Ninja Gaiden 3 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

Platform: PlayStation 3 (also on Xbox 360)

Developer: Team Ninja

Publisher: Tecmo Koei

# of Players 1 (Online 2 – 8)

ESRB Rating: M (Mature)

Score: C+ (75%)

Team Ninja set itself up with quite a paradox-shaped pickle when they set about designing Ninja Gaiden 3. The particular problem plaguing them? How to make a game for new casual players (and those who hated the supreme challenge of the older Ninja Gaiden games) and while pleasing the more hardcore fans of the franchise (some from the arcade and NES days) who wanted something brutally difficult that took a great deal of effort to master. Now, some of those more loyal hardcore Ryu Hayabusa fans would simply say “screw the noobs!” or something far less print-friendly. However, these days it’s getting much harder to sell some “core” games so far within a niche and make a decent profit. Yes, that’s pretty awful if you think about it, but broadening the base has worked well for certain other franchises and genres, right?

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Mystically, a review copy of Team Ninja’s latest appeared yesterday (as in out of the blue via Fed Ex), which caught me quite off guard. I guess that means Ryu Hayabusa’s job security is still intact (at least with me). Anyway, I’m in the process of going through it now and while it’s definitely DIFFERENT than previous installments, it’s not the completely horrific experience a few reviewers are bleating on about.

It’s obviously wearing a few modern influences on its bloody sleeves thanks to certain other popular action games out there and thanks to that, it loses some of what made the earlier games great in the process. On the other hand, if it wasn’t a Ninja Gaiden game, I’d bet good money that a lot of the bile directed against it wouldn’t be there at all. Anyway, back to playing some more – my full review should be up this weekend (if not sooner)…