yaiba is snarky, more calculating than he lets on, and has some comical dialogue. As he tracks Ryu through the game we also discover that he's considerably more learned about the ninja world than his uncouth nature would lead one to believe.

Dat art

While Yaiba is far from a graphically impressive Ninja Gaiden, the game has striking visuals and looks particularly good on the PC. Comic artist James Stokoe drew some really intense pieces and some very stylish panels for the game. His drawings are very sharp and while other games have taken a comic style presentation, few look like this.

Bring it on!

The combat is very complex albeit extremely clunky. Yaiba has three basic attacks; sword, punch, and flail. The sword is quick and does about average damage, the punch is powerful but leaves Yaiba open to attack, while the flail is good against crowds of enemies but does little damage. Different combinations of these commands will execute different combos that vary in effectiveness depending on the type of enemy you fight against. For example, some enemies will surround themselves with an electrical shield and you'll need to use the flail to absorb their electrical charge before you can attack them. While you'll need to punch larger, more lumbering enemies in order to stun them and leave them open for combos.

New and Improved

As with most action games there's a skill tree that allows Yaiba to learn new moves and combos. Yaiba can collect power-ups which increase his health meter, and defense against various elements such as fire, electricity, and corrosion. There are no potions or elixirs in the game so Yaiba regains health by performing executions on his enemies. Initially you can only do one at a time but after getting a particular power-up you can chain up to 10 executions back-to-back, provided you get the timing down and the system quickly becomes gratifying when Yaiba is taking down hoards of zombies like the badass he is.

Come at me bro!

Yaiba also has a Bloodlust meter which similar to a "rage meter" seen in other games (God of War, Force Unleashed, Darksiders) can be filled by taking and inflicting damage and once activated increases Yaiba's offense and makes him invincible for a short period of time. Yaiba might seem like a button-masher initially, and while that is the image many reviewers have tried to push it's factually untrue. You'll need to master the timing of the executions to maximize your kill chain, and also the lag between some hits in Yaiba's combos to ensure your enemies can't capitalize on them. Unfortunately, any kind words I have for the game concludes here.

In Soviet Russia, pooch screws you.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z was developed in collaboration between three different teams and at least two of them (Comcept, Spark Unlimited) have never designed a good game in their history. Yaiba has some good systems which - were they in the hands of more competent developers - would make for a good experience, but only end up kneecapping the game overall. While you have three different weapons you can't level them up. And while Yaiba gains skill points to learn more combos he doesn't actually get any stronger. This isn't a problem when fighting regular zombies but when you take on bosses you're put in situations where Yaiba can only inflict chip damage but he can get bodied in only four or five hits. As I mentioned before Yaiba comes across power-ups that increase his health bar and elemental defenses, however the buffs Yaiba gets don't actually have any effect, or the effects are so minimal I couldn't tell the difference. I collected all the fire shards in the game which - according to the game itself, would improve Yaiba's defense against fire attacks. Only it didn't. And I found that Yaiba was every bit as vulnerable to fire as he was before I wasted hours tracking down the shards. You can increase Yaiba's health bar but it doesn't actually allow him to live any longer because all of your enemies' attacks are percentage based. So if an enemy is going to take off 30%, 60%, or even 80% in some cases, it doesn't matter how much you increase your health meter because they're going to take off that damage each and every time.

Let's carve this turkey.

The camera is another of the game's many problems. In the first stage the camera isn't really an issue but as you go further and further into the game it gets progressively worse because the game's approach to "increasing difficulty" is to throw larger and larger hoards at you and when this happens the camera pans out, often way too far to make out anything that's going on. What complicates matters is that because Yaiba looks as mangled as some of the undead he's fighting against, it's hard to even tell him apart when you're surrounded by enemies that have a similar color palette. It is no exaggeration to say that more than half of my game overs can be attributed to the fact that I didn't even know I was taking damage until my health bar completely emptied. You might say I should have seen it shrinking but that's rarely the case as many of the later enemies can kill you in about three or four hits and it's hard to block, dodge, or do anything to mitigate damage when I can't even find my character on the screen.

Shame Yaiba doesn't get this airborne in the game.

Other questionable design decisions are the fact that Yaiba cannot use ninpo or even jump and no I am not kidding. While the absence of ninpo is at least understandable as it ties into Yaiba's back-story and it separates him from Ryu, the absence of a jump button is absolutely baffling. Certain combos will send Yaiba airborne and certain attacks allow him to flip forward about two feet off the ground, but there isn't an actual jump button in this game which is an absolutely mind-boggling omission, particularly because most of the game's combat issues could be eliminated with the simple inclusion of what is already a core mechanic of most action/adventure games, and yet it's absent here. Yaiba has a dash which is slow and moves him into enemy attacks about as often as it moves him away from them but at least it works better than his block and counters.

Paint the town red.

There is a block button but your guard can easily be broken by enough regular attacks and of course heavy attacks cannot be blocked at all. The game demands you counter heavy attacks which would be fine if the controls were responsive and the tell-tell flash (that indicates an attack that needs to be countered) didn't glitch more than half the time. So essentially you're up against enemies whose heavy attacks can shave off 30% of your health, you can't block them, your counter will probably fail, and any attempts to dash will more likely send you right into another enemy's attack, provided you even clear the AOE of the attack you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Survival Skills

All of the game's problems are on full display when Yaiba finally throws down with his nemesis. Hayabusa is able to take off your entire life bar in only three hits, one or two hits if you get nailed with his lightning ninpo, he can power through all your combos, takes very little damage, and moves so fast that Yaiba seems like he's moving in slow motion. The speed at which Ryu can home-in and completely demolish Yaiba cannot be overestimated and I regularly found myself dying in four or five seconds. Now on the one hand you could make the argument that this shows the difference in ability between Yaiba and Ryu but that would be an inadequate defense for the following reasons. In Yakuza 4 and Devil May Cry 4 for example, there are situations where you fight the main character of the series with a less powerful character but the boss battles themselves still work because the game's mechanics are sound. You can create a scenario where a series protagonist is stronger than your MC and still have an enjoyable and well-designed boss fight.

Only in the cutscenes.

Yaiba's lack of speed, offense, defense, elemental resistance, the absence of a jump, questionable blocking mechanics, and a counter mechanic that glitches more than it should, all become more prominent, nigh game-breaking issues when you enter a scenario where all of those problems leave you with a main character  that is completely gimped. More succinctly, it feels as though the battle against Ryu requires working mechanics from a different game i.e. a Ninja Gaiden game which - from a design standpoint is something Yaiba is not. And given that three different teams worked on this game, this scenario is not only possible but quite likely. The lack of "working mechanics" is also problematic during the game's platforming sections which are among the worst I've seen in any generation on any console.

It looked good on paper at least. :\

Platforming sections are the only places in the game outside of cutscenes where Yaiba actually jumps and even then it doesn't work. Command prompts regularly fail, the camera during the platforming is too close to see where you're supposed to leap to, and sometimes Yaiba will just fall through the world when he's trying to grind a rail. But by far one of my favorite glitches is when the arrows on the walls and pipes aren't highlighted and because they're not highlighted Yaiba won't jump to them. So what happens is that you'll come to a wall or ledge but Yaiba won't leap, jump, move, or anything. He'll just stand there because even though the arrows are pointing in a certain direction, unless they're glowing Yaiba can't progress. So you have to restart your game and hope it doesn't glitch.

Game, case, booklet, comic, soundtrack, two DOA5U costumes.

I tried to like Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. Much like DMC, I went into the game unfazed by the jeers of critics and fanboys. I was ecstatic when I bought a brand new copy that came with the added bonus of a comic, soundtrack voucher, and two DOA5U costumes all for only $9.99 and while I figured Tecmo Koei was desperate to get the game off the shelves, I didn't think it'd be this bad. It looked like good ideas went into the design document but never really made it into the development, let alone the final game. I feel this is a PSN or Xbox Live quality title and I mean that in the most unabashedly, critical way possible. It is no exaggeration to say the trailer is the best thing about the game. This isn't the worst game I've ever played but it's definitely on the list.