Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge Review

For this review, I think I'm going to start off with the weakest part of the game, the story.  The story really is not that interesting, the writing is mediocre, and I find the main character Ryu Hayabusa to be completely boring. The story mode is also fairly short, which is pretty common for the hack and slash genre. They make the story go by pretty quickly, but they generally give you something else to do to keep you playing, such as unlockables, side missions, or replaying the game on different difficulties. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, gives you all of these things.

I'm putting very little stock in the story of the game. Hack and slash games aren't about telling an interesting story, or eliciting an emotional response, or anything like that. Granted, there are exceptional games like Devil May Cry 3 that go above and beyond, but for the most part, hack and slash games have one purpose: mindless, action-packed, violent fun. As such, this entire review essentially comes down to a single question: is Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge fun enough to justify the uninteresting story and lackluster characters?

For me, the short answer is, in the long run, yes.

I really love a game with a good story, interesting characters, heavy themes, great voice acting, all those kinds of things. However, I do not play hack and slash games for these things. When I choose to play a hack and slash, I'm just looking to have a good time. Really, there are five things I look for in a hack and slash. Good gameplay, cool enemies, cool character(s), variety, and authentic difficulty. I am going to go into more detail on all of these things, but first I want to talk a bit more about the game as a whole.

For me, the part of the game that was the most fun was Ninja Trials. These are essentially fairly short missions, usually about five to ten minutes long, where you fight through several waves of enemies, trying to clear them as quickly and efficiently as you can. The major advantage to this mode is that you have a few different characters to choose from. If you're like me, and you don't like Ryu for either his aesthetics or his play-style, then this is a great blessing. You unlock Ninja Trials after you beat the second level of the game, but in the beginning you can only play as Unknown Ninja, a generic and slightly customizable character. In the third level of the game, you play as Ayane, which is a breath of fresh air. However, the mission is really short, and after it's over you go right back to Ryu. However, once you clear this mission, you unlock Ayane in Ninja Trials.

After unlocking Ayane, I went over to Ninja Trials and played a few. Afterwards, I was honestly considering abandoning the main game altogether and just doing Ninja Trials from now on. However, I decided to finish the game so I could unlock Ryu. Kasumi, and Momiji in Ninja Trials. This was honestly worth it, because Momiji was my favorite character in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, and Kasumi proved to be really cool as well. After beating the game, I spent many hours doing Ninja Trials in order to develop solid opinions on the game.

The first thing I judge a hack and slash by is probably the most important, and that's the gameplay. The gameplay needs to be nice and responsive, and also very proactive. I don't want a hack and slash to be like an Assassin's Creed game, where I can breeze through every encounter by just blocking until I'm attacked and then countering. I want to be constantly on the offensive, and I want the enemies to be as well. On top of this, I want to have a ton of potential and freedom with combos and the like. As I, the player, get better at the game, whatever character I'm playing as should start to seem a lot more awesome. This is a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I think the game that did this best was DmC, the reboot. The game gave you access to so many abilities and weapons, most of which you could switch between in an instant. This gave you the ability to do many incredibly combos, and it kept the gameplay consistently fun. Granted, DmC was overall a fairly mediocre game and honestly sort of insulting to Devil May Cry fans everywhere, but in this particular aspect, it excels. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, also does this well. The combat is really rewarding as you start to get the hang of a character, but it can also be very punishing. A lot of stronger abilities leave you vulnerable for a second, creating a high risk high reward scenario. This helps to add to the authentic difficulty of the game. In general, I have no real complaints about the game. The only thing that is annoying is when I try to jump while near a wall, and I wind up running on the wall. The camera angles can occasionally be frustrating, but they are an improvement over Sigma 2, so that's a good thing.

The second point on my criteria is the enemies. It has been established that Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge will let me kill things in really cool ways. However, it is important to me that the things I am killing are really cool too, otherwise what's the point? I do not have too much to say about this, Ninja Gaiden's enemies are awesome. They always have been. It is important to have a variety too, and NG3:RE does that well too. There are 67 Ninja Trials in this game. A few of them are essentially slightly modified versions of Team Missions from Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. As such, Ninja Trials has several enemies from the past, as well as a ton of new enemies, and they're all awesome. You have giant, bulky fiends that pick you and toss you all over the place, snake things with tentacles that spin you around by the ankle, scrawny demons that pin you down and punch you a bunch, and a whole lot of different humans. I never really got tired of the enemies in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, so I doubt I will ever get tired of the enemies in this game.

The third point is characters. While playing through the main game, I had started to think that this would be the game's undoing. Ryu is boring all around. Ayane is pretty cool, but you barely  get to play as her. However, this issue was mostly remedied after unlocking Momiji and Kasumi. Kasumi quickly became my favorite character to play as. Granted, she is not incredibly interesting in terms of personality or anything, but she is a lot of fun. I still consider Momiji to be the coolest character, mostly just because naginata are really cool. However, I find Kasumi substantially more fun to play, and she is the one I have played the most overall. Unfortunately, none of these characters are incredibly interesting, but they at least look good. In the end, I still think the characters are the games weakest point, especially when compared to other hack and slash icons such as Dante or Bayonetta. However, it is not an incredibly damaging flaw and only slightly damages my overall opinion of the game.

Point number four, variety. To put it simply, this game has tons of it. Each of the playable characters has a very distinct play-style. Between story mode, chapter challenges, and solo and co-op Ninja Trials, the game gives you plenty of things to do. If you enjoy hack and slash gameplay, this game will keep you interested and involved for a long time. You are sure to get your money's worth at the very least. In the field of variety, this game absolutely excels.

This brings us to the fifth and final point, authentic difficulty. Games that are stupid easy are boring. However, games full of artificial difficulty are just frustrating. If you are like me, and by no means an expert gamer, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge can prove difficult on higher levels. However, the difficulty never felt cheap to me. There are not any unavoidable deaths or stupid pitfalls or unexpected quick time events. There are plenty of enemies in this game that have special attacks or grabs that can two shot the player. However,  the strength of a grab or power attack is directly related to how telegraphed it is. There are these snake demon things that can grab you pretty much instantly and fling you around a bit, but it barely does any real damage. On the other hand, there are these bulky rock demon things that can grab you and punch you across the room, taking away like half of your health. This attack has over a second of wind-up, thus making it fairly easy to dodge if you are paying attention. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge requires you to constantly be aware of what's going on, and to constantly be at your best in terms of combos and reflexes. Because of this, it succeeds at authentic difficulty really well.

All in all, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge does everything it tries to do really well. It does not try to tell a really interesting story, or move you emotionally or surprise you with plot-twists. Because of the style of game, this is mostly forgivable. However, games like Devil May Cry 3 have shown that hack and slash games can be used as a medium for good storytelling, which does raise the bar as a whole. Essentially, if this game had an engaging story and some more interesting characters, I would almost be willing to give it a solid ten, since I did thoroughly enjoy playing it. However, the lack of substance does bring the game down for me a fair bit, despite everything else working incredibly well.

Final rating: 7.5/10

Jazzpunk Thoughts

I played Jazzpunk yesterday and decided to write a bit about how I felt about the game. This isn't realy like a full fledged review, just my thoughts and opinions on the game. Spoilers ahead.

This game was absolutely bonkers. It was absurd and often random, but in a surprisingly well-done way. Usually I'm not particular fond of random humor, but it works well in this game for a few reasons. First off, it's organized chaos. In a weird sort of way, everything that happens makes sense within the laws of this world. Also it's heavily implied that the player, and presumably everyone, is on drugs through most of the game. A fair amount of the absurdity is very clearly satire, and it's usually done quite well. The other thing is, the randomness doesn't feel like laziness. This is my biggest problem with random humor most of the time. Someone can't think of something actually funny, so they just say something like "A man walks into a potato and seven crocodile" or something. The thing is, Jazzpunk shows on multiple occasions that it doesn't rely on randomness to be funny ("I am in your debt. I am in overwhelming debt." "You have bestowed blindness upon me." and "I have fourth degree burns all over my entire face" come to mind). Also, most of the time the randomness is, again, sensible and often funny (like the trinkets you find during the metal detector mini game.)

Admittedly, there are plenty of points where the randomness is nothing more than randomness and just isn't funny. For example, the flock of flying toasters. There are points where the humor is a bit too crude and juvenile, like when the Cowboy is in the bathroom expelling his kidney. Still, these low points didn't really damage my opinion of the game as a whole, since they were few and far between.

When I finished, I did find myself thinking quite a bit about the world of Jazzpunk. It's honestly fairly well-crafted. Despite it's absurdity, there are plenty of consistencies, and most things in the universe make since within itself. I find myself wondering exactly how Missionoyl works. I mean, the label specifically says “Take one per mission, or until reality is sufficiently augmented” so it isn't too hard to believe that all the randomness and absurdity is caused by everyone being on drugs. However, I have slightly different thoughts on the world itself.

Ending spoilers ahead.

At the end of the game, you defeat the villain and run to save the director (after spending 26 hours freeing his secretary from a gelatinous prison.) When you get to the director, you set him free, but also turn him into a crocodile (either accidentally or on purpose, I did it on purpose.) Then, he swallows you, and you see satirical end credits as you walk around inside him. When you get through the credits and reach the end, there is a tape recorder and a bottle of Missonoyl. The tape recorder explains that the director swallowed the record and the bottle, on the off chance that he ever gets transformed into a crocodilis e and swallows someone important. When you take the Missonoyl, a countdown appears, but rather than saying “Mission Begins in 5” like it usually does, it says “Simulation Ends in 5”.

Thing is, throughout the game, there is a lot of implication that you're not a human in reality, but some sort of android or something in a Matrix-like world. It's usually little things, like the fact that your eyes have windshield wipers, or the fact that at one point you literally download a new brain. At one point you take a different drug called Vacationoyl, which sends you into an actual simulated vacation. This is where you meet The Editor, the game's primary antagonist. Anyway, this all leaves me asking the question, “what exactly does Missonoyl do?” because at this point my best guess is that the entire game takes place in a simulation and Missionoyl is just a repository of code that sends you into various other simulations. Perhaps the Missionoyl at the end is just coded to make you exit the simulation. To all of this I have one question: Why? I don't know. Maybe that's the point.

One last thing I want to talk about is the “final boss fight”. After you escape from the simulated vacation, you return to find that the director and his secretary have both been kidnapped. Then you take some drugs that send you to The Editor's Bachelor Pad, disguised as an Exterminator (because Jazzpunk.) You do a bunch of random side quests, including a Fruit Ninja mini-game, a shooting gallery where you shoot toast and ducks, and a pillow-fight-to-the-death. After you clear these side shennannigans (which is honestly a more fitting word than “quests” or “missions”), you find the Director and you're confronted by the Editor in an almost excessively silly manner.

The following sequence is quite honestly the best part of the entire game, in my opinion. Instead of a dramatic boss fight (which would be out of place in this game anyway, so it's not surprising), the Editor challenges you to a gauntlet of sports games. This turns into a fairly clever inversion of several gaming tropes more than anything. First of all, you can't actually win the battle. The first game, which is basically mini-golf played with anything except a golf club, is impossible to win because The Editor always gets a “Home Run” (his own words.) The second game is Gravy Boat Racing, which you can actually win, but it doesn't matter. The Editor gets grumpy and admits that you weren't supposed to be able to win and that he needs to cheat harder in the future. The last game is a game of Virtual Boy Tennis. You can win this one fairly easy by taking a chair and beating the Editor unconscious with it. Afterwards, you arrive at the awards ceremony and the Editor decides that he won anyway. So you decide to use his own Hubris against him, in probably the most literal fashion imaginable. You run around finding trophies and accolades to throw at him, which causes him to literally inflate with pride. You then pop him, causing him to die. As silly as it is, it's a very nice play on the traditional “beaten by his own hubris” concept.

That's basically my thoughts on the game. I just realized that I didn't talk about the graphics at any point, so I'll some that up really quickly: They're simple but charming and kind of cute. It's honestly a nice style. Reminds me of Thirty Flights of Loving in some ways. Anyway, yeah, the game had a few low-points and jokes that I just personally didn't find funny, but as far as comedy video games go, this one is pretty top quality. I recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor. It's pretty short, too, not much of a time commitment.  

Obligatory Introductory Post

I made a blog. Hurray.

At the moment I do not know exactly what I'll be posting on this blog. Probably just whatever I happen to feel like. Some things to expect include reviews of pretty much anything, top fives/tens/etc, and fairly random musings. That's about it. You have now been introduced.