1.5/5 ★ – hunkypet's review of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.

How a game with some many cool ideas can turn out to be dreadful is beyond me. Ninja Gaiden - Cool. Zombies - Cool. Cel Shaded artwork - Cool. Cyborgs - Cool. Extreme Gore - Cool. Hack n Slash Action. Cool. Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z - Not Cool. One of the worst feeling third person action games I can remember playing. What should feel like a fast, fluid and kinetic action game becomes a tiresome slog of repetitive arena battles and gimmicky controls. The story is a convoluted and nonsensical mess, throwing every teenage cliche your way. From tales of revenge to extremely busty assistants full of innuendos. The game holds your hand up until the halfway mark, constantly stopping you and explaining everything 2 times over, the enemy variety is limited and they constantly pair up the most frustrating kinds of enemies to pad out difficulty (I hate this lazy, artificial difficulty design) and the game is full of these on rails, button prompt platforming sections which are dreadful. Credit where credit is due, the boss battles are epic and memorable, the graphics are solid if a little messy at times with the sheer amount of colour and gore and the soundtrack is decent. Releasing on PS3/X360 a year into the next generations cycle was a recipe for a disaster, it had the makings of a cult classic but instead it will be remembered for being utterly disastrous. Played on PS3