Being a Ninja is very hard work. Even when you are black.

Good golly Miss Molly that was a hard game. I knew it was going to be which is why I opted to go for the Black version with the easy mode in it because I knew I would eat all my controllers trying to do this on normal. I got this when it came out in 2006 but am only getting around to it now.  When I first saw it, I thought it was a sequel and not an enhanced version because the character on the box art looked to have much darker skin compared to the original.  So I thought it was a sequel in which you played a black ninja and coined the catchphrase "Ninja Gaiden: Black: This time, you're black":

 VS

Actually looking at them again now, there's not as much of a difference as I recall, but damn it, I'm sticking by the catchphrase.  The Ninja Gaiden series has always been well know for it's difficulty but this is the first one I've actually played so it was the first time I experienced it first hand.  Gameplay wise, it plays a lot like Devil May Cry. But this was harder for a number of reasons:

• Every enemy does massive damage
• Attacks and movement are slower
• You seem to need a lot of time and clearance to jump or dodge
• You can not pause when you are jumping, attacking or being attacked making it easy to die from being bum rushed before you can use a healing item
• There are no checkpoints so any death causes you to go back to last save
• Maximum item counts are quite low meaning you can't horde them

All these factors and more make for a very hard game but like Devil May Cry, it is also very satisfying once you get into the groove of kicking ass.  However I still think I prefer the gameplay of Devil May Cry mainly due to the higher agility of Dante and quick weapon switching that became a staple of the series allowing for some seriously ferocious combos.  I thought I was doing pretty well about half way through and then I made the mistake of watching the attract video and the moves performed in that were baffling compared to the simple ones I was doing.  With multiple playthroughs I maybe could have got to that level, but not on the first one.

This game was a lot longer than I was expecting it to be but that was probably due to the slow progress caused by the extreme difficulty.  There was also some serious diversity in level length.  Some were very very short and some of them were ridiculously long.  The "story" as it were was paper thin and really just an excuse for Ryu to go through several areas and kill lots of things.  For a 2004 game, the visuals and sound were quite impressive and the level structure was well thought out.  Instead of separate divisive levels, pretty much the whole game was large areas joined together so if you wanted, you could backtrack as much as you wanted.  Unfortunately, this also meant that backtracking was part of several levels and a few locations were visited multiple times.  But this wasn't always a bad thing because it would be mixed up with an altered layout and/or tougher enemies.

I was contemplating striking this one from the backlog because I wasn't too keen on playing it but I'm very glad I didn't now because this was very enjoyable (and hard but also satisfying).  Fantastic ninja in the face action through and though.  Maybe I'll do some of the other ones in this series once the backlog is cleared.  Suggestions are welcome.

This is also one more system closed off. The last XBox game. Meaning no more Microsoft systems left on the backlog at all.