Review | Ninja Blade
Format: PC | Genre: Action adventure | Publisher: Iceberg Interactive | Developer: ND Games/From Software | Release date: 12/02/10 | RRP: £29.99
Sometimes, when reviewing a game, it’s best to simply describe what happens in it, and let that do the talking.
This is the PC version of last year’s 360 action-adventure Ninja Blade. Its options menus ask you to do things like press the yellow ‘Y’ button. There is no mouse support until you’re actually playing the game itself. Some of the graphics options refuse to scale above ‘average’, even on a top-of-the-range PC. Sometimes you scroll through options menus with the arrow keys, and sometimes with enter.
The game features a cast of Japanese stereotypes with American accents. You begin by jumping out of a plane, then fighting off a variety of mutated beasts in mid-air. This is the second time such an infection has spread wildly across a large area. I only know that because the press release told me so. To fight the beasts you have to press A, B, X or Y on your 360 controller within a split-second of the game telling you to do so. If you don’t have a 360 controller for your PC, these four buttons are assigned at random to keyboard keys or mouse buttons. By the time you’ve played for ten minutes, X has corresponded to left-mouse, right-mouse, space and enter. Sometimes, the on-screen captions get it wrong, and you die, and it’s not your fault. Sometimes, the caption doesn’t appear at all, and you’re left staring at a giant, green, pulsating letter A, with no idea what to do with that information.
ARE YOU GETTING THE PICTURE YET?
Character models are highly detailed, but environment textures are blurred beyond recognition. Levels are entirely linear and blocked off by invisible walls. The camera is sometimes controllable with the mouse, but only if you slide the thing about half a mile to either side. Sometimes even that doesn’t work. Sometimes the game takes control away from you entirely. Sometimes, when it does that, you get burnt to death by a fire in the meantime.
During the tiny fraction of the game that isn’t controlled via quick-time events, you fight by pressing the same two buttons endlessly until something dies. Often, that thing will proceed to get back up again after you’ve killed it. One boss continued to beat me to a pulp even with its health bar on zero. Things pop up in Japanese when you kill things, sometimes. There is no translation for when that happens.
There are a lot of explosions and collapsing buildings. But one time, I lost a hefty amount of progress, because the game doesn’t allow you to manually save during its lengthy missions, so I assumed the checkpoints did it for you. Pro-tip: they don’t.
Some other things that have happened so far this year include the releases of Bayonetta, Darksiders and Dante’s Inferno. Apparently, some game called God Of War 3 is coming out soon, as well. They’re not PC games, but, well, nor is this.
My favourite bit of Ninja Blade was the opening cut-scene, during which the game crashed and I was left staring between the legs of a young lady for all eternity, because pressing ctrl+alt+del to bring up the task manager didn’t do anything. Maybe I was supposed to press Y instead. By Lewis Denby
2/10
So what is the bottom of your review scale, Lewis, and what would this game have needed to do to get there?
I was wondering the same thing….