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Personal Pick
In addition to our fundamental Game of the Year Awards 2025, every member of the PC Gamer workforce is shining a highlight on a recreation they beloved this yr. We’ll put up new private picks every day all through the remainder of the month. You can discover all of them right here.
We strive fairly arduous to keep away from lazily dropping cliches into our writing right here at PC Gamer, which places me in a clumsy place as I sit right down to pitch to you why a remaster, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, is likely one of the finest video games of 2025, regardless of largely being a recent Unreal Engine 5 pores and skin for a recreation that got here out in 2008. So if I have to sin, I could as effectively see simply what number of forbidden phrases from the model information I can use directly.
In different phrases: They actually do not make ’em like they used to.
Sorry. Sorry!! That should’ve been fairly gross to learn. If you threw up, that is on me. I thought of jamming a “It’s the Dark Souls of…” line in there by some means, however was frightened the paragraph may very well change into so cursed it may very well be summoned to life as if by some necromantic energy.
I simply wanted you to know that I understand how ridiculous it’s to bust out “they don’t make ’em like they used to” towards Ninja Gaiden 4, a recreation in a style that is starved for brand new additions and by its very nature feels prefer it belongs extra to the 2000s than the 2020s. And the 2D platformer Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Sega’s beautiful Shinobi metroidvania-lite are each kinda catching strays right here, as a result of they’re good, and we could not have had the yr of the ninja with out them.
It’s simply that in terms of slicing a thousand dudes into bloody ribbons whereas using a wave of pure adrenaline, nothing does it like Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.
To me, the 2008 NG2 is just the most effective character motion recreation ever made, buying and selling away the 2004 Ninja Gaiden’s extra measured protection and degree exploration for linear levels of exact hyperviolence. Cutting off a limb lets you immediately execute an enemy as blood gushes from the wound; absorbing their blood essence after you’ve got dismembered them can both function very important restorative well being or as an alternative gas an automated combo that ensures a kill and some seconds of invulnerability.
Ninja Gaiden 2 is mercifully freed from gimmicky setpieces and drip-feed unlocks that you will discover in Ninja Gaiden 4; the place that recreation offers you 4 weapons, Ninja Gaiden 2 offers you 11, and virtually each makes you suppose “this is the sickest thing I’ve ever used” till you discover the subsequent one 45 minutes later and guess what?
Yeah, it is sicker.
Even higher, Ninja Gaiden 2 begins you with all of your important fight talents accessible from the primary second of the primary degree. Learn to make use of them or die: the sport does not care which.
The authentic model of the sport can be full of bullshit: ranged enemies that may knock you off ropes as you slowly climb them, a pair horrible bosses, slowdown galore. It seems like they rushed it out the door six months early, and but it nonetheless goes extremely arduous, the fight making up for all of the dangerous bits for those who tune into the sport’s frequency the best way I did in 2008, and nonetheless do in 2025. I deeply admire the dev workforce’s dedication to throwing hordes of enemies at you even when it tanked the framerate, as a result of they knew the lethality of the fight system they’d designed absolutely got here alive when it pushed you to the ragged limits and dared you to change into unstoppable.
A later port, NG2 Sigma, cleaned up quite a lot of the mess, which was in all probability the proper name—however within the course of it in the reduction of on these enemy numbers and made some tweaks to the blood and stability that diluted the sport’s essence. It was a much less irritating, extra even-tempered recreation, but in addition a much less particular one. And that was the one model you may simply play for, mainly, the final 15 years. Until now. Until Black.
This model of the sport is an earnest try and marry Sigma’s cleaned up port with the extra jagged authentic, and whereas it does not absolutely return to the unique’s overwhelming enemy numbers and aggressive balancing it will get a hell of quite a bit nearer. A still-in-development mod will get nearer nonetheless. In time I really feel assured that this shall be with out compromise the definitive model of the definitive ninja recreation.
I attempted (unsuccessfully 😔) to persuade my fellow PC Gamers that Ninja Gaiden 2 Black belonged on the Top 100 listing earlier this yr. This was the center of my pitch:
Remember the film Twister? Remember how they made a sequel, TWISTERS, and the best way they made it extra dramatic was: TWO TWISTERS? That’s Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, besides YOU are each tornados.
The first 3D Ninja Gaiden demanded cautious protection, as a result of even some basic-ass foot soldier may rock your shit. Ninja Gaiden 2 stated: F that. You needn’t defend for those who merely by no means cease attacking. We’re going to make the enemies EVEN MEANER, however we will provide the energy to obliterate them with continuous offense as a result of you aren’t only a twister: you’re a Sharknado.
It has shiny new Unreal Engine graphics, and it retains the nice modifications from Sigma whereas intentionally reverting to the stability and lethality of the unique recreation. It is the most effective fight in a Japanese character motion recreation ever made, and sure it is a call-out for Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. I really like these video games, however there is a uncooked aggression and pace to Ninja Gaiden that’s on one other degree. If you are sick of Soulslikes, that is your treatment. There is not any stamina bar and you may kill bosses in like 30 seconds.
You even go to hell! Not since you die, like Kratos in God of War; that is weak and embarrassing and as everyone knows Kratos type of appears like a pirate, and ninjas defeated pirates within the nice meme wars of the late 2000s. You go to hell since you merely run out of demons to kill on earth so it’s a must to go to the underworld to kill the remainder of them. It’s like 10-15 hours of uncut adrenaline, which could not be wholesome, however you’ll have a good time.
Maybe in hindsight I should not have introduced up the pirate factor. But even with the remastered graphics, it is evident Ninja Gaiden 2 belongs to an older period of video games. Its ranges are largely barren, its digicam finicky, its tolerance for enemies firing rockets at you when you attempt to get inside melee vary larger than you’d see in a recreation from this decade.
But Ninja Gaiden 4’s ranges are by some means extra boring, sticking you in the identical few environments for hours the place NG2 relentlessly barreled ahead to new locales, with out age as an excuse. Its new ninja hero runs round weightless like he is on everlasting fast-forward. And for all the pieces cool it provides to the fight, it additionally provides one thing that weighs it down or crufts it up.
I hope the collection will get one other sequel, as a result of Ninja Gaiden 4 gives the look of a really passionate workforce rediscovering the traditional texts and making an attempt to decipher them. Perhaps the untimely death of series creator Tomonobu Itagaki—whose departure from Team Ninja after Ninja Gaiden 2 forever changed its identity as an action studio—will serve as further fuel for the next generation of designers there to examine how his exacting direction led to a pair of truly peerless action games.
Ninja Gaiden 4 does not quite capture the old magic, but I think it proves that they have the skill to make a game that does. If there’s a next time, maybe they’ll nail it. For now, Ninja Gaiden 2 still lays claim to the cowl.
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