Bon Jovi or Itagaki? You make the call

Tecmo Executive Producer Tomonobu Itagaki appeared at the Microsoft Keynote on Wednesday, to demonstrate the latest playable build of Ninja Gaiden 2 during the Game Developer’s Conference this week in San Francisco.

 


At the outset of his demonstration, Itagaki took a moment to express concern regarding the criticism that games coming out of Japan are losing their creative edge and carefully sticking to static ideas and gameplay concepts, rather than experiment with new ideas. 

 

“People have been telling me that the Japanese gaming industry has lost a little bit of its vitality, but I’m not ready to give up just yet,” Itagaki said.  “In fact, I flew in today from Tokyo to show you that there is an extremely exciting game (being developed) right now in Japan.”

 

Running on real hardware, the demo introduced audiences to a new stage named the Temple of Sacrifice.  Visually, the stage represented the same sort-of-gritty 'destroyed beauty' from the backdrops in Gears of War, only here in a Mayan-type setting. 

 

Ryu slashed and slipped between extremely large enemies using a combination of bladed Tonfas, a spear-like Bo staff, and a large Scythe – part of the broader weapon’s palette in Ninja Gaiden 2.

 

Since the press has already seen the stylized violence of Ninja Gaiden 2, and the deadly combos, this demonstration was a great opportunity to show some of the changes that have been incorporated into the game since it was last shown to the press at the Tokyo Games Show in 2007. 

 

Part of the demo showed the public how quickly they will be able to switch weapons in Ninja Gaiden 2.  Before you fans start getting excited, it’s not as quick as the system that Capcom uses to instantly switch weapons in Devil May Cry 4.  the system used here produces a slight pause, but quickly returns players back to the extremely fast action.  Prior to the demonstration switching weapons required using a separate menu system and longer loading before being able to switch weapons in Ninja Gaiden 2. 

 

Secondly, the team at Tecmo revealed in-game save films, ala Bungie’s Halo 3, which can be shared over Xbox Live – Keynote Speaker John Schappert called it ‘Ninja Cinema’.  At any save point players can activate an icon to start recording the action as a clip to the Xbox 360.  The best players in the world we be able to upload all of their clips to a leaderboard and share their films online, at the same time showing novices how the best players in the world play the game.

 

It’s certainly exciting to see how Ninja Gaiden 2 has improved since its debut late last year.  The marked improvements in the visual style, menu system, and saved films are bound to be a success in North America.  Itagaki concluded that Ninja Gaiden 2 will be released exclusively on Xbox 360 on June 3rd in the states.