Ninja Blade Demo Impressions

The demo of Xbox 360 exclusive action game Ninja Blade is set to go live next week. Blend Games was given the opportunity to preview the demo early and find out whether it's worth the hype. The demo was a short, thrilling ride but it's not clear if there will be enough in the full game to keep gamers' interest for several hours.

The demo begins with an airplane full of ninjas being deployed to Tokyo to fight some kind of mysterious infestation of monsters. After a little talky-talky, your character (Ken) leaps out of the airplane and the level begins. While soaring down to one of the skyscrapers below, I slashed through a handful of demons with four quick-time events. Ninja Blade's quick-time events apparently don't use random buttons - you'll be prompted with the same button push every time you go through a certain quick-time event. For example, the first two demons you slash in the air will both require timely pressing of the "Y" button.

To help you a little more, the button prompts correspond to the normal in-game controls; a quick-time event that requires you to slash an enemy will either ask you to use X or Y, the normal attack buttons. Failing a quick-time event just causes the game to rewind to a few seconds earlier so you can re-attempt it. It definitely removes the challenge and stakes from quick-time events but frankly, I never found quick-time events interesting in any game. They're just a way for developers to sneak in little cutscenes and I guess I can live with Ninja Blade's QTEs because they're not really going to break your balls and they're fun to watch.

Anyway, after slashing through a few demons, I crashlanded on a skyscraper and fight through a horde of zombie-ish dudes. Ken's got a choice between a quick katana, a pair of shortswords, and a heavier but more powerful sword called a "stonerender". Also, he's got a shuriken that he can swing around in a whirlwind. Each of the blades comes with over a dozen moves attached to them. I did fine just mashing the X and Y buttons randomly the first playthrough but the second time I explored the moves a bit and they look pretty impressive. To make sure you catch some of the quicker moves, the game does a short, 300-ish slow-down halfway through (that might get a little old). One of the cooler moves was when I flipped, stabbed my sword straight into the ground when I was upside down, then finished the flip with an overhand slash into my foe's forehead. As with most hack and slash games, there's always the danger that most players won't need to use the vast majority of moves that the developers painstakingly created but the attacks available in the demo were all pretty straightforward so the learning curve's not steep if you want to try out some of the flashy stuff. Special attacks require chi and, wouldn't you know it, your enemies drop chi when they die.

I wasn't digging the look of the doughy cannon fodder demons you slice up in this segment but luckily a giant worm ripped through the floorboards after I was done with them. I swung and leapt along the side of the ruined skyscraper while the worm surged after me. Once I got to the ledge, I used my grappling wire (QTE) to swing down and then began to run straight down the side of the building. This part was another hack-and-slash sequence, except that I was slashing through enemies as I sped past them. Might not have been a very challenging segment but looked cool slamming into these enemies at full speed and slicing them apart.

I'm assuming the demo has unconnected parts of the game spliced together or something - suddenly instead of being chased by a worm, I had a giant spider on my tail. After swinging toward it with my grappling wire and giving it a good kick to the ass (two QTE's), the spider landed on some scaffolding and a full-fledged boss encounter began. I ran a hundred feet or so down a catwalk to get to the spider while dodging his sonic blast attacks and then started slicing up his legs. He periodically shot some fire at me or blew you back down the catwalk. After I got him down to half health or so, I leapt over a ledge and start slashing some other body part. After reducing him to almost no health, a sequence of QTE's began. I dodged his desperate last strikes and led him onto a roof with a crane and wrecking ball and...well, suffice to say, it's a fatality Shang Tsung would approve of. The game informed me that I received a bunch of "blood points" (or was it "demon points"?) but I never got to find out what they were used for because the demo was over. I assume you buy abilities with them or something. Or it might be to buy items - the demo allowed you to use first aid sprays to heal yourself and adrenaline boosts to bump your speed and strength temporarily.

The developers of Ninja Blade definitely know how to craft stylish scenes. I imagine the video footage alone from the demo will garner a lot of attention from Xbox 360 owners. Still, there wasn't much from a gameplay standpoint to differentiate it from God of War or other hack-and-slash games. Being too much like God of War isn't necessarily a bad thing but I'm just curious what unique things Ninja Blade brings to the table and whether it's got enough tricks in its bag to satisfy us for however many hours. Will the game still be engaging once the initial excitement over the flashy visuals wears off?