I’ll say right off the bat, this game is HARD! Sure you can get through it on easy, or even the “ninja dog” difficulty, but to truly beat it and open up all of the added content, you need some serious skills.
Ninja Gaiden Black is a re-release of Ninja Gaiden that came out almost 2 years ago. I never picked up the original, as far as know it was a badass game already. What was added? Missions, weapons, harder (and easier) difficulties, new costumes and the ability to play the original Ninja Gaiden arcade game. Most of the new features have to be unlocked by accomplishing certain tasks, but they’re worth it. So far I’ve beaten the game on normal which was hard enough, took me a couple weeks, which boiled down to about 30 hours of play.
The heart of this game beats in the combat. There are no stealth kills, or any other easy ways through a fight, except a lucky decapitation here and there. You are constantly faced with multiple enemies ranging from demon to armored soldiers with rocket launchers. The hard part is finding your opening. But once you do and get into the rhythm of the fight, you’ll find your a god damn killing machine. The variety of weapon and moves for each weapon, really make this one of the best action games I’ve ever played.
The storyline is pretty straight. Ryu’s village is burnt to the ground by a demon named Doku. Your job from then on is to track him down and kill his ass. 15 levels before you do that, you meet a chick with triple D’s, kill a few thousand people, and solve a puzzle here and there.
I’ve tried out a few of the missions, which only appear in the game menu after you beat the storyline on normal. This is where you venture into the realm of ridiculously hard. There are 50 or so missions. In each your given a set of weapons and a goal to accomplish. Most of the time your dropped in a room and need to kill a hell of alotta enemies, sometimes you need to fight a few bosses at once. I’ve only won 6 so far. Again… f’n HARD!
If you like a challenging game with basically no difficulty cap and tons of content/replay value, check this one out.