Ninja Gaiden

I kind of feel that people like games like they like movies, and no one can tell them different. To me, the major, major flaw in this game is the camera. Like Spiderman and The Matrix, two of what should have been the best adapted games out there, the camera ruined both of them. If I can't look around with one of the thumb sticks in real time, I don't want to play it. Ninja Gaiden has a feature where you can look around in slow motion if you'd like, then get back to the game. Sorry, when two guys on horseback are trying to kill me, I don't have time. If you want to shoot the bow and arrow (which has no crosshairs, just guess), it's back to the slow first person, and you can't set the tracking of the controller to speed it up.

One of the most unbelievably ancient video game flaws is that when you clear a room, exit and reenter, some of the rooms regenerate all the ninjas that you already killed.

The game also features save points similar to Harry Potter and The Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, but they're ridiculously out of place. I don't want to keep spending five minutes running back to the save point to be on the safe side because I might get blocked into an arena with a boss and lose all my progress. Sorry, I have to work for a living and don't have time to replay tedious hack and slash.

If you ask me, regardless of what this game looks like, it pales to Prince of Persia, the game it rips off. PoP is beautiful, fluid, has a great story, and most importantly, is fun. In PoP, you destroy monsters to build up "rewinds" that you can use to revert time when you are killed or make a major mistake. These rewinds give you the breathing room to try potentially dangerous things to solve puzzles without the penalty of having to tediously play the same level over and over. These rewinds reward taking risks in the game. In Ninja Gaiden, you destroy ninjas and try to keep your health bar full until you get to the next boss. If you take risks, you may have to play the level over again from the last save. And after a few, it's boring as hell.

I'm not playing a game to get to the end. I'm playing a game because it challenges me mentally. There have been few cut scenes at the end of games that were worth fighting the last boss. As for Ninja Gaiden's last cut scene, I could care less.