Review: Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma Plus (Vita)
Is Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus 2 worth purchasing all over again for your Vita?
I wasn’t entirely impressed originally with Ninja Gaiden 2 and haven’t played the assorted upgrades that have been put out here, so I felt this was the perfect version to jump back in to the fray with. I was very sadly mistaken, and wish I’d experienced it on literally any other system as this is far from optimal.
For those unfamiliar with the game, the original Ninja Gaiden 2 sought to follow and improve upon the arguably great Ninja Gaiden that debuted on the Xbox. The game was challenging and featured a fast paced and brutal combat system all tacked onto a bad ass ninja with awkward fashion sense. It succeeded in some areas while in others it failed to live up to the original game. I felt like Ninja Gaiden 2 dropped the ball with the overly generic backgrounds and linearity of long hallways with random fights to break things up. There was a lessening of challenge as well with a new mechanic that, if used properly, could let you one shot many opponents and towards the end of the game you could abuse it indefinitely almost.
While the story of the first Ninja Gaiden on Xbox was ridiculous it always kind of poked fun at itself at the same time, knowing that you can’t really take a game where you ride on a fat cyborg seriously. Ninja Gaiden 2 takes an odd approach with long monologues and plenty of story development, but what’s here slowly devolves into an absolutely crazy plot that will leave you scratching your head, or worse completely apathetic about it.
Combat is where it’s at though right? Indeed it is, and this version brings all the various improvements that Sigma brought to the mix like new characters and weapons. The gameplay can still be fun and hacking a bunch of bad guys into oblivion as Ryu has its high points of course, but the fact is that the Vita version is ultimately a vastly inferior product to the same game on PS3 or 360. This version drops the silky smooth 60 FPS to 30 and often it struggles to hit that in the campaign when the action gets going. Since such fluidity is one of the big draws to the original game, it really hurts the experience here as sometimes the game will become bogged down to irritating levels.
It gets worse on one of the new modes added to this version of the game. In this mode you’ll find yourself facing off against waves of baddies alongside a character of your choice. You can swap between these characters at any time, and though it’s undeniably dumb fun to tear it up with Ryu and Ayame, there are times where the frame rate drops to absolutely unplayable. The other new mode is ninja race, and though it can be a welcome diversion it ultimately comes up as a weak addition to the game. Perhaps, if it had focused on actual racing or trying to navigate an environment the fastest it would be different, but with enemy battles in place it devolves into another Time Attack Mode. On top of everything else co-op was dropped from this title with almost no explanation, as it would have been great to team up in horde mode. While online may not be a big part of Ninja Gaiden, it something that would be missed and another reason you are better playing it on any of the consoles if you have that option.
All of this is more confusing because the first Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus on the Vita was a great addition to the series that allowed you to take a classic on the go. It’s almost like Team Ninja forgot how to develop for the Vita in the short time since the first game’s release and has dropped the ball in so many areas that it makes it almost impossible to recommend the title. If you’ve played Ninja Gaiden 2 before and any of its upgrades I can’t recommend it to you because the new modes are poor additions. If you’ve never played Ninja Gaiden 2 it’s still a difficult recommendation, because it’s really just not a very well designed game and there is so much out there that’s just better in the first place, even without the technical issues.
The only people I can recommend this title to are those who really loved the first Ninja Gaiden and have absolutely no other way to experience the second addition and haven’t played it. Even then I think you’d be better off searching elsewhere in the Vita’s library for a more playable title. Everyone else should give this game a wide berth.
A copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review.
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