Same as, more often than not, X and Y are used for attacks, although once in a while the game does throw different techniques at you such as pressing a button repeatedly, either quickly or slowly, to switch things up and to keep you on your toes. If you thought the cut scenes in Devil May Cry 4 were choreographed well, then Ninja Blade will knock your socks off, that is if you can differentiate realism and over the top action for the sake of action. With that said, while the majority of the QTE’s involve jaw-dropping manoeuvres, some QTE’s are just ridiculous, like having to press X repeatedly to flip a lever or open a small hatch.

Although the QTE’s can be challenging at times, they are also very forgiving. If you mess it up, you will be “rewound” to the beginning of the sequence to give it another try. With the QTE’s being so forgiving, the actual game itself is not. Ninja Blade can be a difficult game to say the least and while there are checkpoints at certain intervals during missions in case you misstep a jump or wall run, you cannot save your progress mid-mission and return to it later. Considering the missions are on average about an hour long, this can be a little frustrating, especially when you also take into account there are mini-bosses – that are just as difficult as regular bosses in most cases - in just about every mission that you will need to fight again, should you need to power down during a mission.

Ninja Blade does have its faults, like only being able to wall run up a wall where it is explicitly specified and not two feet to the left or right of the certain spot, and glitchy animations during some up close battles, but all in all, the game is an effective over the top action title that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

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