In the world of Ninja Blade, it’s perpetually midnight, the moon is perpetually full, and you’re perpetually several hundred feet in the air above the streets of Tokyo, fighting huge monsters who appear to have escaped from every other game on your shelf. The game stars neo-ninja Ken Ogawa, whose Lone Ranger mask doesn’t make him him look like a ninja so much as like a pervert in search of the nearest fetish club. Ken’s master is a graduate of the Mr. Miyagi School For Masters. He shadows Ken during the game’s opening act, offering a steady supply of cryptic bon mots and flashy new weapons.
But Ken’s master, whom we quickly learn is also his father, betrays Ken within the game’s first 20 minutes, making this quite possibly the fastest master-student sellout in gaming history. Ken is stabbed and left for dead on a rooftop. He doesn’t stay dead, of course, but players are likely to wish he had.
Ninja Blade aches to be a Ninja Gaiden clone. But it offers none of the intuitive moves-rolling-off-the-fingertips of Tecmo’s series of far superior ninja sims. Instead, thanks to Ninja Blade’s awful controls, Ken lurches around like a drunk uncle at a bar mitzvah.