Instead what's delivered is a rote action game (but really, really hard) with enough offensive imagery and characters to fill a spit bucket on a porn set, that is both woefully repetitive and uninteresting.
The game's detachment from entertainment comes in the opening seconds of the game when Yaibu, apropo of nothing, is confronted with Ninja Gaiden protagonist and Dead or Alive fighter Ryu Hayabusa. They fight and Yaibu loses pieces of his humanity to Hayabusa's blade. Yaibu is resurrected by someone for some reason with some augmentations, there's a zombie plague, Yaibu's angry... and who cares? Yaibu is about as deep and mysterious as a puddle and his "bro" attitude -- "Hey, I'm enjoying my panty party" after a lingerie shop explodes when a bus crashes into the store's vagina -- offers zero chance to create some kind of empathy or even interest in what that character has to offer in the way of quips or "attitude."
Precision melee fighting is a hallmark of the Ninja Gaiden series and there's plenty of it in this game. It does take a fair amount of skill, even on the "Easy" setting, to make signifcant progress. Parrying blows and following it up with sword slashes, punches, and whips amongst hordes of enemies isn't as easy as most button-mashing action games. It takes some concentration to focus on incoming blows and managing lumbering zombies. And if that's attractive, then the game has plenty to offer because the action flows from closed arena to closed arena with the barest of exploration or cool ninja leaps and bounds to move from one to the next. It's almost all combat.
If any of the combat offers a tripping hazard, it's the extremely poorly placed checkpoints that will hit most right between the eyes, like a well-placed rake. It's not enough to get to a boss to have the game save automatically so Yaibu can take up arms immediately before the fight if he falls in combat. The game takes it upon itself to send Yaibu back to well before the fight commences. So, if Yaibu mucks up a finishing move and dies, he's sent back a couple of minutes so he can perform a menial task or slaughter an arena full of zombies before facing the boss again. If the combat's attractive then this shouldn't be an issue, but the expertise required to really master Yaibu's moves, many of them upgradeable, meant that after a couple of attempts at a final or mid-level boss, I'd just turn the game off.Does that mean you just suck at action games if you can't slog through Yaibu's zombie-gutting splatter-fest? No.
Maybe you're just looking for fun, which Yaibu: Ninja Gaiden Z definitely is not. Or maybe you're looking for time well spent with a game that's challenging and interesting. Challenging, the game is, interesting it is not.
- Aaron Simmer
Follow @EmpireArmchair
The Good:
Looks nice
Swordplay and precision combat is present and accounted for
The Bad:
Don't care one tiny bit about Yaibu; actually found him unlikeable
The "bro" humour falls flat
Areans filled with hordes of zombies are piled on top of each other
Score: 4.5 / 10
