Review by: Jeff McAllister

Ninja Blade revolves around a ninja warrior named Ken Ogawa and the sword imparted to him by his father. Ken is part of a squad of soldiers known as the Global United Infestation Detection and Elimination team that is assigned to various tasks in and around Japan. Set in the year 2015, an outbreak of rather disgusting looking creatures called Alpha Worms have started to infect the people of Tokyo and it’s up to the G.U.I.D.E team to exterminate them. However, from the get go, things go to hell in a hand basket and Ken is left to fight the impending epidemic on his own, with little more than his trusty sword and ridiculously huge throwing star.

While the title of the game is a little too generic, the action is something worthy of a blockbuster Hollywood movie. The gameplay takes a page from Ninja Gaiden, God of War, and Devil May Cry and while that may not be a bad thing considering how great those games were, Ninja Blade brings nothing new to the table. You have three weapons in your arsenal and three different types of attacks for your shuriken, all of which are upgradeable using “Blood Crystals” that are dropped from felled enemies. Ken also has the ability to use Ninja Vision – another creative name – to slow down time and to highlight objects around him which are both useful and dangerous.

Ninja Blade is your typical hack and slash platformer when you get down to it and even though Ken does have a good number of moves in his repertoire, you’ll mainly be mashing the same two buttons over and over, taking out the few variants of enemies that are known as “Carriers”. While the regular enemies are lacking somewhat in pizzazz, all the bosses are huge and impressive and although they do tend to repeat towards the end of the game, they have different attacks the second time around, making it a little less repetitious. The bosses also tend to range from mind numbingly tedious, to laughably easy once you figure out their weakness – which usually involves cracking open their shells and then going to town on the meaty inside.

The one thing that stands out in Ninja Blade is the cutscenes and the fact that they are all driven by quick time events (QTE’s). While at first these can seem to be a major pain in the ass when you just want to sit back and watch a scene, but instead are busy focusing on the center of the screen for the next button press you’ll need to perform in order to continue. After a while however, the QTE’s tend to become predictable and more enjoyable as the game goes on. Thankfully the QTE’s don’t appear out of the blue as in some other games, as you are given a warning that a sequence is about to begin when the camera zooms in on Ken’s eye. The same button presses are “usually” used for certain actions, so when Ken is flying through the air and is about to land, you know that A will be pressed to make the landing. It’s like Dragon’s Lair with a Ninja.