Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Review

In the realm of Pixel Artistry, action platformer Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a beautiful piece of Dither and Parallax. It is filled with set pieces reminiscent of the heyday of misremembered arcades. Between the more standard run “N” chop levels are Jetski Chasedowns, motorcycle chase, freight train fights, bulldozer escapes and gas chamber breakouts. If it didn’t bring about death screens often, I would say it would barely pause for breath. The entire game is not a nostalgia mining, as it is a job of shale fracking. I’m a bit sad that that strongest gimmick quickly blends into the background and is overwhelmed by the flood of demonic villains.

As you’d probably see, it’s a retro throwback to the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy of Yore, which appeared on NES and SNES in the 1990s. This is a sideways scrolling action tow truck full of dashing, thrashing and ninja knife-yate. The world is under threat to manipulate those Rascals in the CIA and free him from his hellish realm. It plays a young ninja (though one fan doesn’t recognize) troubled by a purple shaded phantom lath. Their clans are ancient enemies, but they must work together to stab the demons. go! ->

Ninjavoy handles dicing at close range, but keeps the purple puffs away and makes an attack that throws a long-range kunai on the shoulder. When colliding, the second-timing jump button tap allows you to bounce off the enemy’s head (or projectile attack). Dodge Rolls can pass enemies shielded for fast backshives. Stabbyboy and Floatygirl come together by pressing both the sword and upper layer attack buttons at the same time, activating a super-large projectile explosion (you can also trade this ultimate attack with other unlockable options).

If this was all there was, I would immediately throw it into a large pile of RPS pixelated nostalgia bait, along with it, along with all the other low-resolution revisits that recreate the old days without investigating layers of game design that have accumulated like sediment in decades of intervention, I would throw it right in (Hello, PS1 tank controls not pinning the camera). Luckily there’s another flashy trick to making kitchen ninja antics into a game.

Certain enemies will glow blue or pink. Swordfella attacks you bump into a blue eavesdropper and you’ll be supercharged. Ghost Radi attacks cut down his pink small intestine and are charged as well. For example, if you mix and mix the colours with a pink cord buddy, you will miss the intense glow of the next large slice. It’s just a thin layer of extra challenges, as you can technically hit the entire game without using these super attacks. But the intention is clear. Understand the Nippy Run, which instantly cuts down as many enemies as possible at the fastest possible time. This game is built for speed runners.

In previous previews, I was impressed by the liquidity that this feature was given to the level. I liked it leaning towards the “kill anything with one hit” philosophy – but if you’re doing things exactly, or at least with a quick enough reflex to fudge it. The few enemies who had multiple bangs were able to slice with one bash, as long as they followed the pattern and killed the correct enemy in advance with a right-colored attack.

But now I’m playing the entire game, so I’ve seen how this philosophy shakes along the way. There are even sparkling “charger” feed that will allow you to see more enemies that require multiple slices, and sometimes you will need multiple Shan Kings for your Super Slash. This makes it more challenging – I’m sure many will enjoy it – but it slaps that sense of fluidity from your hands, and from your hands and onto the floor. That is especially true in later boss battles. There, the rhythm is determined by the combat waltz, the classic pattern dasker.

It still requires considerable precision to pass the level, but I think it would disappoint me if I didn’t commit hard to a completely accurate lethal. Early on, it seems like an invitation to figure out the order of dancing and smooth attacks, but as the buttons get slower with increasingly frequent bashing, it becomes a more normal retro dash ‘n’ slash.

At the very least, reboots and checkpoints are not punitive. You rarely lose more than a few seconds when you fall into the pit. However, some places may be refined and shortened even further. Why would you send me back 5 seconds outside the bossgate when the only way I’m going to go straight back? It’s better to start the boss battle instantly again.

I especially grated on some of these bosses. These are beautifully rendered, but are the most typical genre elements of the entire game, all pattern recognition and polyphase remnants. How I feel about reflex honing and trial-by-trial approach depends on my mood, motivation, and whether I like how I feel in my hands. After countless failed attempts, faced with Jennikiro at Sekiro, I felt that a series of fully practiced steps was truly transcendent to be fully carried out. In Ragebound you can defeat the strange mutant slimeball… I don’t know, do you think it’s rewarding? Certainly I get good at beating things, but sometimes it’s only enough to compensate for the frustration of taking another electrical sphere in my face.

They’re all not terrible, they’re hits and missed. I liked the big bad battleships that were pinballing around its many eye-like turrets while the soldiers took pot shots on the sides from me. I liked the twin mega eels that required the use of both blue and pink supercuts in the strange act of one person’s teamwork. I did do not have Like a giant apebeast who drained spiked crystals to me. Mainly because they were enemies of the “charger” that needed to be destroyed in order for these crystals to be charged with Hyper Biol, and they had to hit these crystals three times and get their juice boost. I didn’t have enough time to hit these crystals or two before Beastbustard stood on me again. Leave, you reject the zoo.

I have an assist mode and I might not be silent about some of my complaints. Generally speaking, when it comes to bosses, I would like to thank Kojima’s mentality for “pretending you won.” But Death Stranding 2 is a story-rich game that is a wild outlier full of garbage combat that you don’t expect. It’s like Ninja Gaiden, and your boss is definitely teeth game. This makes you feel sick about running through them by reducing 75% damage or turning off knockbacks completely. It really doesn’t meet the game on its own terms. But I used it just to speed up the reviews.

Before you enter into the fire war over assist mode (they’re okay, they’re silent), you need to know there are plenty here too for masochists. For example, you may find golden scarabs that you can spend on special amulets between levels. This means bonuses, such as health cashback for kills and tricky new weapons to run through walls. But besides offering additional challenges, there are plenty of others who will handicap you. As I say, Speedrunners: please.

There is a talisman who sends you a moment when you die (not just the last checkpoint) back to the beginning of the stage, and the other triples the damage you receive. This universal approach to difficulties – offering both assist mode and extra hard mode – is neat. I don’t think many people are actually complaining in good faith about assist mode (sorry, I was told to shut up), but Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound runs sharpened Shuriken along the spectrum of difficulty, cutting you deep or shallow as you like. I lowered the damage to 0% so that you get through the tough little bit hanging from the helicopter. Meanwhile, you can remove all health pickups from all levels. Knock yourself out.

I also need to emphasize that none of this tweaks will ultimately correct my disappointment at the loss of early levels of flow ency. In a game like this, when practice gives you a stable flow, I sometimes wonder: What is the amount of practice I have to invest in before I feel that sense of flow? In the early sequences, Ragebound seeks little investment. You’ll quickly get all the basic understanding of dashing, avoidance, slashing and Boeing that you need to pass through average levels with abandonment of speed runners.

But then, especially in some of those bosses, there is a time requirement to practice spikes, and is forced to perform the repeated Rigamarole that is expected from an arcade machine. I don’t really want to indulge, even if this leads to a game that feels like the perfect challenge for those who have finally drained all 50 games of UFO 50. I can speak for myself. He is someone who effectively remembers games he has never played before. Naturally, Anti-Memory is not enough to make me appear in hard mode, like the grin of a toothless boxer when I complete the game.

Disclosure: Former RPS contributor Jay Castello was the game’s text editor. I have also worked with story designer Jordi de Paco in the past.