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Tag: Platinum Games

  • Ninja Gaiden 4 Review-In-Progress: Dumb Story, Great Action

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    What do you want out of a modern, big-budget, blockbuster video game? Large, detailed environments to explore? Tons of skill trees, crafting systems, and resources to manage? An HBO-worthy story with top-notch voice acting that keeps you playing until the end? Ninja Gaiden 4 does not give a fuck about any of these things.

    Ninja Gaiden 4 is here to serve you up tense, twitchy combo-based action and flashy but simple backdrops for ever more ridiculous boss fights and bloodbaths. Nothing more. Nothing less. It gets that job done with S-tier style and attention to detail. Everything else is…fine. I hope that doesn’t sound like a disappointment.

    It’s not. I’m 10 hours into Team Ninja and Platinum Games’ cyberpunk-infused joint entry in the long-running series and I’ve been loving every no-frills moment. The sequel is out October 20 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (published by Microsoft and available day-one on Game Pass Ultimate) and my full review won’t be out until later this week. I’ll leave more of my nitpicks until then. For now I can confidentially say this game has some real juice.

    Ninja Gaiden 4 is the Brazilian steakhouse where the hosts keep plopping down increasingly rich and tasty hunks of meat until you feel completely gorged and then they give you more and you keep going because it’s just that good and also the world will fall to ruin at the hands of a mythic evil dragon if you don’t.

    There’s not a lot of variety. You may occasionally break into a sweaty panic. But plate after plate of bloody brawls and bone-crunching boss fights will arrive and you will not send them back because this is Team Ninja’s house and you will feast until it’s over because who knows, it could be another 13 years until the next Ninja Gaiden arrives.

    Team Ninja / Microsoft

    If you haven’t been keeping up, Ninja Gaiden 4 puts you in the shoes of Ryu Hayabusa’s rival Yakumo who wields the Bloodraven Form technique to chain the blood of his enemies into dazzling and devastating combo attacks (you also play as Ryu in some chapters). Yakumo gets access to multiple weapons with different attack patterns and unlockable move sets. There’s even an ultimate meter you can fill up to unleash quick executions.

    Combined with dodges, parries, and an overwhelming number of fighting-game-style aerial maneuvers and attacks, the combat rewards close attention and thoughtful execution. It’s a button-mashing gorefest, except that every button is pressed for a particular reason and if it’s not, you’re probably looking at the game over screen again.

    Every challenge room and boss fight so far has left me feeling satisfied and accomplished in exchange for the effort expended, even when progress slowed to a crawl and it briefly felt like I was banging my head against the wall. Ninja Gaiden 4 is so limited and focused in terms of what it puts in front of you that I found these periods of stalled momentum as cathartic and calming as pushing through to the next chapter.

    I won’t talk about the story because I’m not finished yet and, well, when has a Ninja Gaiden story ever really mattered that much? There’s a mysterious woman manipulating you into breaking magical seals to purify the ancient dragon and prevent it from returning to haunt neo-Tokyo. The English language dubs are not great so I’m playing with subtitles. The conversations and characters, like the spartan levels you encounter them in, provide the most barebones table setting for a linear series of battles and the occasional 3D Sonic-style platforming section.

    None of the stuff outside of combat has been all that great in Ninja Gaiden 4 so far, so I welcome there being so little of it. This is a game about seeing how long you can keep your health meter unscathed while landing just enough blows to randomly sever an enemy’s limb and open them up to a grisly execution move that sprays blood all over the screen and nets you points toward your high score for the stage. It’s strikingly old-school that way. It’s nice to have you back, Ninja Gaiden.

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    Ethan Gach

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  • 30 Minutes With Ninja Gaiden 4 Was All I Needed To Be Convinced

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    It’s been over a decade since the last numbered Ninja Gaiden game. While the precision-based hack-and-slash series was sleeping, most action games went one of two ways. They either morphed into sprawling RPG adventures full of bloat or tried to ape the obsession with Soulslikes, incorporating methodical hitbox dodging and disciplined stamina management. But one of the kings of 3D arcade action is awake again and ready to dispense with all of the popular trend chasing. Ninja Gaiden 4 is mostly a game about killing tons of guys by executing the most lethal combos and flashiest executions you can master, and it seems to be completely content with that. I am too.

    I had a chance to play a recent build of the game at Microsoft’s campus (Xbox is publishing the game) during PAX West 2025 ahead of Ninja Gaiden 4‘s release on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 21. The joint venture between Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and Bayonetta makers Platinum Games appears to be going great. Rather than a disjointed sequel divided between two game design philosophies struggling with each other and the series’ infamous legacy, what I played of Ninja Gaiden 4 felt smooth, focused, and fun. Most importantly it exuded confidence about what it is: a high-skill action game that rewards diligent fans with satisfyingly gory thrills.

    The story revolves around returning frontman Ryu Hayabusa and a new hero, the Raven Clan’s Yakumo, as they scale a cyberpunk-infused Sky City Tokyo infested with new daemon horrors and futuristic ninja soldiers. Each character has access to different weapons and skill sets, and which you play depends on the chapter your in. The option to replay any chapter as either one unlocks after you finish, and for demo purposes I opted to go with Ryu for old times’ sake.

    Within seconds I was chopping off heads and staggering enemies with throwing stars. A perfect dodge gives you a small window to press the attack with a counter-strike that breaks through enemy defenses. There’s also a perfect parry that consists of attacking an enemy right as they’re about to attack you, but it’s an awkward window to exploit and doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying when you’re in the heat of combat (and for those who want a less crunchy experience, there’s an option in the settings menu to turn hitstop completely off).

    Ninja Gaiden 4 thrives when you’re constantly moving and trying to combo light, heavy, and projectile attacks into a conveyor belt of carnage. Doing so builds up meter to unleash special attacks or enter a time-limited transformation that alters your moveset an also makes it more lethal, culminating in stylish new insta-kill animations that swap the screen to black, white, and red. The old obliterations are there too, letting you unleash geysers of blood as you quickly execute foes already suffering from severed limbs. The pulled-out third-person camera also performed well during the demo, rarely tripping me up with off-screen attacks amid the controlled chaos.

    I only had time to experience the first layer or two of combat, and can see how two characters, a handful of weapons each, and all of the other secondary moves can add up into a combat system with enough depth to keep things interesting while never losing sight of the moment-to-moment satisfaction that propels a game like this forward and keeps you from rage-quitting once you hit a difficulty spike or two (there are three difficulty modes in Ninja Gaiden 4 that you can swap between at any time).

    What I’ll be most curious to see from the finished game is whether its level design will feel equally refined or just like a means to an end. The early couple of sections I experienced included some wall running, wall jumping, and grappling hook swinging, both for platforming and combat. Ninja Gaiden 4 has collectibles and I encountered the occasional fork in the road to explore, while statues dotting the level offer checkpoints at which to buy items from and upgrade skills.

    But most of the action was confined to flat arenas without many interesting features outside of some split elevations and grappling hook points. If Team Ninja and Platinum Games are able to imbue the later stages with as much drama in-between the big battles as during them, Ninja Gaiden 4 could be the return to demanding hack-and-slash action fans have been waiting for, perfecting the essentials and carving away the rest.

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    Ethan Gach

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