Ninja Gaiden 4 is an exciting meeting of minds for stylish action aficionados. Developed by an action dream team of PlatinumGames with guidance from series masterminds Team Ninja, the game blends the expertise and sensibilities of both studios while retaining the elements that make Ninja Gaiden great. After over a decade away, I’m happy to report the game is already shaping up to be a masterful return to form.
I played a lengthy demo of the title during Summer Game Fest Play Days. Afterward, I spoke to Ninja Gaiden 4’s development leads – Yuji Nakao, producer/director at PlatinumGames, and Masakazu Hirayama, producer/director at Team Ninja – about the genesis of this partnership. According to them, this series return stems from the friendly relationship between Platinum and Team Ninja presidents, who had been interested in collaborating on a game for some time. Xbox head Phil Spencer caught wind of this and was instrumental in making this partnership a reality, though neither designer elaborates on how exactly he achieved this. All we know is that the result of this is that Xbox is publishing Ninja Gaiden 4.
Ninja Gaiden 4 stars dual protagonists: newcomer Yakumo, and series hero Ryu Hayabusa. The demo I play stars the former, letting me see what the upstart ninja brings to the table. As a brand new face, Yakumo was designed from scratch by Platinum, and Hirayama states the character allows Platinum to inject its “unique, stylish approach to action” while retaining the tenets of what makes a Ninja Gaiden game. As for Ryu Hayabusa, fans shouldn’t worry that he’ll feel any different because another team sits at the steering wheel. “When it comes to Ryu, we’re very picky about making sure that Ryu feels right for players who are familiar with the prior games,” says Hirayama.
Despite being developed by Platinum, you’d never guess it after picking up the controller. Ninja Gaiden 4 plays smooth as silk and controls how fans remember and expect, from the lightning-quick swordplay, flashy combos, gravity-defying grapple maneuvers, and tight yet nimble acrobatics. Presentation-wise, everything looks fantastic. I quickly dispatch the first enemies in brutal fashion, slicing apart limbs, separating heads from shoulders, and coating everything around me in blood. Cinematic finishers called Obliteration moves serve as an emphatic exclamation point to a combo string.
Platinum’s influence comes in the form of the new Bloodraven Form. Eviscerating foes builds a meter to activate Bloodraven moves, executed by holding the left trigger while performing light or heavy attacks. This transforms Yakumo’s sword into an enlarged crimson blade to unleash stronger, slightly more deliberate assaults. The increased length of the Blood sword is great for striking swaths of foes at once, knocking them off their feet for you to quickly pounce on. Since the meter fills quickly, weaving Bloodraven attacks strategically into combo strings is easy.
A second meter builds towards activating Berserk State. This allows you to perform the Bloodbath Kill, an instant execution that drops certain targets regardless of their health, by charging an attack. Nakao describes this specific feature as another prime expression of Platinum’s stylish action sensibilities. On the defensive side, Yakumo can block attacks, perform a split-second dodge to which players can immediately chain an attack, or parry by timing blocks right before impact. Getting a hang of this new bag of tricks is vital because, to the surprise of no one, Ninja Gaiden 4 is a challenging game, often throwing waves of large, aggressive enemy mobs at the player that will quickly take them down if they’re caught lacking. Success requires matching or exceeding that aggression while constantly monitoring your surroundings to evade offense from all sides, and overcoming these odds never ceases to make me feel cool.
“One of the distinct qualities of Ninja Gaiden is that back and forth between offense and defense, and at PlatinumGames, we try to make sure we really nail that feeling of pressure and release in the gameplay,” says Nakao. “So you feel like you’re not going to be able to make it, and then there’s that cathartic moment where you’re able to turn the odds against your enemy.”
Although a high skill ceiling is part of Ninja Gaiden’s appeal (and infamy), Platinum and Team Ninja are cognizant that it’s been a decade since the last 3D Ninja Gaiden title, so they want to accommodate newcomers as best they can. To that end, Ninja Gaiden 4 features the return of Hero Mode, the easier difficulty setting first introduced in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Furthermore, players can adjust the game’s difficulty anytime during the story mode.
Yakumo traverses his surroundings in typical Ninja Gaiden fashion, meaning he can wall run and perform the signature wall-to-wall jump to quickly reach higher platforms. He also has a grappling hook called a Caddis line to zip to distant platforms and swing across gaps. The Caddis comes in handy during combat, too. Arenas often have grapple points, which I use to disengage from the action when surrounded or gain higher ground to unleash an aerial assault. You can also pick up side quests, ranging from killing a quota of enemies to collecting strange sentient jars called Gourdys for a peculiar twist.
Ninja Gaiden 4 achieves a tough-to-articulate balance of feeling completely faithful to the previous games while also having a noticeable, if subtle, Platinum touch. As a fan of both studios’ works, I love seeing Platinum’s ideas blend harmoniously with Team Ninja’s winning formula, and the partnership appears to have been a mutually beneficial learning experience.
“We are different studios, but we both make action games, and of course, we have huge mutual respect for each other, and it’s really an honor to work with each other on this game,” says Nakao. “But with that said, even though we both make action games, we have very distinct and different sensibilities when it comes to how to approach action gameplay. So it’s a challenge, but I think it was a big accomplishment that we were able to work really closely together, almost as if we were part of the same studio. And if there was something that I played in the build [Hirayama] didn’t really vibe with, he’d be very honest. He wouldn’t hold back; we’ve been very flat with each other and have very honest conversations. So, it was really cool because we were able to use the logic of action game design to have these productive conversations to make this title.”
To reinforce this apparently healthy relationship between the developers, Hirayama quickly adds, “We’re really good friends.”
The partnership is paying off, as I’m sold on Ninja Gaiden 4. It looks great and plays like a dream, and I was genuinely disappointed when my demo concluded. It was my favorite game out of all the demos I played at Summer Game Fest Play Days, and I look forward to welcoming the series back with open arms on October 20.
