// VIEW: NINJA GAIDEN: DRAGON SWORD (NINTENDODS)

Ninja Gaiden, possibly the most mainstream ‘hardcore’ game ever released, is a huge favourite here at DYBS Towers. Leaping, bending and slashing your way through the Fiend hoard has never looked so good or felt so tactile as it did on the Xbox iteration of this venerable series. Can Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (anyone else get tired of tenuous ‘DS’ subtitles ooh, about 2 years ago?) hope to replicate the fast and furious precision of the classic Xbox title (which, incidentally, is well worth downloading from Xbox Live Arcade if you haven’t picked it up yet) using 4 face buttons and a touchscreen?

Well, yes and no. Control is a pleasant surprise, actually. Holding the DS in the ‘book’ configuration (much like Brain Training/Hotel Dusk), you control the ever-lovable Ryu Hayabusa by simple holding the stylus in the direction you want him to move. Jumps, slashes and special moves can be triggered with various combinations of scribbles, prods and slides of the stylus, and for movement at least it works very well indeed – you feel constantly in control of Ryu, essential in a game where death is common. In fact the scheme owes a substantial debt to the similar (superb) scheme in Phantom Hourglass. Unfortunately combat doesn’t fare so well. Striking across the target with the stylus performs various hacks and slashes; a fine system and it does work well. You just can’t the feeling that you’re not really doing much to earn victory in battle. For while you might attempt to attack with the fluidity you’d expect from Gaiden, you may as well be playing WarioWare; such is the lack of subtlety. For hardcore followers of Tecmo’s series, this would be an unforgivable flaw – and honestly, they’d have a point.

Ninja Gaiden is, to them, about control. Not the scheme itself, but the feeling it gives you. The blade falls where you want it every time – every stroke is another, essential addition to their individual masterpieces As it is, the game does suffer for it. After the brutal challenge of Gaiden on Xbox, defeating any enemy (let alone a boss monster, as was the case here) by simply performing an airborne attack (stroking the stylus up and across) was unsurprisingly unsatisfying. It reminded me of complaints levelled at otherwise-excellent block-slider Meteos; the feeling that victory could be easier achieved through frantic scribbling rather than considered strokes. It’s a shame, since it’s clear care and attention has been dedicated to making the experience as seamless and smooth as possible.

The meat of the game is rich, and pretty filling, too. The main quest, all sorcerers and samurai stuff – delivered with classic pomposity through, honestly, pretty poor dialogue bubbles – will last disappointingly few hours on normal difficulty, but this is rectified by bumping up the difficulty. Hard mode is a bit more like it, comparable to the legendarily tricky Xbox game in difficulty and a beefier flavour of adventure (those how many of the extra hours Hard mode offers are spent on the Game Over screen is worth considering) Other than that, it’s standard Gaiden-fayre, with plenty of areas that will be familiar to fans of recent games. Graphically, its all pretty attractive – pre-rendered backgrounds complimented by some decent, if a little small, character models. The closest comparison would be a much better looking version of online RPG Runescape. The camera is excellently thought out, going for the Resident Evil style fixed placement, changing screen-by-screen but eschewing the nourish, acute (and often incomprehensible) angles favoured by the horror series. In my experience there’s not been a moment where progress has been hampered by the viewpoint the game chooses – which is really all you can ask.

Gaiden DS seems doomed to ‘goodness’, then. It does everything you’d expect from a handheld Hayabusa outing while going nowhere especially exciting with the concept. It’s certainly refreshing to see a talented developer take an established console franchise to DS with minimal concession to the wider audience their presence on the format inevitably attracts, all the while conscious of the strengths (and limitations) of the host format. Just make sure you play it on Hard.