The Ninja.
Perhaps the coolest class of warrior ever.
From Wikipedia:
In the history of Japan, a ninja was someone specially trained in a variety of unorthodox arts of war. These included assassination, espionage, and other martial arts.
In the Japanese culture, they were usually trained for dangerous missions. Although their exact origins are still unknown, with some historians speculating about some Chinese origin or influence, it is known that they appeared in 14th century feudal Japan, and remained active from the Kamakura to the Edo period. Their roles may have included sabotage, espionage, scouting and assassination missions as a way to destabilize and cause social chaos in enemy territory or against an opposing ruler, perhaps in the service of their feudal rulers (daimyo, shogun), or an underground ninja organization waging guerilla warfare.
Or from Realultimatepower:
These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.
Facts:
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
So we’ve established that the Ninja is dangerous and really cool.
The folks at Tecmo have brought us another incarnation of the Ninja Gaiden series. Basically a port of Ninja Gaiden Black (so I read) comes Ninja Gaiden Sigma.
Firstly, somehow I’ve never played a Ninja Gaiden game. How this occurred I don’t know. I guess I only bought the PS2 for the sake of Gran Turismo, now my horizons have somewhat broadened and thanks to amazing graphics and the whole ‘next-gen’ value of consoles these days, it becomes more justifiable to outlay large sums of the hard-earned on toys and games. So after playing the Sigma demo from a recently purchased PS magazine, I was so impressed, so incredible wowed, that I went out and bought the retail version the next day.
You can’t begin to describe how good this game is. It’s completely and utterly polished to perfection. The animation, the movements, the upgrades and character and story development. This right here is what next-gen is all about. Stunning graphics and an equally compelling, immersing story.
From Chapter 1, its eye-candy all the way. You’re in Japan at Autumn time, ‘The Way of the Ninja’. Introduced to the arts of sword fighting and unbelievable dexterity. All around you are the amazing colours of Autumn and leaf upon leaf falls from the trees above and flutters through the air in a bright red, orange, yellow dance. It’s just superb. You run along walls, triple somersault across ravines, double-backflip up ledges, skip over water.
You battle evil ninja, brown suits, white suits all the way through dojos where you’re ambushed by small armies of enemy Ninja, who you dispose of (not so) easily before moving on to fight the Dojo master before sitting down and having a chat to him.
Seriously awesome.
It’s been a while since I’ve played a game so good. It’s a departure from my usual game genre, but without hesitation, I’d put it up there in my top 5 games of all time. Wonderful.
Link: Official Website
Link: Ninja @ Wikipedia
Link: RealUltimatePower.net
