Topic: Ninja Gaiden & Civ Revolution 360 demos

[Cobra951]

I spent most of last evening on these 2.  I was surprised how good Ninja Gaiden II is.  It's not generally my kind of game.  It's beautiful and very responsive.  They nailed the atmosphere, reminding me very much of the Genesis/MD classic Revenge of Shinobi.  You get all kinds of weapons, powers and moves.  As usual anymore, I'm hanging by the skin of my teeth in such fast and furious contests.  At least on the lower difficulty, I could hold my own.  I liked this a lot more than the DMC 4 demo.  It didn't seem like I was just mashing buttons and hoping to do enough damage to survive.  I could block, attack at 2 strengths, do combos, and magic attacks.  I felt I was in control most of the time.

Civilization Revolution also got a loving treatment in graphics and presentation.  While production, research, and so forth are simplified from what I remember of similar PC games, there is plenty of depth and variety left.  Each turn spans 50 years, which I thought was too much.  I'm hoping that's just a demo limitation.  There is also a number-of-turns limit, but you can play for hours even so.  The whole thing is a lot less intimidating than the last PC Civ game I tried.  The whimsical "advisors" talking gibberish, nicely modeled and textured though they may be, I could take or leave.

[gpw11]

I spent most of last evening on these 2.  I was surprised how good Ninja Gaiden II is.  It's not generally my kind of game.  It's beautiful and very responsive.  They nailed the atmosphere, reminding me very much of the Genesis/MD classic Revenge of Shinobi.  You get all kinds of weapons, powers and moves.  As usual anymore, I'm hanging by the skin of my teeth in such fast and furious contests.  At least on the lower difficulty, I could hold my own.  I liked this a lot more than the DMC 4 demo.  It didn't seem like I was just mashing buttons and hoping to do enough damage to survive.  I could block, attack at 2 strengths, do combos, and magic attacks.  I felt I was in control most of the time.

I was a huge fan of Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox and didn't even notice the things the game often gets criticized for.  That said, I checked out the video review of this and it looked just as good.  The first one was difficult, but a good kind of difficult that made you think about where you were going wrong.  It's good to hear from you that the second is just as fun.

[Cobra951]

The demo certainly is good.  After posting, I read a couple of reviews.  They're very positive.  Gamespot criticized the "middle third" of the game, saying it can be cheap, rather than (as you said) letting you know where you failed and how you need to improve to progress.  They were very happy with the rest of the game.  They also mentioned some generic environments, which are not exposed at all in the demo.  So it isn't perfect, but words like "brilliant" do abound in the press.

[Quemaqua]

Actually, there were a number of more negative reviews that said, at the very least, the story is total garbage.  I have no opinion on it myself as I've not totally dug into the first one.  Also, Cobra, you might want to beware... the first game was supposed to be extremely punishing, and from what I've read the second is supposed to be even worse.

[gpw11]

The first one was difficult, but I never found it as bad as most people seemed to think...probably because when I played it I hadn't played one of these types of games in years and as such kind of went in with a clean slate.  I think if you were coming off of something like Devil May Cry you'd probably  have a hard time.  Button mashing or just throwing out the same combo over and over again is just going to get you killed in NG.  Instead, you have to know when and how to attack, when to posture for positioning, and when to block and counter attack (huge). I may be projecting this a bit, but in retrospect the combat is like a much more in depth version of that found in Assassin's Creed in that you can't just run up to four guys and expect to cut them to pieces. 

[Quemaqua]

Sure, but that didn't make it easy.  It's much harder to time and plan attacks, react to enemy movements, constantly consider position, and keep track of a huge number of different moves which you should really use in context of situation and environment.  Having less of that to worry about is easier, and DMC3 was pretty fucking hard.

[Cobra951]

I don't intend to get it, for several reasons, one of which is that I'm past my prime for twitch games.  Story, though, is irrelevant to me.  We've had this discussion.     I care much more about what I get to do, and how well.

[gpw11]

Sure, but that didn't make it easy.  It's much harder to time and plan attacks, react to enemy movements, constantly consider position, and keep track of a huge number of different moves which you should really use in context of situation and environment.  Having less of that to worry about is easier, and DMC3 was pretty fucking hard.

Yeah, sorry I didn't mean to say I thought it was easy, I just didn't find it all that hard.  I'm basically differentiating between challenging and "there's a room full of enemies that keeps on cheap shotting me".  That's all really.

[Quemaqua]

You know what you should play, Cobra?  Guild Wars.  =D

No, seriously.

[MysterD]

You know what you should play, Cobra?  Guild Wars.  =D

No, seriously.

Oooh, that's a good game!
Good idea.

[ren]

I want to play the Civ demo but it's currently only downloadable for Xbox Live Gold members so I have to wait for god knows how long. lame.

[Cobra951]

1 week.  And yes, it is very lame.  Silvers got that screw job fairly recently, I guess after everyone realized that if you don't do multiplayer, Gold is worthless.