Ninja Gaiden Sigma's a great opportunity for PS 3 owners to play the greatest hardcore action game of the last 20 years.

User Rating: 9.5 | Ninja Gaiden Sigma PS3
By howardorr | Review Date:
When talking of Ninja Gaiden Sigma, there are those who wish to talk about how the game differs from the original XBOX versions (especially Ninja Gaiden Black (2005)), on the one hand, and those who wish to talk about Sigma as simply a great PS3 game. I would like to focus on the latter point. Sure, NGS is more polished graphically than its predecessor, and has a new playable character -the heavily bosomed Rachel- but it is fundamentally the same game to any but the most fanatical Ninja Gaiden fans. Of course, Tomonubo Itagaki, who was Producer of the XBOX Ninja Gaidens, would disagree with this point: he has publicly denigrated the PlayStation 3 version of the game, perhaps because it was left to his understudies to make whilst he worked on the XBOX 360's Ninja Gaiden 2. But let's put that down to ego and move on.

Sigma is a beautiful game, but its real beauty lies in the complexity of the combat system. The game is quite simply a masterpiece of fast-paced control and combat design. It edges ahead of games such as the excellent Devil May Cry series because of its wonderful balance of defence and attack, magnificently fluid controls and ultra-demanding difficulty level. Its lasting brilliance is shown by how it is able to instil a feeling of pride in a gamer who succeeds in defeating a boss, or mastering a combo move: it is the gaming equivalent of learning a martial art. It is Ninjitsu for thumbs.

Sigma, whilst not significantly "better" than the previous versions of the game, is wonderful despite -or perhaps because of- that. Most significantly, it gives PlayStation 3 owners the chance to play the greatest hardcore action adventure masterpiece of the last twenty years.

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