Thursday, September 29, 2005
Review: Red Ninja (XBox)
Red Ninja is one of those games that you shouldn't buy at full price, but is worth a look if you can grab it on the cheap. Its a game that has some great ideas on one hand, but also suffers from the stink of "we didn't actually playtest this before shitting it out onto the shelves and snatching your money". First off, the good points....
For a start, the game has a great lead character in female Ninja Kurenai. Instead of the usual typical Ninja weapons, Kurenai uses the Tetsugen - a wire weapon. This of course leads to some great looking moves and kills in the game. A girl who decapitates, slices in half and rips the limbs off people she doesn't like - just pure wife material. Just don't tell the crazy bitch that the room is going to be a colour anything than what shes said.
Theres also some nice moves in the game when it comes to the platform areas and playing as a female Ninja, you even get to seduce some of the more stupid guards before stabbing them in the face. You also get to use the Tetsugen to swing, climb and change the enviornment by pulling down the odd weak beam, etc. Thing is, the good points of the game tend to really revolve around Kurenai and her unique weapon.
Now the bad points. The graphics aren't wonderful, pretty much around the level of Tenchu. But they aren't going to burn your eyes either. The speech in the game could have done with the option of being able to choose Japanese with English subtitles, simply because the Japs always seem to get into it more and make it better than some tosser who walks in probably hung over, spews out the lines and then says "can I have my money now ?"
The biggest pain in the arse about the game though has to be the camera. That FUCKING camera ! It hates you with every essence of its being ! If it could speak, it would tell you how much it dispises you and ridicule you as you play ! It makes sure you have the worst view possible for everything you do. Even though you can steer it around with the right analogue, it just doesn't seem to make it much better as you have to constantly readjust it for just about everything you do. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that alot of the jumps and wall runs you need to do, require a decent amount of skill to pull off without breaking Kurenai's neck on the floor below. Plus, even without the camera coming into it, landing a number of these jumps seems to rely on luck rather than skill. So combine this with the camera and areas that demand you do every jump right or start at the beginning of the area again (or just die), then it doesn't matter how little you've paid for the game, you'll still want to put your forehead through the disc !
Thing is, through this frustration, the main character is cool to play as and its fun sticking some bastard, then running circles around him, decapitating his buddies with the line as you do it. But those bloody developers responsible for the ingame camera should commit seppuku with a fucking hammer !
Overall Score: 5/10
posted @ 3:09 pm
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