Ninja Gaiden Sigma Review

This ninja makes heads roll... literally.

Posted by Chris Buffa on Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Bloody, action packed and maddeningly difficult, Ninja Gaiden Sigma adds a true gem to the PlayStation 3's beleaguered library, plunging gamers into a gorgeous adventure full of monsters, mesmerizing acrobatics and sweet ninja weapons. Former players will recognize Sigma as a port of publisher Tecmo's Xbox offerings, Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black, and the decision to drop $59.99 on it depends on whether they want to experience one of the coolest video games ever made. Again.

Much like its cousins, Sigma lets players control Ryu Hayabusa, the ninja assassin out for revenge against the mysterious forces that decimated his village. To combat his human and demonic foes, players execute a series of beautifully animated acrobatics, flipping Ryu through the air, zipping along walls and running up cliffs. In addition, they master a series of deadly ninja weapons, such toys as the Dragon Sword, a bow and Sigma's new addition, Dragon's Claw & Tiger's Fang and dual Japanese swords. They can also harness ninja magic, Ninpo, as well as level up and purchase equipment at Muramasa's Weapons and Tools shop.

Throughout the course of the adventure, Ryu travels to several exotic locations, engaging enemies in a dojo, battling them in a burning village and slaughtering bad guys on an airship. The action moves at a brisk pace, with scores of enemies assaulting him almost all of the time. This, while entertaining to a degree, stands out as one of the game's faults, as bad guys constantly re-spawn at the same locations. This proves especially frustrating when players accidentally leave a room while mashing the attack buttons. Thanks to the game's obscene difficulty, one mistake carries deadly consequences.

Tecmo also deserves a slap on its wrist for not improving the in-game camera angle. Gamers manually control it with the right analog stick, but despite this freedom, it manages to display awkward angles, allowing off-screen enemies to score some cheap shots.

Furthermore, the game lacks a user-friendly navigation system, thus causing players to wander in and out of the same locations and enemies re-spawn at will. As a result, gamers waste time battling the same adversaries, using up all of their health elixirs and eventually dying.

Returning from the grave has its own problems. Tecmo spaced save points far apart, meaning players must wade through the easy segments before reaching the spot they died.

Sigma's difficulty makes these issues much worse. In designing Ninja Gaiden, developer Team Ninja went old school, programming relentless, oftentimes cheap enemies that unleash life draining attacks. The difficulty doesn't suck, and patient, skilled gamers will feel a great sense of accomplishment beating Ninja Gaiden Sigma instead of some easy platform adventure, but it does grate on the nerves, especially when the camera obscures enemies. If the developers intend to torture people with punishing artificial intelligence, then they need to program a fair, technically sound video game.

Despite these faults, Tecmo delivers the quintessential action adventure, one full of bloody decapitations; multi hit combos and memorable characters, some of which take up the entire screen. It also did a masterful job with the PS3 hardware, tweaking the aged Xbox graphics to create one of the system's most gorgeous games. Not only does everything move at a lightning fast 60 frames per second, it looks amazing at 1080p, some of the blurry cut scenes notwithstanding.

It also contains bonus content. In addition to the Dragon's Claw & Tiger's Fang, gamers will play a separate campaign as Fiend Hunter, Rachel. She moves a bit too slow and controls like a truck, but her levels offer mild amusement.

Finally, the game features limited SIXAXIS motion control. Before executing a Ninpo attack, gamers shake the controller to power it up. It's a subtle feature but at least it tries to do something innovative by use the most forgotten feature of Sony's PS3 controller.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma, warts and all, demands everyone's attention, particularly PS3 owners that never experienced the Xbox games. It is without question one of the most intense experiences on a console. However, its faults (poor design choices, really) keep it from being triple A.

Final Score: 8 (out of 10)



Final Score: 8/10