Touch of a Ninja

Ninja Gaiden fans have been taken on a whirlwind ride lately what with Itagaki announcing that he was leaving Tecmo just days before Ninja Gaiden 2 shipped for the XBOX360. Perhaps he felt that he was betrayed when Tecmo failed to honour their end of the deal over work done for Dead or Alive 4, and the only option left was to leave. Itagaki sure is one of the most eccentric game developer you will find in the japanese game industry, he speaks what's on his mind and isn't afraid to talk down on any games he feels is inferior, sometimes at expense of enraging other fans. Now his brash outspoken ways certainly isn't very much part of the often reserved japanese culture but it makes him far more entertaining than most average game developers. I have yet to play any of his games and i'm afraid i may never will seeing his dislike for the Playstation platform, i lost interest in Ninja Gaiden Sigma when he started bashing his own game as well.

Fortunately he was kind enough to grace the Nintendo DS with another one of his labour of love, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword a welcome addition to the DS seeing how few action games are there on the platform. Playing Dragon Sword is unlike any other action game on the Nintendo DS but in essence it's just like any action game which require a quick trigger finger and plenty of button mashing. The button mashing this time, comes in the form of swiping the stylus across the touch screen as an array of moves can be accomplished depending on how the lines are drawn. It's a neat idea i'll give you that but because of how small the DS screen is, most of the subtle moves ends up registering as just mindless slashing across the screen. This is one area where it looks like Team Ninja's ambition are too big for Nintendo's handheld but given how few action games actually manage to succeed on handhelds, this is still an amazing achievement.

The highlight of the game are the artwork depicting the story of the game, in a similar fashion to Konami's Portable Ops minus the voiceovers. It's rare to find artwork in modern games these days let alone good ones.