Way above average?.....um no just no.
Look at the closeups of the enviroment textures, they are plain last gen textures no bumb mapping or normal mapping just plain shitty textures.
Look at the roof of the house between the legs of the moster in the last pic, now that is just a horrible texture.
The character textures look nice and everything else looks great.

Nope sorry, for a game 40% done i see some nice textures specially if it IS going to be in 1080p native and a decent frame rate.

Texture observations aside, that looks great. Chop chop!

Bakutheswede, you are familiar wtih computer graphics, as I see, so you have to know about pre-alpha-build, pre-pre-alpha-build and so on.
"Do not show the half-done work to sceptic", as the saying goes.

60FPS I guess, and... I hope... at least the same if not better Battle A.I. than NG, cuz the Demo for DMC4... what a letdown...those Marionettes "A.K.A Drones" are just the same shitty shit Cannon Fodder... they even form a queue to get chopedd'up.

What I really do not like - scene - Venice, Rome what else, do not remeber - not the best choise for game like NG2 - I do not like Onimusha3 due to that reason.
"Ninja in Venice" - sounds like B movie, not AAA game.

A Italian Nazi plummer in Space collecting Stars and rescuing a Princess he thinks still "a virgin" for the X th time.

Doesn't sound too AAA to me, but guess what... it is.

Oh dear god they have used venice style backdrops ... DEAR GOD HOW DARE THEY USE THE MILKED BACK DROP!!!!!!

Sarcasam aside, Dburt are you shawnzee ?

You cant point percents into gaming development seriously. Its either coming along well, or its early built or its in polishing phase or its done.

Saying it is ???% is nonsense if you ask me.

As far as I can understand about NG2 is that it is STILL under development, and things can go up as they can go down and things do change under making of a game.

Look how Lost Planet changed in terms of level design and gameplay, NG2 or any other game in making is no different.

Putting that aside, Itagaki is still gonna make the AI cheap as hell.

In Hard to Master Ninja in the beginning they will give the AI weapons that wont be in to later enemies in the game and damage is now 5x more powerful and they put harder and faster AI right from the get go.

While you still got the crappy slow, low life health bar with ni ninpo Ryu Hayabusa.

Thats cheap way of saying AI is smart.

They should just make the AI faster and make them go around you and attack faster. Not giving them flaming sword that with 2 attacks you will die while it takes 5 slashes, hence POWER slashes to kill one of them.

Itagaki is using cheap ways to make the AI "smarter", but some are blind to see that.

Non the less, all that bashing to NG, I will still buy it because its one of my favorite 3rd person action games.

Sath darling, i only stated 40% because that is what was been thrown around, yes i understand that shit can happen even so close as a few months to launch
My point was the screens are not complete, and for what it is they do look lovelly and to say any diffrent is been eager to bash for very little reason than to be one of the first to bash it

bit like the "its cool to hate halo" bandwagon

And yes the AI is cheap thats a given, i dont think the AI would have time to react in a game of this speed

Look at the building textures up close. Those look way above average. The buildings in the back seems to have flat placeholder textures. Considering it looks like we're actually able to go to those buildings, expect them to fix up the flat texture work in the final game. The game didn't even have full shadows implemented in the game when we saw it in motion. The game is only 40% complete. Since when did this represent the final graphical quality of games? lol.

^^ thank you.

Itagaki's Games only get better graphically while dev time goes on, not worse, and this looks miles above DOA4 in motion.

The AI is NG is not Cheap as hell, its not cheap at all, if you cant handle it thats your problem, not the AI's, its a challenging game, but if you loose, its because you werent skilled enough, not because the AI was "cheap" The AI doesnt even use Ninpo, you do, you are at all times more powerful than the AI, but you have to know how to play to actually use that power.

The "zomg you suck at this game" comment of the day goes to Xion4360

Really, to lash out at someones ability over the possible lack of Ai is outstanding

I think what gears of war has given us, is how blood effects rock

From headshots to shotgun blow or grenade tags, hell of alot of body parts flying and blood effects work

Glad to see NG2 is taking on a much more bloody direction, makes all the killing more satisfying ( that is so disturbing to actually mention)

Looks great and you can bet it would be fast and smooth, love the wolverine claws.

I've never been a fan of the DOA or Ninja gaiden character art style. Environments always looked stunning, but characters always looked like dolls to me, rather than believable badass characters

Wait, I can use ninpo right from the get go against Murai in Very Hard and Master Ninja? Holy shit! /sarcasm.

I am not an ass to keep playing my ass off for months and months just to finish some damn difficaulty. I know when to stop, that is when I am close to smash the controller.

Some people actually devote their time to a game just to beat everything, I am not one of those, not only that, with an AI that CHEAP its just stupid.

I was talking about in the beginning of the game, not after you get the leather sword, and ninpos...etc. those are easy for sure, but in the beginning, right when the text scrolls are over you get nothing.

NG Sigma didnt give you anything while NG Black gave you a nunchuk, which was like giving robbed person a gun to fight back the robber.Did Plumb giveyou one of his drinks, because you must be drunk? If not, you do know the guy in my avatar is a guy right, and I am a dude :P

But lets say you didnt say that (wont be easy though). :D

I'm a big fan of DOA and NG and I'm a very good player in both games (played trough master ninja etc.). First I have to say in terms of graphics, it's an improved Ninja Gaiden Sigma Engine, in my opinion.

The textures on the floor looks pretty crappy (in every NG, by the way) but take a look at the char models. They just look awesome, as always!! Many polygons were used and no massive bump and normalmapping which often (not always ;) ) leads in edgy heads or other texture problems (Gears of War) or less detail.

The game will run with 60fps like any other Team Ninja DOA/NG Game and such a high framerate combined with high-res textures isn't possible. The Xbox 360 has only 512 MB of RAM and could never handle it (why? I dont get it. Just 512 RAM is a waste of ressoures if I have a 3,2 GHZ CPU and powerful Graphpic card). It's a reason why so many games just run in 30fps on consoles, because you cant make uber graphics like you see in PC Games. It's a limitation of the hardware, not the developers (not always ).



The "AI-is-cheap". I say: No!


The A.I. in Ninja Gaiden always had some stuff Ryu never had. For example fast single strikes with massive damage + guard break ability, orvery fast and non breakable + heavy damaging throws (yes, some grabs were breakable, just 3 or 4 in the whole game, mostly the bosses like Doku had them), teleports and other stuff.

Where other games offers hundreds silly monsterns on the screen, Ninja Gaiden offers you just 4 or 5 BUT skillfully enemies. I love this because every little enemy can be a frustration for casual gamers. Mini-Bosses everywhere ^^

You must LEARN how the A.I. fights. Button mashing will end in death. Same for "I hold the block button until my enemy cant do anything"....you'll be owned by throws.

Ninja Gaiden FORCES you to learn and understand. Finishing this game is the biggest reward you can get in Ninja Gaiden. But right here is the point where so many players getting mad when playing Ninja Gaiden.
Once I was a nooby in this game but now I can finish it without using a spiritual blah blah of life or even dying.

Oh, and in Action Games THERE IS NO smart A.I. The A.I.s Job is to kill the player and the only intelligent script they have is "surrounding-the-player". After that, the fight begins. Even in Devil May Cry and mostly other games this genre.



As I can see in the gameplay video (some weeks ago) that the A.I. is alot more harder in NG2. More enemies attacking Ryu at the same time. Some enemies even have special abilitys now, like suicide moves which costs Ryu almost 50% of energy (and I bet Itagaki played just on normal for demonstration) and it looks like you cant escape these moves. And the new information about Coop-Attacks for enemies....just sick :D

Maybe no one noticed that (and I haven't read this in any magazine or somehing else) but Ryu finally has Attack Throws (Itagaki made alot with the scythe during the demonstartion). Many enemies in the other NG had such moves (the soldiers which pierce ryu with the bayonet and then shot, for example). These are move where you can grab the enemy BUT ONLY if the enemy dont block your attack which initiates the throw.

Great, a good new feature for Ryu I always wanted.






To all people who think NG2 will be easier....forget it. Ninja Gaiden is all about challenging (Karma) and the unique and very hard gamplay with the toughest enemies in history is evidence enogh that NG is probably the best Action Game (of this kind) out there.


I cant wait for this great game. A must have (for me).

you cant be a ninja with out a lil blood shed =D

Lol id did not mean in a "darling" kinda chick way, i usually do it on live when i enter game with friends like "ello darlings" ...yeah i'll shut up riiiiight about now.

I know what you meant, was making fun of you...you know, joke, hahaha.

Ah well, NG AI is cheap and I cant wait to see how cheap they made it in NG2 when I purchase the shit :D

The AI of NG never felt cheap to me. It was always highly challenging and if you died you knew exactly you did the mistakes not the game. This was the opinion of many reviewers and mine as well. They better you got the more fun it was.

I Still Remember throwing my pad againt the TV in ninja gaiden in The Bridge where the Demon riding a Horse fights you...
him and two respawning magical ninjas that throw energy balls ... the game felt cheap as if I tried to kill the magical ninjas... there was the spear of the demon killin' me... if I tried to Kill the Demon, the energy ball or it killed me, or I was always evaeding them to have time to trow some blows... then I learn the magical importance of block/counter, do it in the attacks of the horse/demon and kill first the magical ninjas then deal with the rest...

Face It, if you die in NG and you don't know, U Suck. U Dunno the way to beat the game, but there is a way... Master It, try diffrent strategies!

I know I suck writing long setences.

People just like to blame the AI for their lack of skills, hey if NG is too hard for you, go play Heavenly Sword, i played it and i was shocked to find out that i could let go of the controller and the character would still block enemy attacks, both me and my cousin were at first very impressed with the visuals but once we saw how it played, we both said WOW and walked away.