Xbox : Ninja Gaiden

• Developer : Team Ninja
• Publisher : Tecmo, Eidos Interactive (EU) (Sigma)
• Series : Ninja Gaiden
• Version :
• Release date : March 2, 2004
• Genre : Action-adventure
• Mode : Single-player
• Media/distribution : -

Game Info :

Ninja Gaiden is an action-adventure game for the orignal Xbox video game console. Team Ninja developed the game for five years before Tecmo released it in 2004. It breaks away from the older Ninja Gaiden series for the Nintendo Entertainment System, starting off a whole new story and universe. It has received much critical acclaim, with several publications proclaiming it one of the best and most difficult video games ever made, inducting it into their Halls of Fame.

Ninja Gaiden marked the first foray into the third-person, three-dimensional action-adventure market for the Ninja Gaiden series. Taking place in Japan and the fictional country of Vigoor, the game follows the ninja, Ryu Hayabusa as he fights hordes of enemies in a variety of environments to retrieve the stolen Dark Dragon Blade. Microsoft held an online tournament for it shortly after its release. The qualifiers played over Xbox Live established record-breaking participation, and culminated in the finalists having their showdown at the Tokyo Game Show 2004.

The game mechanics of Ninja Gaiden have gradually evolved through downloadable contents and two re-releases, Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox in 2005, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the PlayStation 3 in 2007. Its saga is continued in Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword on the Nintendo DS, and further on in Ninja Gaiden II on the Xbox 360.

Screen Shot (Click on any picture to view full size)

Gameplay

Takes place within a single game world in which most of its game locations are connected in a continuous manner. Although the game world is loaded in stages, reviewers have called the load times negligible. The city of Tairon functions as a hub world, a central connection linking other areas to each other. The connections between new regions in each chapter are mostly linear paths going through points of interest. Enemy encounters populate these points and along the paths. Dragon busts scattered in the regions serve as save points. The player controls Ryu Hayabusa, guiding him in a third-person view, fighting foes and exploring the environment of the 3D world. Except for a few situations dictated by the story, Ryu is unrestrained in his exploration, running through the streets, jumping and running up and along walls, and swinging from pole to pole. Although the game world is loaded in stages, the load times are said to be negligible.

Ninja Gaiden's standard game mode, Story Mode, follows the pacing of the typical action-adventure game, where the protagonist starts off weak at the beginning of the story and can be built up to have a larger life bar, more powerful weapons and magical ability through items or purchases, by the end of it. The player's performance in this mode is based purely on the karma score, with "Master Ninja" as the highest rank, and "Ninja Dog" as the lowest.

Another gaming experience was introduced in Ninja Gaiden Black and Sigma, in the form of Mission Mode. The missions are short sessions of pure combat action, and each mission typically comes with its own equipment loadout for the player. The highest scores for each mission are accumulated for the player's Mission Mode score.

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