Truth is though there aren't too many games of this kind around, and even a downgraded NG is a fucking great action game. I've yet to buy it, but I think churning out weaker NG games from here on will still keep me reasonably happy.

Ninja Gaiden was an Ocarina of Time really and I'm not entirely convinced there'll ever be another NG game that quite comes together that well. That said, Devil May Cry 3 is a testament to the opposite sometimes being true. That is if you share my sentiment that it's the best in the series of course.

My playtime with the NG2 demo mostly has me somewhat worried about the obliteration technique and its impact on gameplay. The whole dismemberment/OT thing makes the game feel much more disjointed and it doesn't flow as well as the first one did.

Yes, it's a schizophrenic game. I mean on one hand they've tried to make it more accessible and omgwtf canned limb chop animation! On the other they still try to make it difficult on higher levels, but that just means they flood you with guys like you say.

But I think it's a bit thrown off by the fact that you get these insane weapons on a level that - presumably - you don't have them on in the full game. I still think it's fairly NG underneath and as long as you use the normal sword there's a reasonable amount of dodging and maneuvering required.

I'm still more worried by the fact that TOUCHING people makes their leg fall off and after that it becomes a Y button mash fest unless you wanna get wrestled to the floor and have a ninja blow up in your face.

About OOT I'm sure there's nothing I can write in a couple of paragraphs to explain it so I'll just leave it be. You don't like Braid either you UTTER FOOL. :D

Woah woah woah woah woooaaah. Now I gotta step in. I agree that NG2 isn't as terrible as people make it out to be, and even though there's unfairness to it it's still a plenty good action game. There is no frigging way it tops the original Ninja Gaiden though.

It's predictable and boring when things aren't random? Well let's just have all the buttons do completely random things then! The way the game is set up, dismemberment is KEY, and to have it be essentially luck driven is just completely retarded. The fact that once people's limbs drop off it's just a Y button mash fest is probably both some misguided attempt at making the thing look more "cinematic" or whatever, and the very reason they had to make it random to not break the entire game. If anything, the finishers just chop the game up into bits of prebaked animation, completely ruining the natural flow of its predecessor. "Fluid" is the last word I'd use to describe NG2, especially compared to the original game.

As long as things "looking awesome" is what you prefer I guess NG2 has more canned animation in there, but there is no way it plays as good as NG(B) did.

I'm gonna tone down my hostility a bit, I realise I was a bit over the top.It's saved by the fact that it IS random. The randomness isn't what threatened to ruin the game in my opinion, the OT's are. It's still the main thing that fucks it up for me to be honest. Obliteration techniques takes the entire FOUNDATION of the first game, of always having to adapt and react in different ways, and asks you to hammer one button. Let's paint a scenario.

How many times have you rushed into a group of enemies, hacked away, then hammered the Y button *just in case* someone's about to go suicidal on you? See, when you start pressing the Y button the game isn't NG anymore for a while. It isn't NG all the while you're skidding across the screen playing canned animations. When the game simply asks of you to set aside everything you've learned just to press a single button, it creates a vacuum.

If this had been further emphasised by giving you complete control over the dismemberment at all times, the entire game would fucking.. CRASH. It's like Megido says, what if you've got a fighting game where a two step technique always defeats the opponent? What's all that other stuff even for!?

OTs strike me as an attempt to appeal to the GOW crowd to be honest. "KRATOS IS RIPPING WINGS OFF.. YOU KNOW THINGS!!" and now Ryu's gotta have some canned animations too. Only, in GOW the combat is already incredibly one-note (the appeal of that game really lies elsewhere) so it doesn't fuck up those games at all.

It's ironic because one thing that'd make me even more annoyed would be if the dismemberment had no impact on gameplay whatsoever. An no I don't mean "OH MAN SO UNREALISTIC NO ARMS LIKE AND HE'S OKAY!", I mean it would've been an almost warrior withinly sudden gore-up for no reason at all. However, putting the countermeasure on a single button was a damn copout.

Instead they have to ramp up difficulty by dumping so much crap on you at once it's like listening to five different songs of different genres simultaniously. Somewhere in the middle of all this you can barely see when people's legs have dropped off, so it's reduced to a bafflingly jerky and random feeling game. QUITE unlike NGB.The animation is only part of the problem though. It's what it suddenly does to the combat input wise that's the real issue. "Flow" to me isn't just about the ninjas not pausing in their hopping around, it's about what I'm doing on the controller. During the mandatory "check for leglessness" Y button mashing phase, it's stupider than the most basic brawler.

And really, no matter how much one could campaign for the inclusion, simply leaving it out would instantly cause a chain reaction in the design of the game that'd adress all the issues people are having with it, and make for a better game.

It's nowhere near DMC2 levels of a cockup, but in some ways it's just as bewildering.