I’m known for being interested in games, but I can never predict what they will be. For example, I played the PS Vita/PS3 arcade racing game MotorStorm: RC so much that it was part of my personality for about a month, and I would negatively judge people who didn’t spend every waking moment shaving milliseconds off their best time trials. So I have this obsessive trait in me, but other times I just enjoy the feel of a game, the vibes, the essence of having a good time. This is my relationship with Ninja Gaiden. There’s no doubt that some people will jump into Ninja Gaiden 4, a game that practically demands to be mastered and used as a demonstration of skill, but I’ve always seen the series less as a test of ability that I don’t have and more as a finely tuned violent escape room. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to be a ninja to enjoy Ninja Gaiden 4, and this entry lends itself to that philosophy more easily than those that came before it.
To defend myself a little, I’m not terrible at video games at all. I’ve been playing it for about 35 years, completed Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox) and Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360), and can still beat my almost 12 year old son at everything we play. But let’s just say that age has dampened my abilities and reduced the amount of time I can spend “getting into” games – which is why I never thought I could play Elden Ring, for example.
While you can’t really Mayhem Mode (not quite the same as button mashing, to be clear) to blast your way through a FromSoft game, Ninja Gaiden 4 fits that “I’m going to have a good time even if I don’t know 100 percent what I’m doing at any moment” philosophy. It’s no surprise that it was developed by Bayonetta studio, Platinum Games. Bayonetta is another one of those games that I really enjoy, but I can’t swear on my heart that I intended to nail every move I made. Joyful chaos from start to finish. Ninja Gaiden 4 even supports you in this transformational way of thinking by offering you meaningful aids to ease the difficulty – we’ll get to that later.
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Listen. I wish I were you – the person reading this who has the brain capacity available to not only learn all of the moves so carefully created for Ninja Gaiden 4, but also to understand when to best use them. I’d love to be the guy who makes a living uploading complete video game walkthroughs to YouTube, without adding anything to the footage, because the games are played so impressively that there’s no need to litter them with voiceover. I understand. You are the ultimate human, as close to a true ninja as a couch dweller can be, and I am, well… not.
However, there is a difference. Despite my best efforts to convey my inadequacies with a video game controller, my call for incompetents to try Ninja Gaiden 4 – a rallying cry against the “git gud” crowd, if you will – you know what? I’m not terrible at this game. The systems, the combos, the move list, the defense techniques, it all comes at you, massively and quickly, or so it seems. But what initially starts out as my aforementioned Chaos mode, in a fairly low-key way, gradually begins to become more deliberate actions. Naturally, you’ll learn the timing of parries and blocks, instinctively following them with guard-breaking attacks and nifty finishing moves. You’ll know when to use the Bloodraven form to break through blocks, how to use walls and flying drones to your advantage, the ideal weapon to choose, and how to dodge with impeccable timing.
Those aids I talked about earlier? Well, they are related to “Hero” mode, a name that certainly makes you feel better about using it. The point is, I’ve experimented with them, and they do indeed make the game more enjoyable, your character self-doging and guarding, but – and I know this may seem contradictory to the whole article – I don’t recommend you use them. The magic here is that a game that initially seems almost impenetrable to anyone with only casual interest soon begins to seep into your brain, muscle memory kicks in before too long, and that boss you swore you would make, well, I can’t really say what I said about it, eventually falls away.
People I’m sure will have some issues with Ninja Gaiden 4, especially those who wanted more of a Team Ninja game than a Platinum Games special, but I love it. It has a sleek retrofuturistic style, with a largely near-monochrome or muted appearance that might annoy fans of the more colorful previous entries, but this design choice lets the blood and other pops of color stand out. The new character, Yakumo, being a lead over Ryu (who still has his sections, to be clear, but nowhere near half) is going to upset die-hard fans of the series, but Yakumo performs brilliantly. More spectacular moments, like the acrobatic rail grinding, aren’t exactly pure Ninja Gaiden, but they fit into this world of superhuman exhibitionism.
Maybe the final part of Ninja Gaiden 4 dives into a closed arena grind, but I’d be surprised. Platinum Games impressed me, managing to get me interested again in a franchise that has been treading water since 2008. The good news is that interest is about all you need to give it a shot.
A copy of Ninja Gaiden 4 was provided by Xbox.
