The Ninja Gaiden games established something back in the days of the NES - they were tough as all hell and left many people with the desire to bust the crap out of their controllers. The jump to 3D came with a jump in difficulty and pushed the games over the top in terms of ridiculousness, featuring everything from ghost fish flying around gangbanging you into submission to nearly every woman in the game featuring breasts the size of basketballs and inexplicably being covered in semen during cutscenes.



The series comes to the DS with surprisingly nice graphics, using 3D models over pre-rendered backgrounds. It plays very smoothly; at no point did I detect any slowdown. The game is held sideways, similar to Brain Age. You move and attack using the touch screen - there's no traditional control scheme at all. However, this works out surprisingly well. Very few times did I have problems pulling off any of the moves, and while the combat system isn't as varied as that of its big brothers, it's well done. One unfortunate loss is the lack of weapons variety. You can upgrade your sword but that's about it.

The areas you explore in the game are varied, if not a little bland. There's a reasonable amount of enemies and bosses, and with the exception of one boss, they're actually different enemies and not just re-skins of each other, which is pleasant. My favourite Ninja Gaiden enemy ever, ghost fish, make an unsurprising appearance. They grab you and slow you down considerably, which is hilarious since they're always in the areas where giant boulders are rolling at you and require you to dodge them.



What I found bizarre was the only difficulty available to you when you begin the game is normal. Sure, there were a few times where I died during boss fights, but in general the default difficulty was far too easy for a Ninja Gaiden game. Yeah, you can unlock the other difficulties when you beat it, but that's a good 6-8 hours you have to put into the game before you get to play it the way it should be played. You can unlock a few things besides the difficulty level but nothing terribly exciting.

The story, however, seems to have been made by some incompetent intern during their lunch break. Fortunately there's not too much of it, but who isn't tired of not being able to skip nonsense cutscenes? They're not terribly well-animated or interesting, but they do manage to work in busty villains so they're at least sticking to the formula.

Overall, the game has solid action and it's well made. My complaints prevent it from being what I would call a great action game, but it's a quality one nonetheless. In recent memory, the only non-2D action game for portables that surpasses this one would be God of War for PSP. While I wouldn't recommend paying the full $40 NG:DS seems to retail for, it might be worth it for you.

3.5/5