Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword (DS) Review

(First posted on my GameSpot blog.)

What do you get when you get a crappy overused plot, and some pretty good gameplay? Well, not Mario, but Ninja Gaiden. But this time, Ryu Hayabusa goes for a spin on the Nintendo DS.

So how does this start again?

You first play as Momiji, who I think is Ryu's sister. After training, she picks flowers for Sakura, but after picking flowers, she sees some freaky monsters trying to get you at every corner. She is not entirely defenseless, however, and that's because she has her shurikens and her sword. So you as the player will at least try to defend Momiji against the evils of the Black Spider Clan by controlling her, but that's just for a short period of time and serves as introduction to the new controls because she gets abducted anyway.


                   Ryu! Hurry up before the old lady rapes Momiji!

Stylus-slashing!

This will draw comparisons to Zelda, which I haven't played, and that's because Ninja Gaiden is almost fully controlled by the stylus. You hack and slash by slashing your screen and releasing projectiles by tapping at your target lightly. This also makes for some control issues and conflicts that arise from the fact that walking is also initiated by tapping at a part of the screen!

Then again, it's more of the hardware's problem if you think about it.

You can defend yourself from attacks as well by pushing any button. I'd advise pressing the R button since your one of your hands is gonna be resting there, and that's because you play Ninja Gaiden like you're playing Brain Age- you flip the DS sideways.

Graphics

At first glance, you'll see that Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is a heavy-hitter in the graphics department because they're pretty good to look at. My gripe is that they're pretty much wasted by the monotonous look of most dungeons because most of the rooms look pretty much the same save for a few rooms, thus making it really easy to know which room is important, and which one is not.
     These graphics still shine regardless, and what Team Ninja has exhibited is nothing short of a  benchmark that other third-party developers should follow.

And again, stylus control, and the use of the microphone are some of the game's most advertised features. They're implemented quite well, save for the aforementioned projectile-walking issue.

This leads me to the microphone.

There are times when you have to use the microphone to advance the story, but you don't know exactly when you'll use it.

Like many others, I was stuck at Chapter 3 with the sleeping Muramasa thing which was so self-explanatory that you had to open your PC, connect to the Internet, wait for GameSpot to load, type in the search term, pick the correct title, click Cheats, select one of the many walkthroughs for the game, wait for the thing to load, press Control or Command-F, type Chapter 3, and read it from there.

I mean, yeah, the NPC's note that you should call a person when he's sleeping, but doesn't that mean that if you tap a person that's awake, you don't call them? Instead, they talk randomly? Because common sense usually states that when you want to talk to a person, you call them first. But no, in this game, the NPCs that are actually awake are probably released from the mental institution because they just talk to you without you even calling them. I mean, if you wanted to apply the logic of having to use the microphone to call someone, why don't you just use it to talk to someone awake as well?

Well?

And then...

And then there are those times when the game seriously wants you to waste your Ki and use your special Ninja arts to get rid of an obstacle. Now there's nothing wrong with using powers to clear obstacles, it's just that some of them don't even make sense!

Here's an example that makes me grind my teeth:
                           Gamespot rotated it again! Argh... I just wanted to put my own picture!

Now if Ryu can penetrate steel armor with his sword, why the hell would you have to use fire to get rid of a SPIDER WEB? I don't know about you, but that just doesn't make sense to me. What, is Ryu scared of cleaning his sword because the itty-bitty spidow web will make itty-bitty Wiyu's sword cwy? What about the blood that goes into your damn sword?

Speaking of blood...

There's none of that here, and that makes the game family-friendly, which I don't have much of a problem with.

However, the game's really, really easy, and really, really, really short. As in, each chapter amounts to like 30 minutes of gameplay, but the chapters are far too few to be deemed long.

Mind-numbing strategy...

So there are bosses, of course, and though they're pretty big, they only have like 2 to 3 attacks: 1) the throw and; 2-3) plain, semi-powerful attack.
                I rarely get caught by the bosses since they're so mind-numbingly easy.

So what strategy is there to be had with boss fights? Well, they're so strategic and epic, that you can just roll and use projectiles, roll, projectile, roll, projectile until they fall (except for the last boss who knows how to evade). In fact, the only times I succumb to a boss' throw attack is when I hit the invisible barrier which is annoying as heck because you're simply given an illusion of free 3D movement in every boss battle but not given just that! But at least the camera can catch up.

And if you want to accelerate these boss battles, you can always do this:
                                            Oh yeah, you're gonna die.

In fact, to be perfectly honest, I die more deaths from losing life to the "grunts" or the normal enemies in the game, who are far more irritating to kill, than the bosses. Yeah, I die from them. And when I do die from the bosses, it's because fighting these grunts have made me tired from slashing and Izuna-dropping and such. Yeah, there's not button mashing which affects the fingers, but your right (or left) hand will hurt instead. If there was a term used for describing the many slashes you do on the DS, I'd use it.

Oh yeah, it's called carpal tunnel syndrome.

Still...

There is still variation in the attacks nonetheless. You can slash down and then up twice to perform a pretty cool dive, or rub the screen so hard it could break to execute the Ultimate Technique. Frankly, I'm underwhelmed at the minimum of varied combos and attacks the game offers, but they're actually pretty cool to watch, and exciting to implement.

Overall

Granted, there's still a lot of fun to be had with Ninja Gaiden DS, and maybe you can pick it up unless you're expecting a challenge.

Rating: 8.0/10

                                  Oh look, lesbians! The score just went up a notch!

REVIEW: Hancock

(Side note: Damn! This is like the 3rd almost-consecutive-were-it-not-for-some-things Sunday we've watched movies in the cinema house!)

Hancock
Starring: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was kind of psyched, and that was pretty much because it was actually a pretty unique superhero movie- and by unique I mean the superhero being a perfect asshole and a drinking bastard.

Anyway, the movie first starts out with Will Smith in character as John Hancock shredding road signs of Los Angeles and basically causing more turmoil than he reduces by recklessly cleaning up some bad guys in his own, "special" way. Of course, this doesn't set the tone for the rest of the movie, but I'll get into that later.

The focus then shifts on a man named, uhhh..., wait.

.............
............
...........

Oh yeah! Ray. He's a P(ublic) R(elations) guy who is trying to change the world by pitching about his charitable logo to some companies- and fails miserably. When he drives home, he gets stuck in traffic that reminds me of Recto during the holidays, and just when the traffic comes to a full jam does the unlucky guy get stuck in a railroad track. The thing is, a train's a-comin', and the only thing he could do is hope. This is where Hancock comes to his rescue, not by flying up holding the car, but by tipping the car nose-up and squash another car, and ram himself to the running train. Of course, this instead causes outrage to all the civilians, and that's because, once again, he causes more turmoil than he reduces.

Ray, however, actually thanks him, and wants to do him a favor- which is to change his image so that people can love and appreciate him.

Recommended by Father
So, this morning/hours ago, we went to church, and the presiding priest's homily suddenly turned to the movie Hancock which he watched in SM Baguio during a seminar. He recommended this movie to everyone and he even gave some really true, hard-hitting reasons as to why this is actually great for us. And that's because it teaches about giving love to others, because if one is not loved, he'll resort to alcohol, drugs and crime. He also pointed out that one should not judge a book by its cover, and that's because in this movie, everyone only looks at Hancock like he's a criminal who's not using his superpowers responsibly, but Ray, the PR guy, is able to see through that and look at the good inside him.

These points were compelling enough to convince my father and younger brother to watch it even though Father spoiled the whole movie ("Nawalan ng powers si Hancock"). We originally planned to watch Wanted, but then again, we had no choice when we found out it was, like, R-13- an age my brothers have yet to reach. And another thing is, the earliest time was in a THX theater (in Greenbelt, which is really good but really expensive) so we had no choice.

Not worth the premium for THX
The last time I watched a movie in a THX theater, it was X-Men 3. Because of the explosive sound did I actually like the relatively inferior film (when compared to its predecessors, helmed by a man called Bryan Singer who I like). But this one? Hmm... not really.

I mean, it does start out as a very promising film, but when Ray reaches his goal of changing Hancock's image, it starts getting a little... err, I don't really know what's the right word for this, but the word corny doesn't exactly do it much justice as it should've.

Yeah, Hancock's powers are really cool, and actually rather Superman-ish as well, but that doesn't exactly stop the film from getting out of your attention when the guy turns responsible and... conventional.

Near-end is a bit... eh?
A part of the film shocks the viewer a bit since it exposes a really unexpected secret (and the reason why there are too many close-ups of, well, you'll know who I mean). This fact then sets the foundation for the movie's near-end sequence as it throws you all this weird information in one shot that's hard to actually digest instantly. And because your attention gets lost by this part, you won't exactly get every bit of information a certain character throws at you. I mean, it's like, "What the hell? Why the hell? Huh? What are you saying?" kind of information overload that's, to reiterate, due to the fact that you lost your focus on the movie because it suddenly goes the conventional path.

Recycled Lines
I don't know, but maybe it was supposed to be, like, a catchphrase or something?

I was really irritated when Hancock kept saying, "Say that one more time." every time someone says asshole. I mean, it was funny the first time, but it isn't the second, third and fourth time around.

I got even more irritated when another unexpected person said the same thing when Hancock called the person names. I was like, "What the hell? Were the writers replaced with a really sucky set of writers after they filmed the part when Hancock was still an asshole?"

Tries to teach a lesson
Like what Father said, the film teaches about the attribute of being able to responsibly use a God-given gift or talent, and to not judge a book by its cover. Because, who knows? That guy may just need some love, is all. The lesson is not so goodly imparted, though, but those intelligent enough to see them is probably going to commend the film because it exerts efforts into teaching these lessons into a pretty unique, superhero package- a package that appeals to the demographic.

Mediocre, at best.
The film can probably be classified as one of Smith's misses. After a slew of hits that are actually above decent because of his acting chops, this one misses that line by a few miles. So yeah, it's a mediocre Smith film at best, but it's not exactly the worst film ever of the summer. It just needed some fine-tuning, and a better, seamless structure for the very promising plot. It could've blown everything else away, but in the end, it just disappoints.

Rating: 6.8/10 (Start is promising and unique, end is weak, poor and predictable.)