Recently we got the chance to attend the launch event for Ninja Gaiden II, which was attended by none other than Tomonobu Itagaki, the legendary game developer, who had caught a flight from Japan just to attend the event and show off the latest game in the Ninja Gaiden story.

Mr Itagaki has a real aura about him, maybe it was just me but I got the impression that he is perhaps treated in Japan the way in which a Rock Star would be treated here, clad in a leather jacket and with his sunglasses never leaving his face it was easy to think that perhaps he thought we should be screaming like little girls, it never happened but still it was just a thought.

Anyway onto more pressing matters and that of Ninja Gaiden II, once the introductions where out of the way, Mr Itagaki’s translator was tasked with playing through an entire level of the game in order to give us our first look at it, before we managed to get hold of it ourselves later in the day. The level which we were shown was Chapter 7 – Flying Fortress Daedalus, straight from the off, this seemed pretty impressive to me, the opening scene starts with Ryu and his accomplice flying in a helicopter, only for a massive airship to suddenly appear and dwarf everything else on the screen, as the action begun Ryu managed to get himself onto the airship and proceed to take out the turrets, before long enemies also appeared and it became obvious that we were watching Ninja Gaiden II in action as arms and legs started to fly off in different directions and the splatter of blood painted the floor.

As Ryu continued to work his way through countless enemies, I was keeping an eye out for anything interesting, one thing I did notice is that enemy AI seems to have been improved slightly, for example when you chop off an enemies legs they will crawl in your direction and try to grab you, if they succeed then all of a sudden they will go all kamikaze on you and blow themselves up, which obviously doesn’t do much for your health, similarly enemies will grab you from behind and then stick a knife right through your body into themselves, nice.

Ryu has an arsenal of eight weapons to choose from, you can pick these up as you go, however there is also a blacksmith who can make these stronger, with visuals changing depending on which weapons you use, another neat addition is that once all weapons are unlocked and the game complete, you can start the game again without having to unlock them again. Enemies also seem to have fairly decent weapons, while most will just run at you and attack with their sword, others have arrows or rockets, which can be a real pain to deal with when you are already surrounded.

As well as the Blacksmith shop, other points of interest include a new health station, this allows you to restore health, but only once and when used it then acts as a save station, allowing you to save the game from that point, which is obviously handy when you have all of those ninjas breathing down your neck.

Visually the game seems very impressive, the cinematics run alongside the gameplay without interference, and the camera always changes to get the best view of any dismemberment which you are about to make. With so much on screen action it is quite an achievement that everything runs so smoothly.   

So what about the difficulty? Well this question was put to Mr Itagaki and here is what he had to say “The default difficulty should be ok for most, your skill should increase as you go along”. Of course given that we were there for a hands on, I decided to try the game out for myself, and what I will say is that it is definitely a lot easier than usual, beating the enemies and the end of level boss is still a challenge, it’s just that this time it’s possible. All of you hardcore Ninja Gaiden fans shouldn’t worry though, because there is still a higher difficulty level included just for you.

Another thing I managed to discover is that Ninja Gaiden II is a fairly sizable game, 14 chapters are included, with the earlier chapters being inspired by real life locations, (wait to you see the chapter based on Venice, it’s pretty neat).

So overall Ninja Gaiden II should please newcomers and hardcore fans alike, sure it’s a bit easier than before and really feels like more of the same, but on this occasion that is most definitely a good thing. Mr Itagaki you should be proud.