Ninja Gaiden II

NINJA GAIDEN II

Platform: Xbox 360, Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

I have concerns about

Ninja Gaiden II

, but my overall impression is positive. The concerns stem from comparing it to its predecessor.

Ninja Gaiden

was one of the best games of that console generation—I would call it a triumph of design. It presented a combat system with depth comparable to that of a decent 3D fighting game and a massive city to explore, all polished to a mirror sheen. Its budget-priced reissue,

Ninja Gaiden Black

, had all that plus new enemies, more weapons, an even more polished combat system, and a series of stand-alone missions that unlocked once the core game finished.

It was also too difficult—or at least, the lower difficulties weren’t easy enough. Most people I’ve spoken to gave up at Murai, the

first boss

.

NGB

added an additional, easier difficulty level, but it didn’t really fix the problem—“easier,” in this context, mostly means it threw a few more healing items your way.

NGII

fixes the difficulty problem and I’m not complaining about that. I beat

NGB

on hard (though I couldn’t make it past the first level on very hard), but even I see the difficulty of the first game as a problem—there was so much greatness throughout the rest of the game that most people didn’t see because the

NG

design team couldn’t work out a decent learning curve.

NGII

won’t have that problem.

The problem it has is lack of polish. Figuratively and literally, it never quite all comes together. Instead of being set in one big world with bits you can go back and explore, it’s set in a series of discreet levels. The enemies in the first game were fearsome because of great AI, yet one could always learn to overcome them. Now, the enemies are fearsome because (in the later levels, at least) they tend to have long attack chains that can trap you in a corner and kill you with little to no chance of escape. The imperfect streaming system it uses often leaves me fighting groups of enemies in a loading zone, which results in the game pausing to load in the middle of combat—sometimes more than once—if I have to jump back and forth across the border in the course of evading enemy attacks.

Some elements of the game are clear improvements.

NGII

uses a regenerating health system, where only a small amount of the damage you take won’t heal at the end of the fight that inflicted it. Healing items are more common but the number you can carry is smaller, which encourages using rather than hoarding them and leads to more fast-paced, less defensive gameplay.

NG

let you decapitate foes, but

NGII

lets you lop off arms and legs as well—and crippled enemies become more dangerous but can be dispatched with a single, properly timed strong attack.

As someone who enjoys a good action game, I enjoy

NGII

. As a fan of

NG

, I wish

NGII

were more than it is. Regardless of my own nitpicks, however,

NGII

remains one of the more worthwhile games I’ve played in recent memory, and I recommend it to everyone with an Xbox 360—especially people who tried the first one and had their asses handed to them by Murai.

ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE BOURNE CONSPIRACY

Platform: Xbox 360, Publisher: Sierra Entertainment

Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Conspiracy

is a textbook example of what happens when a property is adapted to a new medium by people who are, firstly, devoted fans of that property, and, secondly, adequate but not notable creators in the new medium.

The graphics are exactly on par with the current console generation. Its appearance does nothing to hold interest: It’s just generic city environments colored like they’re under a blue filter. Much of the music is drawn directly from the films, so when it works, it works exactly as well as it did in the movies but no better.

The story is a direct adaptation of the events of the first movie, interspersed with flashbacks to previous infiltration missions from before Bourne caught amnesia. Promotional statements to the effect of “It draws from the books and all three movies” may be, charitably,

technically

true (it takes camerawork inspiration from the later movies, and as far as I know a few of the flashback missions might be based on events from the books) but are misleading. All the performers are generic CGI models meant to as closely evoke the actors from the movie as “No, you can’t use my face” allows. The dialogue is most often taken directly from the movie, voiced by lackluster voice actors who try to mimic the film actors’ performances just as closely. The flashback missions are all loud and action-packed (at one point Bourne gets into a gunfight with a tank;

that

was tedious as hell) and don’t at all use the sort of cunning and intelligence that made the character of Bourne so appealing.

So what’s the gameplay like? Well, more of the same. The heart of the game is the fight mechanic—one button to press or hold for quick punch or kick, another to press or hold for fierce punch or kick. One button for block. One button to perform a takedown, which can only be performed when Bourne has a full adrenaline meter (it rises when your other hits land) and which instantly kills most enemies and does significant damage to early bosses and not nearly enough damage to later ones. In theory, the takedowns are meant to imitate Bourne’s fighting style in the movies, but movie-Bourne fights use Krav Maga, which emphasizes grappling and strikes to joints and other vulnerable areas. The fighting here is mostly boxing with a bit of Krav Maga thrown into the finishers.

In between fistfights, there’s basic over-the-shoulder shooting, one driving level (which I actually enjoyed because it

wasn’t

shooting or a fistfight), and a lot of quicktime events.

All of this combines to create a poor clone of a successful property—instead of emulating the best parts of its sources, it just emulates what’s easiest to copy. It does nothing clever; I could find nothing here I couldn’t get from just watching the Bourne DVDs and then playing superior games. Ultimately it might be worthwhile as a rental, but I always figure life’s too short to waste time playing games that are only worthwhile as rentals.