I have been known to get “well into” games, but I can never predict what they’ll be. For example, I played so much of PS Vita/PS3 arcade racing game MotorStorm: RC that it was part of my personality for a month or so, and I’d negatively judge people who weren’t spending every waking moment knocking milliseconds off their best Time Trials. I have that obsessive trait in me, then, but at other times I just enjoy the feeling of a game, the vibes, the essence of having a great time. This is my relationship with Ninja Gaiden. No doubt some people will go all-in on Ninja Gaiden 4, a game that practically begs to be mastered and used as a showcase of skill, but I’ve always seen the series as less of a test of ability I don’t have and more as a finely-tuned piece of violent escapism. What I’m saying is, you don’t need to be a ninja to enjoy Ninja Gaiden 4, and this entry lends itself to that philosophy more easily than those that came before.
To stick up for myself a little, I’m not terrible at all video games. I’ve been playing them for about 35 years, I’ve finished Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox) and Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360), and I can still beat my almost 12-year-old son at everything we play. But, let’s just say age has dampened my abilities and lessened the time I can spend getting “well into” games – this is the reason I’ve never felt I could feasibly play Elden Ring, for example.
Whereas you can’t really Chaos Mode (not quite the same as button mashing, to be clear) your way through a FromSoft game, Ninja Gaiden 4 fits this “I’m going to have a great time even if I don’t 100 percent know what I’m doing at every moment” ethos. It’s no surprise that it’s been developed by Bayonetta studio, Platinum Games. Bayonetta is another of these games that I get great enjoyment from but couldn’t hand-on-heart swear I intended to pull off every move I did. Joyous chaos from start to finish. Ninja Gaiden 4 even supports you in this transformational way of thinking by offering some significant assists to lessen the difficulty – more on those later.
Listen. I wish I was you – the person reading this who has the available brain capacity to not only learn all the moves so carefully created for Ninja Gaiden 4, but understand when they are best used. I’d love to be the guy that makes a living out of uploading complete video game walkthroughs to YouTube, adding nothing to the footage because the games are so impressively played there’s no need to dirty it with a voiceover. I get it. You are the ultimate human, as close to an actual ninja as a sofa-dweller can be, and I am, well… not.
Yet, there’s a twist. Despite my best efforts to convey my inadequacies with a video game controller, my call for the inept to give Ninja Gaiden 4 a go – a rally cry against the “git gud” crowd, if you will – you know what? I’m not terrible at this game. The systems, combos, move list, defense techniques, all come at you thick and fast, overwhelmingly so – or so it seems. But what initially starts out as my aforementioned Chaos Mode, quite understatedly, gradually starts to become more deliberate actions. Naturally you’ll learn the timing for parrys and blocks, instinctively following those up with guard-breaking attacks and slick finishing moves. You’ll know when you need to use 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 assists I mentioned earlier? Well, they are tied to “Hero” mode, a name that certainly makes you feel better for using it. The thing is, I experimented with these, and they do indeed make the game a breezier affair, your character auto-doging and guarding, but – and I know this might feel contradictory to the entire article – I don’t recommend you use them. The magic here is that a game that initially feels almost impenetrable to anyone with only a casual interest soon starts to seep into your brain, muscle memory kicking in before too long, and that boss you swore you’d, well, I can’t really say what I said about it, finally going down.
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’m loving it. It’s got a slick retrofuturistic style, with a largely near-monochrome or muted appearance which might bother fans of the more colourful earlier entries, but this design choice lets the blood and other splashes of colour pop. New character Yakumo being the lead over Ryu (who still gets his sections, to be clear, but nowhere near half) will upset die-hard fans of the series, but Yakumo plays brilliantly. More showy moments, like the acrobatic rail-grinding, aren’t exactly pure Ninja Gaiden, but they fit in this world of superhuman exhibitionism.
Maybe the latter portion of Ninja Gaiden 4 nosedives into formulaic closed-arena drudgery, but I’d be surprised. Platinum Games has impressed me, successfully making me care once again about a franchise that has been treading water since 2008. The good news is that an interest is pretty much all you need to give this a good go.
A copy of Ninja Gaiden 4 was provided by Xbox.
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