If you're not familiar with the Ask a Ninja podcast, you really should be. As the title implies, the premise is fairly simple: ask the ninja a question, and the ninja answers it. It is the delivery of the answers that makes the podcast so great though. In a genius bit of marketing, someone at Microsoft decided to team up with Ask a Ninja to produces some special episodes of the podcast sponsored by Ninja Gaiden II. The first two episodes are available now on Xbox Live Marketplace, so feel free to download them at your convenience. For even greater convenience, you can watch them right now, as we've taken the liberty of embedding them in this post (how we did this shall remain secret, though we will admit that Ninpo was involved). Find the second episode after the break.
Sitting down with Team Ninja head (and snappy dresser) Tomonobu Itagaki, Joystiq (along with some people who aren't from Joystiq) got to dig up some info regarding Ninja Gaiden II. For example, gamers looking for something a little easier than the first game are in luck. While the Ninja Dog mode found in Ninja Gaiden Black essentially went out of its way to make fun of lesser players for choosing an easier difficulty, Ninja Gaiden II's Path of the Acolyte mode will do no such thing. Not that we had to worry about that. No, that fact is much more important for certain Joystiq bloggers (who shall remain nameless). Head over to Joystiq for the full interview.
In our continuing effort to bring you fresh and interesting content, X3F presents Would You Rather ... a weekly feature that asks you the hard questions. The point? If you had to choose one or the other, which would you go for?
This week in WUR we're taking a different approach. With so many demos playable at Mircosoft's press event for upcoming Xbox 360 titles, we wanted to know which one you craved the most.
If Microsoft was to release only one demo today for you to play, which one would it be? Remember, this list only includes items that were playable at Microsoft's San Fransisco event so Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 aren't options. While Ninja Gaiden 2 might be the favorite, we wonder who out there is anticipating more hot Piñata action.
Feel free to share the reasons for your vote in the comments. We'll share the results of the poll during the next edition of Would You Rather ... which hits X3F every Wednesday.
Last weeks WUR results can be find after the jump ... take a look!
At an event in which the majority of the games were continuing franchises, Ninja Gaiden 2 didn't appear at first glance to be the game which had changed the most from its predecessors. From afar and to an untrained eye, the game appears to be exactly the same as the first, but the closer you get (right up to and including sitting down and playing the game) the more you notice, and the more you see how crazy over the top that Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja have gone with their latest game.
Upon picking up the controller the first thing we noticed was just how much faster the entire experience was. The increased responsiveness, the increased enemy speed, the replacement of the roll with the dash and many other little things all work together to make NG2 a much more fast paced, relentless game than the original.
Much, much, more after the break, and be sure to read the rest of our impressions from Microsoft's Spring Showcase as they go live over the course of the day.
Good lord. So many Ninja Gaiden II images. Adding more the already huge pile of Spring Showcase media, we bring you 40 new images of Ninja Gaiden II. We've got character renders. We've got concept art. We've got new screenshots. Hell, we even have special screenshots with no blood (good thinking on that one Microsoft). Please, dive into the gallery below. Just dive right in. Caress each image lovingly with your eyes. Your eyes work very hard, and they deserve the treat.
With so much Ninja Gaiden news arriving this week we're having a little trouble keeping pace. What with the pre-orders, the videos, the generally liberal amount of blood, and the "Power Rangers for grown-ups" character design, things having been looking pretty good. So it was only logical that there would be some bad news eventually. In this case it's the return of the deadly Horse Armor Syndrome. Come this July, Live will see DLC the likes of which it has not seen since the dark days of the early Marketplace.
Each of the first three pieces of DLC is just a skin, just a texture and model. Just, ya know, Horse Armor. Those in Europe will receive a download code for their Dress-Up Ninja™ DLC packs as their pre-order bonus, but the rest of us will have to pay 200pts per pack if we want them. And sadly, (so long as there is some sort of Hurricane-Pack-thing as well) we really do want them.
Update: Microsoft has clarified that the 200 point DLC will in fact contain five new costumes, not just one.
It's hard to know what exactly we did to deserve this fine month of May. First we get the Iron Man movie. A new Indiana Jones comes out later this month. Then there's all this Ninja Gaiden II coverage (not to mention the demo coming out sometime this month). GameTrailers has just unleashed a veritable flood of Ninja Gaiden II videos. Seriously, there are six of them. Seasoned Ninja Gaiden players will likely feel the urge to yell at whomever is behind the control though (he never jumps!!!11!!). Still, it's new footage and we're not about to complain. To be fair, we've actually featured one of the videos already, but we're throwing it in again anyway because the GameTrailers player is much, much better than GameSpy's. Check 'em all out after the break.
In lieu of any sort of collectors edition, Ninja Gaiden 2 appears to be getting all manner of pre-order bonuses. First it was Circuit City giving away the Halo 3Legendary maps with a pre-order, and now it's Walmart and Amazon, getting into the act with their own pre-order trinkets. In a similar move to the one with Iron Man, Ninja Gaiden 2 can be bought with a $10 gift card thrown in (Amazon). And if you really like the box art than you could pre-order from, *shudder* Walmart, who are giving away a wall scroll of the box art with their pre-order. Really, with so many games getting collectors editions these days, just give one of those Microsoft! Hey, it's Ninja Gaiden, we'd buy it.
Read, Walmart Wall Scroll Read, Amazon $10 Gift Card
After seeing the reveal of the senior Hayabusa today, we didnt think there would be anything more to add to the pile of Ninja Gaiden awesomeness for the day, and we were wrong. The newest snippet of gameplay is centered around the lunar staff and depicts werewolves, some crazy fiend bugs and the regular old spider ninjas. The enemies don't really appear to be much of a threat in the video, and we're hoping that means the video is being played on Path of the Acolyte mod, because those werewolves don't really look all that threatening.
We didn't think hardcore ninja types had daddy issues but this latest clip of Ninja Gaiden 2 tells us otherwise. It showcases the ultra-ninja Genshin versus the father of Ninja Gaiden star Ryu Hayabusa. In the clip Ryu's father Joe Hayabusa (seriously, his name is Joe) faces off against the ultimate bad-dude before Ryu walks in and screams out for his father's safety, and probably because he never played catch with him as a kid.
After the jump you can check out another cutscene that features the werewolf boss, Volf (seriously who names these characters?). Surprisingly Volf reminds us of Kelsey Grammar's portrayal of Beast in X-Men 3. Well-spoken werewolves FTW!
Eurogamer recently got their (lucky, lucky) hands on a preview build of (Game of the Year 2008) Ninja Gaiden II and the word is good. According to Eurogamer, complaints leveled at the original (bad camera, wonky save system, respawning enemies) have largely been addressed. Oh, and we should probably mention that the game is reportedly beautiful, with Eurogamer praising it for its "incredibly sharp textures, vivid and atmospheric backdrops, and frenetic, pinball-like action that barely flinches no matter what chaos is unfolding on the screen." Perhaps most importantly for many gamers out there (not us, of course), the game now sports a much more forgiving difficulty curve as well as more selectable difficulty levels available from the start.
For the love of all that is good, the wait is killing us. That demo had better get here soon. Hit the "read" link to check out Eurogamer's full preview in the meantime.
With the leaking of the Elizébet character earlier today, the list of leaked achievements mentioning her name got a bit more credible, but what about the rest of the names on the list? The last name on the list, Genshin, is in fact the game's ultra-ninja counterpart for Ryu, and is the leader of the Black Spider clan, who have allied themselves with the fiends in an attempt to end the Hayabusa bloodline. Elizébet is the queen of the greate - ... y'know this "story" stuff really doesn't matter, just watch the videos (the second one is after the break and is a bit NSFW).
(BTW, be sure to hit the 100% button in the flash player to keep the video from pixelating too bad.)
Well, as if having one character making fun of the hero of his competitor's game wasn't enough, Tomonobu Itagaki is at it again. Seen via a (horrible) screencap of one of the game's cutscenes is the series' newest female character, Elizébet. Sporting a red coat, she could be read as another parody of Dante, but the character's concept art reveals a direction a bit different from that of our crying devil. The second of the two pieces of concept art is that of a male boss named Alexei, and both of the character's names can be found in the game's rumored achievements, perhaps lending more credibility to the list.
As the release date of the summer's premiere action game grows ever closer, the marketing of said game grows as well, with more and more media being released to build hype. It's certainly working for Ninja Gaiden 2, with the game looking better and faster every time it's shown. This is our first view of the New York chapter, and there's everything from typical street-level views to fights against fiend-bats on (presumably) the Brooklyn Bridge. A must-watch for any and all fans of Ninja Gaiden.
We've known for some time that Ninja Gaiden 2 will be releasing on June the 3rd, but some of the game's finer details have been a bit under wraps. In an article in Famitsu (kindly translated by folks over at the Ninja Fortress boards and reposted at NeoGAF) there is some more details on the game's changes and tweaks. There's tons of little tidbits, but some of the biggest ones are more revealing, like the fact that some gamers have beaten the game's beta version in 15 hours (difficulty wasn't mentioned.)
Other things of note include the fact that there are no longer armlets in the game, as Ryu more or less has those abilities inherently now, and the fact hat Ryu no longer carries around potions to heal. Healing items are now different sorts of powders ("'This time, Ryu uses drugs to heal' he said while laughing."). And if you missed the xbox.com update, the Flame Wheels are now flaming birds that will circle you, attacking enemies who come too close. If you're interested in reading a little more, just follow the read link.
With so much Ninja Gaiden news arriving this week we're having a little trouble keeping pace. What with the pre-orders, the videos, the generally liberal amount of blood, and the "Power Rangers for grown-ups" character design, things having been looking pretty good. So it was only logical that there would be some bad news eventually. In this case it's the return of the deadly Horse Armor Syndrome. Come this July, Live will see DLC the likes of which it has not seen since the dark days of the early Marketplace.
