'Ninja Gaiden 3' assassinates franchise's high quality

There's a feeling that settles in the pit of one's stomach when they realize that they've come across something truly bad. That sensation - when you play a videogame for 20 minutes and slowly begin to realize that despite having hours to go, you've pretty much seen everything that you need to - is something I not only dread going into anything but hoped to never have to suffer with something as close to my heart as "Ninja Gaiden."

As the second sequel to, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest action games of all time, this franchise is slowly starting to reveal itself as the "Highlander" of video games; despite a great first installment, the insulting quality of everything after will invalidate any good it has done for the genre.

The story sees the return of super ninja Ryu Hayabusa, this time recruited to help government agents fight an organization bent on world domination through the use of ancient curses and demons, like previous games. Unlike previous games, however, you better actually have some form of interest in the thin plot, because this time, it's featured a lot more prominently than it should be.

Bland characters and dialogue cutscenes galore permeate the game from start to finish and will have you groaning. This franchise has never been particularly meaty in terms of story, but having this one focus on its shortcomings without addressing the problem was a major mistake, despite having a pretty tense opening five minutes.

It doesn't help that graphically, "Ninja Gaiden 3" looks pretty dated. The game is by no means ugly, but the textures are no where near as detailed as we've come to expect from hardware of the current generation. The animations are so stilted, they'd pass for something straight out of the PlayStation 2 era.

"Ninja Gaiden 3's" ultimate sin stems from none of these faults. What truly drags this game down as a disappointment on every level is the fact that it's just a nightmare to play.

"Ninja Gaiden 3" streamlines its combat system immensely compared to previous games, giving almost every combination of the attack buttons some sort of combo attack. Although this makes combat easier to jump right into, in theory, it eliminates the series' infamously high difficulty and makes repetition sink in really fast. After about ten minutes of killing baddies, I had the dire urge to put the controller down not simply because I was bored out of my mind after mashing the same button over and over again, but because of the game's aggressively annoying desire to push style over substance.

The camera of the game seems obsessed with focusing on every money shot that Ryu dishes out to his enemies, making it pan, zoom, and shift from its current position every time the player engages an enemy. The shift is nauseating, disorienting, and downright confusing. This especially becomes a problem in the cheap boss fights, which require overly precise strikes and fast motions that don't mesh well with the streamlined combat.

Multiplayer doesn't fare any better. The idea of designing a ninja for online combat was a great concept but ultimately succumbs to the same clumsiness and repetition of the single player mode due to a lack of mode and weapons variety.

On top of the fact that the game can be completed in about a day or two of play, I sadly can't bring myself to recommend anything in this package worth even a rental. "Ninja Gaiden 3" isn't a terrible game per se, but it drops the ball so hard in almost every conceivable category that would even make it worth a passing glance.