Team Ninja turns up the volume

I think, just about, I’m ready to join Ryu Hayabusa on his latest ninja escapades. Gaming doesn’t get any more challenging than the Ninja Gaiden series. But since I quite enjoy this kind of pressure when it leads to such mouth-watering rewards Team Ninja’s output keeps me coming back for more.

And that’s really what the deal is here in Ninja Gaiden II. It looks gorgeous, and each new area is more impressive than the last, but boy do you ever need to work to get there. There’s a third part to this equation, borne out of the other two, and that is immense personal satisfaction. Ninja Gaiden II builds on the tried and true tradition of videogames that play hardball as coach but you’re thankful for the training when you’re the star on the pitch. In this case you’re perfecting Ryu’s incredible ninja combat skills and learning how to master a massive new range of weaponry.

You’ll know when you’re getting good at NGII because, basically, you stop losing and start winning. After that you enjoy winning with style, and here’s where the cool new Ninja Cinema mode comes into play. Your greatest encounters with the most spectacular outcomes can be recorded as movie clips, and these can be shared with your friends via Xbox LIVE. For that extra sense of historical importance, you can apply a Kurosawa-style samurai movie, grainy black-and-white filter effect.

As you might guess Ninja Gaiden II is my ultimate escape for June, but for more light-hearted and hilariously inventive trails I’ll still be enjoying Lego Indiana Jones, and I’m pretty sure that my younger relatives will enjoy teaching me a few lessons of their own in Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit. It’s hard to take, but what doesn’t kill you…

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Graeme Boyd, Xbox.com Community Manager, Gamertag: AceyBongos