Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge
Full disclosure: I hated Ninja Gaiden 3 with a capital H when it originally released last March for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. I even made a fairly decent living off the malice I directed at it. So when several people told me the developers at Team Ninja had listened to all the criticism and repaired its travesty, I felt my skepticism was rather justified.
After playing Razor’s Edge, I still do. The Wii U port drops the original (and insane) opening scene and goes right into the button-mashing bloodfest. The combat feels a lot more forgiving this time; you still spam the attack buttons, but now a lot more people die a lot faster as a result. That misses the point of a Ninja Gaiden game, and the frustrating, pedestrian level design sadly made the transition fully intact. Menus for weapon selection, upgrades, and magic Ninpo attacks live on the GamePad’s touch screen, where you must hunt for them instead of playing the game itself. A disingenuous camera also returns, and it still decides which rocket-firing enemies you do and don’t need to see. Simply awful.
I can tell that Team Ninja made several changes under the hood, and it’s to the studio’s credit that it responded to fan outcry. But Ninja Gaiden 3 is a sow’s ear. Did anyone really think they could turn it into a silk purse?
Batman: Arkham City: Armored Edition
The very first thing you’ll notice when you load up the Armored Edition of developer Rocksteady’s masterful sequel is an embarrassing amount of artifacts around just about every object on the menu screens. Even if you generally gloss over such things, you can’t avoid it here.
Fortunately, the game itself calms things down a bit. The Armored Edition might not be quite as pretty, but the solid gameplay and Bat-badassery remain intact … if not slightly enhanced. Your new bat-armor absorbs kinetic energy during your many, many fistfights; when it maxes out, you can unleash hell on everyone looking at you funny. It’s not a weighty addition, but not an offensive one, either.
Integration with the Game Pad takes getting used to if you’ve played Arkham City before, particularly when it comes to scanning clues via an “augmented reality” view. But if, like me, you got sick of constantly referring to the game’s map for reference and directions, having it always available on the touchscreen — where you can tap icons and set waypoints with ease — makes this version of Arkham City stand out. Would I call it the definitive edition? Not especially … but I’ll have trouble going back to the other versions.
NBA 2K13
It’s probably wrong that I get a chuckle out of seeing “executive-produced by Jay Z” right below NBA 2K13’s logo. I don’t expect he spent more than five minutes rolling through the production offices without ever stopping.
But J Hova’s game on the Wii U pretty much stands as a straight port from the original release without any changes honestly worth calling out. You can play from your TV or the GamePad screen, but that’s about all 2K Sports did to fit their franchise on Nintendo’s new hardware. The menus remain as confusing as ever — when’s the last time you saw a menu tree with a help button to point the way? — but if you’re in the mood for a little roundball, good luck finding a pickup game as deep and satisfying as this. Putting special moves on the right stick takes me back to the good ol’ NBA Jam days as do the wildly improbable, MTV-friendly celebrity-player options. Impressively detailed character animations might even fool a few eyes into thinking you’re watching a real game … from a distance, anyway.
The publishers provided GamesBeat with copies of these games for the purpose of these reviews.