had a bunch of Best Buy coupons burning a hole in my pocket, a lot of respect for From Software's Otogi team, and an unhealthy affection for Shinjuku, so I picked up their inaugural “Next Gen” effort, Ninja Blade. The idea is straightforward enough, you're some sort of superninja, there are fucked up mutant zombies all over downtown Shinjuku, you have to chop them up into little pieces. The general combat mechanics feel pretty good and the game is pretty enough to get by, but there are just some really questionable design decisions being made here.
It's like the design team played some God of War and decided that massive boss fights featuring tons of quicktime events was the way of the future, and it was time to invest!
Something must have gotten lost in translation somewhere along the line, because it seems the major things they got out of GoW were red orbs that you spend to power up your weapons, and an absolutely insane number of quicktime events... I mean really, I know i mentioned it already, but it's staggering.
Another lovely thing that ive already encountered twice in two levels is the whole, Raiders Run, AKA: “running towards the camera to outrun something that's chasing you while you're navigating obstacles that you can't even see yet” thing, which is on page 2 of the “How to piss off your players as quickly as possible” guidebook.
I know i'm bagging on this game an awful lot, but there's also a lot to like, each stage is essentially an hour long boss encounter, normally featuring massive set pieces and cool minibosses that frequently get in your way as your chasing down (or being chased by) the boss.
That's all for now, more later
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