Ninja Blade (360)

As many of my gamer friends might tell you, two of my favorite games of recent times were Otogi: Myth of Demons and Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors on the original Xbox. Developed by From Software, they featured solid 3rd person hack and slash action, increbible graphics, amazing sound, persistent destruction, and kick ass character designs, all done up in a mythological Japanese wrapper. Awesome. So when I heard that From Software was releasing a ninja themed 3rd person action title on the 360, I was all over it.

Sadly, From's newest game, Ninja Blade does not live up to the precedent set by the Otogis. In fact, it is so disappointing, I can not bring myself to finish it at the moment. On the bright side, in my time with the game I feel as if I learned a few valuable game design lessons, especially about Quick Time Events, (QTEs,) so all was not lost. And so, my list of criticisms:

The main character’s running animation is bad. Not believable at all. Very obviously keyframed. I found it distracting.

Once started, one move cannot be cancelled into another.

The camera is very far from the guy, making him and the action appear very small on screen.

Weapon switching should have been a cycle on the shoulder button, not D-pad.

The story telling is pretty bad. I have no issue with the plot; I can totally buy the premise of a super squad of ninja commandos that clean up biohazards, but as soon as the characters are introduced, there are complicated backstabbings and double crosses going on in the very next major cinema, before you know who is who, or what their relationships are. Note to fellow designers: The whole "WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON!?!" schtick never works.

Blocking feels broken due to being randomly effective against certain attacks and time limited, (worse: there is no indication as to when your guard will break.)

Shuriken controls are poor. See Dark Sector for great shuriken action.

Wall runnable surfaces should have distinct visual properties. If Vision Mode reveals all runnable surfaces anyway, why bother? Why not just convey the fact that they are runnable from the outset? And then, why not get rid of Vision Mode all together? It is useless and largely disadvantageous.

Sword effects need to be more distinct. A lot of the time, I can’t even see my slashes, unless I am using the big heavy weapon.

Why is wall breaking a separate event using the “A” button? Why isn’t it just a regular attack with the heavy weapon?

Checkpoints often set you pretty far back upon dying.

What’s with the snail projectiles that turn invisible after some amount of time?

Killing the last enemy often triggers a new QTE, not leaving opportunity to explore the current area.

QTEs really break up the flow of the world. I feel like I am going from isolated set piece to isolated set piece, not in some larger connected world. RE5 has this issue as well. God of War does a great job of integrating QTEs right into the core game play experience.

QTEs are extremely unforgiving. One wrong button press or direction, and it is a fail. RE5 did it better where there is a window in which to get it right, no matter if wrong inputs are submitted several times first, (assuming one is fast enough.) Big difference.

In QTEs, randomizing which button to press on each fail is super annoying.

In QTEs, divorcing the button press from their regular in game actions, even though the same classes of moves in the QTEs seems like a bad idea. If the QTE tells me to “Jump” I am expecting to press “A” like in the regular game play, not “X” all of a sudden.

In QTEs, button prompts cause the player to miss all of the madcap action playing out in the video. One idea would be to make the prompts way more vibrantly colored so they can be seen of the player's peripheral vision. They are so subdued that the eye is forced to focus on the lower area of the screen where they will appear. Resident Evil suffered from this as well. As an alternate solution, God of War puts the QTE prompts in the midst of the action, right where the game play is.

If QTEs rewind on failure, why doesn’t dying do the same? Why do I have to go through the slow assed menu system? Just give me an option to quit out on the “Retry?” screen.

$60 price tag.

So Ninja Blade is an unfortunate disappointment from a purely entertainment-for-dollar standpoint, though it ended up being highly educational from a game design position. Before Ninja Blade, I would have said that I generally despised QTEs. I still do not love them, but after playing Resident Evil 5 and then rolling right into Ninja Blade, I was able to compare the QTEs of each and realize that QTEs can be acceptable, perhaps even good, if done right. Too bad Ninja Blade is not one of those examples. So far I feel that the God of War games are probably the best implementation of QTEs to date, though when all is said and done, I would not be upset if I never encountered another QTE ever again.

Score: 1