Ninja Gaiden 3 Game Review | 6/10
Review by Video Gamer (5/10)
Ninja Gaiden 3 is the first game in the series that really wants to explore the story around its mainstay hero Ryu Hayabusa and his wipe-clean latex bodysuit. This is quite a tall order, actually, seeing as this is a developer who spent its last game trying to squish a four-armed werewolf into the narrative.
Still, you’ll sit through a few aggrandising cutscenes as long as the action is good, right? In doing so, however, Team Ninja strays from the series’ true calling. It certainly doesn’t help that cutscenes – and there’s loads of the bloody things – are riddled with the kind of nonsensical twaddle that does little other than make you want to slide your phone out your pocket and check Twitter, and the game’s hyperactive aesthetic has you bouncing around increasingly bizarre environments that reads like the kind of story I doodled in the back of my maths book at primary school.
Review by Official PlayStation Magazine (7/10)
Never meet your heroes. That’s the old adage, anyway, and it’s never been truer than in NG3. Team Ninja is working the ‘unmasking’ angle really hard in this hack ’n’ slash, and after spending so many exhilarated, frustrated and finally illuminated hours with Mr Ryu Hayabusa in the supremely challenging Ninja Gaiden games up to this point, it’ll be like glass in your eyes to find that he not only looks like Leon Kennedy’s personal shopper under that famous mask, but he also seems to have gone soft on the whole ‘ninja’ thing.
Okay, so the story wants to delve into Ryu’s humanity and explore his vulnerability. Fine. The opening London level lifts your spirits with an unexpected mixture of Edgar Allan Poe gloom and Eastern blood-opera action.
For a while, all’s well in London town. Ryu swoops down on his prey (from the top of Big Ben, of all places) and you enjoy the apparent depth of his combat: blocking, sliding, jumping and throwing shurikens like a boss – Ryu’s moves are all intact.
Video Review by IGN (3.0/10 – Aweful)
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