“Ninja Gaiden 3″ isn’t just a depressing, confusing slog aimed at people with no attention spans and a whole lot of nausea medication. Like a rat-infested ship bringing diseases to the New World, it marks the importation to video games of one of the worst trends in modern filmmaking.
That is, the presentation of action in a manner that obscures the action.
In action movies, it may not matter so much that fight scenes are displayed with quick cuts and constant zooming. In games, though, you need to know what’s going on not just for your entertainment, but in order to play the game.
“Ninja Gaiden 3” takes a good beat-’em-up formula of a swordsman going around slicing people — play “Ninja Gaiden Sigma” to see how it’s done — and wrests control away from the player. As soon as you hit the attack button, the camera goes insane, like it’s being tossed around in a game of monkey in the middle, with your character as the monkey. No matter, though; he fights the bad guys as if on autopilot. A friend sitting watching you play the game might think you were a god for your ability to navigate this chaos, but then he’d look down at the controller and see you were just hitting one button over and over, with the game doing the rest.
| ‘Ninja Gaiden 3’ |
| » System: PS3, Xbox 360 |
| » Price: $59.99 |
| » Rating: 1 out of 5 stars |
Hold down and then release the strong-attack button, for instance, and protagonist Ryu Hyabusa will destroy the guy in front of him — and then teleport over to another enemy and start slicing him up — all without you even touching the controller.
During fight scenes, I’d monitor my health bar with puzzlement, wondering what was causing it to diminish, and what I could possibly do differently. The only strategy I could figure out was to attack the guys with the bigger guns first, so they’d be out of the picture before the camera tornado started. And before blood splattered all over the screen, further obscuring the proceedings.
Walking away from “Ninja Gaiden 3,” you’ll be covered in more blood than if you’d seen the double billing of GWAR and Slayer, and dizzier than you’d be after a marathon riding session on a Tilt-a-Whirl. But at least heavy metal and carnival rides are fun.
