Zitat von ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Ninja gaiden 3 demo impressions
I got to spend a lot of time with NG3 at the eurogamer expo yesterday and I think I have a pretty good idea of what the game will have to offer, based on this build. Im sure some things will change others I think will stay the same. Here Is a breakdown of my impressions.
Before I start, this is going to be a very long post so ill give a short version for people who don’t want to read much.
Combatwise, If you are casual player, and have only really been interested in NG because it’s a badass ninja that kills things you shouldn’t really have a reason for concern. While NG3 is definitely easier than previous entries, there is enough familiar things in the game to keep you happy.
People who are serious about the series and have beat the previous entries on anything higher than the basic difficulties there are a lot more causes for concern.
Movement.
Ryu still can move in the same way that he always has, he is fast and has the majority of his old traversal mechanics, even for some strange reason, the flying bird flip. The main addition as you may know by now is the slide. It is performed in the exact same way the dodge/ roll was performed in the previous entries (left trigger/L2 and direction) It can stun an enemy and can be cancelled into a jump so the dash, Jump, dash or roll,jump, roll can still be done. The windmill slash is also there (when ryu gets up from a roll and slashes) but the timing is iffy and doesn’t always work.
You can still wall run to certain extent but again, the demo doesn’t really have many areas to test this on and it seems to have different properties. It doesn’t seem you can Flying stab from it.
Wind path (stepping on enemies head ) and wind run (x+y) are still present and are mostly unchanged.
Combos
Ignoring the SOB for a moment, The demo had the same amount of combos available as a level 2 dragon sword Moves like blade of nirriti ( x, y, x,x,x,x ) and Fang of the Wolf (x,x, y,y) were present and counted for
As well as the isunza drop. (x,y, x,x,x y) The timing felt a lot more lose than in previous entries , the margin for error seem to be increased dramatically. Outside of steel on bone, the combos seemed exactly the same if maybe a bit easier to perform.
Flying swallow/suplex/stab
The flying swallow is still here but it has now been changed to s cinemticatic stab/throw on connection. It seems to have lost a significant portion of its range and the multiple flying swallows are gone, at least for this stage of the game. In the rare times the grunts put up their guard, it can be blocked. The tool however is still there and can still be used for spacing and working around any errant camera problems.
It also can be cancelled into in all the way of the previous games (after a wind run, wind path, jump etc)
SOB/OT/UT
Ok, down to the meaty stuff. The steel on bone is a cinematic attack that has been the selling point of hayashi’s new direction. It occurs randomly, midcombo and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it apart from possibly it only engages once an enemy gets to a certain point in health. The good news is it can be avoided as much as possible by using air moves like blade of nirriti, flying swallow and a new combo that seems to be performed by jumping at the enemy, (x, y,x ,y,y) or something to that effect. Ryu basically attacks the enemy in the similar way to how the Black spider ninjas used to rush you in NG black/sigma , spinning in the air like a helicopter blade. It is topped off with a double flying swallow that look like the Annihilating Gleam UT from NG2 (360+Y after max charge)
You may even be able to launch enemies and simply shrunken cancel them too, but Im not that good to try anything like that.
The worst thing about steel on bone is it doesn’t kill enemies on the higher difficulties, they can still stumble around and while none attacked me in the demo after a SOB, its possible. You still need to finish them off.
Different combos seem to have a different steel on bone and it doesn’t seem enemy specific at all.
One thing to note about the button prompt. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter what button you press during a SOB, both attack buttons will make the animation go through. The only time it matter is if the enemy “resists” it, Which is not at all often.
OT:
Yes, believe it or not, OT’s are still in this game. Once you have SOBed aenemy or have Izuna dropped one, you can finish them off using a OT. They work the same as in NG2 and there is little cosmetic change really except the obvious decapitation ones are missing.
UT:
Once you have killed about 2 or more enemies by UT or SOB, your arm glows red and you can perform a UT. It is a teleport move where ryu takes out 3 enemies. At times it seemed like it take out the enemies with the most health/untouched/most dangerous at others it seemed to be any 3 random grunts. A thing to note here is you cannot charge it, If you hold down the Y button, Ryu will do the old UT animation but nothing will happen. On landings still work, but like the isuna drop and almost everything else, the timing seems a lot easier. To be honest, its abit pointless to do an onlanding without stacked essence anyway.
Enemies:
The enemies in NG3 suck. I mean really fucking suck. The A.I is a joke even on hard. They rarely block (even the special ops that have fucking riot shields) They do however share some of the moves of the combat Ninjas from NGB, they have grab that they almost never use and a stab that does extra damage. But they are basically cannon fodder.
At this point id like to ask a question was was the single most annoying enemy in NG2? The one that made people give up on the game halfway through even on normal?(NB: IS ninjas come late in the game on normal)
Yes you guess it, the rocket motherfuckers are back. The single guys are easy as pie to deal with but somehow Hayashi has found the single cheapest thing in NG2 and made it worse. The Multiple rocket Ninjas (well these guys are far from ninjas but you know what I mean) are back. And the rockets are FASTER. Their inclusion alone should signal to NG players that the harder difficulties won’t be balanced and fair, just filled with cheap stuff. They aren’t really a problem in the demo though because they spawn one at a time occasionally but im not looking forward to fighting multiples of them at once.
Nippo:
Oh fucking hell, the thing by far that was my biggest gripe with the game. Nippo has been changed dramatically in this game. It is now a move that you only can use once at a time and have to build meter by killing enemies to do so. something in the region of 20 kills in hard mode if not more. As soon as your Nippo meter is full you get an incessant prompt to use it. Once used a scripted cinematic happens and the dragon you channel from your hands kills a few guys. Why I hate it is as soon as you use it, all the grunts lose the will to fight and fall on their ass begging fo you to spare them. You cant just kill everyone the normal way and not use the nippo, you have to use it to get to next area, the enemies keep respawning otherwise.
To be honest, I was fine with the respawning and at one point just kept killing guys until I was bored. It gave the game a bloody palace/survival mode vibe to it and hope its something that finds itself in the retail version. My record of kills before I died was 157.
With the changes to nippo in mind, don’t be surprised if it becomes something you can’t use in boss fights or if you can it becomes a finisher similar to god of war.
Stealth:
Can be ignored entirely. Don’t worry about it.
Boss:
pitfully easy even on hard. Nothing really to report that you cant see in videos.
Wall climb:
Counter-intuitive and fucking shit. Even worse to play than what it looks like.
Performance:
Holy shit. Wasn’t the lack of decapitations supposed be to make sure the game ran smoothly? NG3 has the most framerate drops I have ever seen in a Ninja gaiden game, outside of the staircase fight in NG2. At most there are about 5 grunts on screen as well as Ryu, but once you take into all the blood and lighting effects from the New UT, the framerate Chugs down to about 20Fps. Granted, this was only in the area that I was letting enemies continuously respawn but It was amazing to see that this got past QA. And yes, even without that, performance seemed noticeable worse on 360 than it did on PS3.
There are a couple other things ive forgotten but that’s the majority of it in a nutshell. From what I have played, it seems like the game is running on NG2 engine and hayashi hasn’t refined a damn thing about it. Instead he has just dumped his stink on top of it and lowered the precision that made the game so good in the first place.
That said, it was actually quite fun and is still a serviceable NG game to a point. Id call this the DMC4 of the NG series which is still head and shoulders above 90% of action games today.
Definitely give it a try, but just keep your expectations low and returning fans should wait till it is on sale at a reduced price.
EDIT: one last thing...that guy in the consequence trailer? You have to kill him, there is no way to let him live.
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Auf technischer Ebene klingt alles nach einer Katastrophe. Sicher, es ist eine Demo und besonders auf technischer Ebene lässt sich bis zur Veröffentlichung noch noch einiges verbessern. Aber selbst wenn Team Ninja Dog an der Technik feilen und es auf 60 fps bringen werden, am Kernkonzept des Spiels wird sich wohl nicht viel ändern.
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