Ninja Blade

Games are supposed to be fun right? The minute players start to rate games based on visuals or gameplay alone, it's no longer about the fun anymore. This is perhaps why Ninja Blade is doomed to fail. However — hold onto something — the game is actually not that bad and while it may not be the most competent title out there, it offers more fun and bang per buck other releases cannot attest to.

The concept is absolutely ludicrous. Tokyo is under siege by a worm virus that turns carriers into mutated freaks with a taste for human blood. So who you gonna call? The most logical answer is a crack team of urban ninjas with a penchant for free falling out of planes and riding motorbikes.

The game is broken down into fighting and platforming sections. The combat is easy enough, but the absence of a lock-on feature grates. Close and ranged sword attacks can be chained for some great moves, but you are always so much more powerful than the mutants you fight so you never really feel all that challenged.

Boss fights, on the other hand, are superb, with some truly epic and inventive battles. Once you have whittled down the enemy's health, you get the chance to do a finishing Todome strike, executed by a string of sequenced button presses. These really are the icing on the cake, with one fight against a mutated helicopter ending with Ken surfing on a missile, grabbing some phat air then redirecting it back to the chopper. Kaboom.

It's this kind of fun sequence that makes the game's faults easy to overlook, although some players may find that that isn't enough to warrant a purchase.