Ninja Gaiden Black Review

New Features in NG Black

Luckily for all of us, some of the new features in the Black version of Ninja Gaiden fix the difficulty issues. The items in the game world have been slightly rearranged to give you a more powerful weapon early in the game and everything just seems a bit more player friendly this time around. Also, if you die three times on the first level, a new lower difficulty level will be opened up that will actually allow most people to be able to finish the game. The game kind of teases you when you use the Ninja Dog difficulty, and series creator Itigaki-san will laugh at you and leave messages on your answering machine and e-mail calling you a little girl (not really, duh), but games are supposed to be fun and when a game is so difficult you can’t get past the third level it definitely isn’t fun anymore. If you are on the opposite end of the spectrum and had no trouble with the difficulty of Ninja Gaiden, Black also offers a new Master Ninja difficulty that, as of this writing, only one person has ever beaten.

There are a lot of other new features in Ninja Gaiden Black besides the difficulty adjustments. The content from the two downloadable Hurricane Packs from the first game has been implemented in Black so there will be new enemies and all of those goodies. The old school Ninja Gaiden games are once again unlockable when you collect enough Golden Scarabs spread throughout the game, but Black also adds the Ninja Gaiden arcade game to the list of unlockables. A new mode in Black is a mission mode that takes away the adventure aspects of the game and focuses entirely on combat. You’ll fight different groups of enemies than you are used to, and you’ll use different weapons in each mission which adds a lot of fun and variety.

All of these new additions add a lot to the replayability of Ninja Gaiden Black. You have to earn features like the mission mode by beating the game, which is somewhat of a letdown, but it is considerably more difficult than the standard game so forcing you to earn it is a good way of assuring you’ll have the skills to beat it. With these new additions to an already great game, Ninja Gaiden Black is definitely the version to own. At a price of only $30, there is no reason not to own it.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Ninja Gaiden Black is one of the best looking games on the Xbox. The animations are silky smooth and the character designs are very detailed and exceptional overall. The environments you explore aren’t super detailed, but they are very sharp and look good. You only face a handful of enemies at a time, which is somewhat disappointing, but the framerate never drops and like I said, the game is difficult already with only 3-4 enemies at a time.

The sound is also very well done in Ninja Gaiden Black. You have the option for Japanese or English dialogue, which is nice, and both of them are pretty high quality. The sounds of combat are outstanding and every slash of your sword and every slash through an enemy sounds amazing. The soundtrack is also quite good and many of the tracks are quite catchy.

All in all, the presentation in Ninja Gaiden Black is phenomenal. This is one of the best looking and sounding games you’ll find in this generation.

Bottom Line

Whether you are already a Ninja Gaiden fan or are just getting into the series, Ninja Gaiden Black is a solid purchase. The new content and difficulty levels make it a far superior game over the original Ninja Gaiden that was released in 2004 and for only $30 it is hard to pass up. The best and most important of the changes in Black is that there is now an easier difficulty level that actually makes the game playable for people that aren’t super-l337-hardcore-haXX0r-gamerz and lets the rest of us enjoy the game. Nothing beats Ninja Gaiden in terms of fast, furious, pure combat so this is a game that action game fans definitely need to play. I highly recommend Ninja Gaiden Black for a purchase.