I've come to this game straight after playing through Heavenly Sword - a much newer, higher-budget, overall snazzier brawler. It's let me view Ninja Gaiden from a different perspective than when I first played through it on the Xbox (Sigma is a remake of Ninja Gaiden Black, which was a remake of the 2004 original). Sure, Ninja Gaiden's presentation, deriving from a 3 year old, last-gen game, might seem a bit no-frills when compared to Heavenly Sword's blockbuster gusto (what a pretentious sounding word! honestly, I'd never say that out loud!), but its gameplay hasn't aged a bit, and is arguably superior in every sense. It allows you a much greater sense of freedom and control, as well as providing a hell of a challenge. I must admit, though, that I was slightly reticent at the thought of playing through Ninja Gaiden again, thinking "can I really bear to put myself through that bit or that bit once more?" and "can my hands take the punishment?". I am pleased to report, however, that I enjoyed (nearly) every minute of it and was even a bit disappointed when it was over.

Methods of mayhem

   Ninja Gaiden Sigma is a game that becomes more gratifying to play the more you play it and unravel its combat mechanics. Attacking is assigned to square (weaker) and triangle (stronger). Holding down triangle charges up what is called an "Ultimate Technique" - a furious combo which makes you invincible whilst performing it. Although it's very hard to find the time to charge up and execute this move in battle, it's extremely satisfying when you do. The game also offers a plentiful selection of melee (the Vigoorian Flail being a particular favorite) and projectile weapons which become available as you move along. Together with your growing skill as a player, these factors provide plenty of incentive to continue. Your sick, self-destructing, maddeningly-frightful drive to overachieve hardly needs to kick in at all.

Tails from the Crypt

Is this really the hardest game ever?

   No, that's absolute bollocks. People who say that either have bad memory, or haven't played many games. Or have bad memory. Try completing Ikaruga on its easiest mode without using one continue - that's a far more unfeasible prospect than playing Ninja Gaiden to completion on its default difficulty. Make no mistake though: this IS one hard bastard of a game. FHM magazine had infamously awarded the Xbox original 1 star out of 5 because they couldn't get past the first boss, and this is still that game. Maybe it's partly due to the intimidating reputation that precedes it, but there's a much greater sense of achievement as you progress through Ninja Gaiden than with other games of its ilk. There are some points where it feels like the developers hate you and the game exists solely to torment you; and at times you will strongly suspect Team Ninja of wanting you to mangle your hands so badly that Ninja Gaiden would be the last game you'd ever play. There will be times when you simply won't believe the monotonous tests of endurance that you're expected to complete to progress, but afterwards you'll feel very satisfied, albeit mainly because whatever horrible bit it was is now behind you.

Saving grace

   Part of what makes the game seem so hard is that it doesn't have checkpoints. When you die, you go back to the last time you saved at one of the save points scattered throughout the game. This is the case whether you pass through a cut-scene, or even go to the next chapter, so saving often is required to avoid massive frustration. There's nothing worse than getting through, for example, a grueling 10-minute fight against two electric giant penises with fangs (I'm not making this up), or painstakingly getting loads of collectibles from hard-to-reach places, only to die shortly afterwards without having saved for ages and having to relive the whole thing again. A situation such as this can quite easily lead to disheartenment and will surely cause some people to give up. Some much needed help in staying alive comes in the form of elixirs that either increase health or magic. A small amount of these can be carried with you and used when needed. The health elixirs are in generous supply, scattered about the place in chests, but believe me, you will need them. Prepare for lots of pausing in some of the more extreme fights, as you restore your ever-depleting health and ninpo using elixirs. New to this latest version, you can now use elixirs in the midst of battle, cycling through items that appear in the bottom-left of the screen, using the d-pad; but pausing for a second's breath is still the advisable route, as it's easy to accidentally use the wrong elixir if taking it at the same time as fighting an extremely intense battle.

Gray and old

   Having only recently left Heavenly Sword's beautiful environments, the levels of Ninja Gaiden can seem quite drab and depressing. The game starts out promisingly on a beautiful Autumnal evening in a dojo, but soon degenerates to blandly uniform environments like a military compound and clichéd videogame dungeons worthy of old Mega Man games - an ice level, a lava level, a water level, etc. Also questionable in the aesthetics department is the attire in which your ninja is dressed. Although you begin clothed how a ninja should be, it doesn't take long before he dons something that looks far too much like a gimp suit - the shiniest gimp suit known to man, that is. As anyone who's played the Dead or Alive games will have already observed, Team Ninja has a strange habit of making everything, including characters' skin, look as shiny as possible. Dead or Alive players will also definitely be reminded of another of Team Ninja's visual trademarks: whenever a woman is present, she must be wearing hardly any clothes and have gigantic jugs that wobble all over the place. In one cut-scene, the female co-star of Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Rachel, gets knocked to the ground unconscious, and even though she is lying perfectly still her breasts still bounce up and down, wild with a life of their own. Having witnessed his depiction of women in games, it's no big surprise that allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace have been filed against the DOA/Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki.

Pot calling the kettle black

   That same Itagaki has recently been in the videogame press (he's not one to shy away from the limelight), accusing Heavenly Sword of being "half-assed" because it contains quick-time events. A bit hypocritical from someone who's just put out a port of a port of a game instead of anything slightly resembling an official sequel. The matter stands, however, that Ninja Gaiden was brilliant to begin with, and so Sigma is still a good game. But it's certainly "half-assed" that the pre-rendered cinematics (the exact same ones from the original) only display in 480p. Oh but there are three more chapters than in the other versions, bringing the total up from 16 to 19. Three new chapters! Excellent, yes? No actually, they're shite. "Half-assed", even. Three lazily tacked on missions, for the most part fighting the same old enemies in the same old places, only with a female character, Rachel - a fiend slayer who honors the Team Ninja tradition of being obscenely shiny. She wears S&M gear, but not that much of it. Her moves lack the finesse of Ryu's and after the initial novelty of a playing as a different character has worn off (give it 2-3 minutes), you'll just want to get back to being a ninja as soon as possible. Did I mention the word "half-assed" yet?

Original sin

   Athough I am done beating up on Itagaki, I must mention a few more of Sigma's flaws - you know, professional integrity and all that crap. Just like in the Xbox versions, the platforming sections suck. Ryu is certainly no Prince of Persia when it comes to scaling vertiginous structures - it's just far too fiddly and frustrating and the camera often doesn't help. Luckily, platforming only takes up a relatively small portion of the overall game, but it's still enough to irritate the hell out of your old gaming hemorrhoid. Also annoying in how they break the pace are the swimming sections. Ryu controls awfully underwater. Note to all developers making adventure games: PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF [Agnostic vagueness], NO MORE F**KING SWIMMING SECTIONS! NOBODY IN THE WORLD LIKES THEM. IF AN UNDERWATER BIT IS NECESSARY FOR THE PLOT, JUST SHOW IT TO US IN A BRIEF CUT-SCENE, BUT PLEASE, DON'T MAKE US PLAY IT. PLEASE!

   NGS also has a very mild puzzle element, which rarely consists of anything more than picking up everything that you can find and pressing square near stuff until something happens. Very rarely, you may need some arrows or incendiary shurikens in order to progress, but whenever this is the case there'll invariably be a dead, rotting ninja nearby, with an infinite amount of the required projectile stuck in his chest.

   Finally, in terms of linearity, the game seems like it's on rails. Although it's occasionally possible to go the wrong way or get a bit lost (like when you load it up in the middle of a task the details of which you can't remember) you are, more often than not, steered in the right direction. As may be expected of a straight remake, Sigma is extremely linear and old-school in its approach - you kill stuff, move on, occasionally find a key and then go on to kill more stuff.

Like a Ninja Gaiden virgin

   If you've read this far and haven't played either of the Xbox versions, Ninja Gaiden Sigma should be your next purchase - assuming you're up to the challenge, that is. The (somewhat sad) truth is that, despite being a barely modified version of a 3 year old Xbox game, and even though it's been out for a while now on PS3, NGS is still one of the better games available for the console at the moment. Should you choose it over Heavenly Sword? I'd say get both if you can afford it and have the time, but where gameplay is concerned, there is no doubt whatsoever that Ninja Gaiden is still king.

       ... Lunk