April Edition Live Magazine - April 2014 Issue. | Page 80

6.5/10
PROS
and flail strikes. These weapons are
all assigned to three different buttons
and combos are executed via a simple mixture of these three buttons.
Sometimes though, combat does
not go as smoothly as one would
hope, and it feels as though the
more unique zombies that appear
(and end up appearing in mixed
groups quite frequently) only create
frustration, due to Yaiba’s paperrock-scissors style of combat. Some
zombies are vulnerable to punches,
but almost immune to sword attacks.
Some are weak to fire, and others
are just about fireproof. At first, this
adds strategies to individual encounters, but eventually (when you’re
fighting a hundred zombies at once)
it just makes you attack the wrong
zombie with the wrong weapon, or
waste a hard-earned weapon on a
zombie that required a single strike.
In this regard, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden
Z feels sloppy, and not a knee-deep

in zombie guts kind of sloppy. A bad
one.
Throughout the game, Yaiba has
numerous chances (via a combo or
distracted zombie) to improvise and
gain a new-but-temporary weapon.
These are quite often the result of
the horrifying execution of an enemy, such as ripping a clown’s arms
off (yes, I said clown) and creating
“nun-chuckles” (nunchaku made
from dismembered arms) or ripping
the spine out of an electric zombie
and creating the “spinal-zap”, an
electric spine-whip. Creating these
weapons is usually extremely gory
and within the context of Yaiba, absolutely hilarious.
Unfortunately for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, its level design is all over the
place. At times, it can be competent,
but boring (a graveyard, really?) and
at other times, it seems to be an absolute mess. You won’t get lost, but

you will get frustrated that you can’t
leap and wall-run throughout the
levels as gracefully as, well, a ninja
should.
Unless, of course, you count the
scripted wall-running and flailswinging moments, which are actually pretty damn cool. Throughout
his journey, Yaiba will have to think
of his feet to quickly traverse numerous obstacles or escape certain
death. These stunt sequences function as QTEs (quick-time events),
where players will have to press a
certain button at an exact moment
to successfully navigate through a
level. Let me put you at ease: these
aren’t the extremely worn-out and/or
annoying QTEs you’re used to, and
you will probably only die a handful
of times. I didn’t encounter a QTE
that held me back, and managed to
beat most on the first attempt. This
was no thanks to Yaiba’s camera
system, which at times seems to

hate you like you slept with its girlfriend. It’s not a constant onslaught
of camera hiccups, but is enough to
annoy you more than once, particularly in urban levels.
After my time with Yaiba, I’m left
a little confused. I don’t feel like it
aimed for a mass audience, but
rather the small group of people
who enjoy Ninja Gaiden games and
the enjoyable button-mashing offered by Japanese hack-n-slashes.
On one hand, I enjoy the combat
and the B-grade characters, but on
another hand, it feels like yet another dated Japanese actio