Broken Pixels

Hola,

I was watching the 1up Show's recent interview with the director of Ninja Gaiden Sigma when he made an interesting point. He said that Devil May Cry is not an action game (it is), but rather a combo game. Now, Team Ninja can kind of be assholes sometimes (see: Tomonobu Itagaki) but despite their history of ragging on competitors (Tekken), I think it has some validity.

As much as I love DMC3, most of the normal combat is you doing cool take downs on enemies. As hard as the game is, a lot of the normal battles are not that difficult. They are a lot of fun, but that is besides the point. The real action is against the bosses, which can't be knocked into the air or juggled with pistol fire. As entertaining as these encounters can be, it generally boils down to finding the most damaging thing to do and doing it repeatedly, while not getting hit. They take out the part of the best aspect of the game. I don't think NG is any different in this regard, but it is something the genre can work on. I stand by everything I said in my DMC3 review, it is a great game, I would just like to see if Capcom could address this.

I have not played nearly enough Ninja Gaiden to comment on it.

Speaking of broken games, the old Genesis Sonic titles. I have spent many happy hours foiling Dr Robotnik's (Eggman?) ill-conceived plots, but there is something inherently wrong with the game design. They are platforming games based on speed; as the levels progress the precision required increases to the point where going fast is no longer an option (unless you are Joe Stanski). I noticed this first in Metropolis Zone of Sonic 2: the running sections are really short and infrequent, focusing instead on a lot of tedious jumping. Better level design that takes into account constant motion would make a huge difference. I mean, look at games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or Spiderman 2. When moving is fun, the game is win.

One other quick gripe about Sonic: the bonus levels are too long. I only rarely go for emeralds because it takes you away from the main game for several boring minutes.

I hate Blue Sphere,
Yuji Naka