Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is a fantastic spin-off entry to the main series, packed with great combat and stunning visuals.

“Yaiba succeeds admirably because it does what so few intentionally "so bad it's good" games do: It makes everything work.”

Yaiba unfortunately has the handicap of living in the shadow of Ninja Gaiden, but even taking it as its own things reveals problems and frustrations that pervade the game as a whole.

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If a computer generated an elevator pitch for a game based on random, stereotypical gamer interests, it might spit out a jumble like Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. And while that could totally still be awesome, this experience is so mired in frustration that even a few well-timed jokes can’t save the day. Gaiden games have always been challenging, but they’ve also always been fair. Yaiba is not. Instead, it’s unbalanced and arbitrarily punitive, and after the first few hours, it’s not worth putting up with anymore.

Ryu Hayabusa – gaming icon and goody two-shoes – is a little bit too awesome, don’t you think? He’s worked his way through some of the hardest games on the market, hardly breaking a sweat. He’s faced all sorts of fiendish enemies and has come through mostly unscathed. But not anymore – Yaiba Kamikaze, a psychopath ninja, is on his tail. Oh, and there might just be zombies. Lots of zombies. Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is a gross-out comedy action slasher that is entirely unlike the rest of the series – but that's not necessarily all bad.

The mocking dead.

Combat, though it does have its nuances, can be tedious and even starts to become unenjoyable. Visually, the game is also a step back for a series which has seen a worrying decline in quality over the past few years. Put bluntly, if you’re hankering for some Ninja Gaiden, then the recent Vita ports are your best option.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is a terrible disappointment. The heart and soul that made Ninja Gaiden so popular has been sucked out, leaving a shallow husk of a game. It’s best not to mess with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z -- it’s already been zombified.

When it comes to the media we love, there are a few things that have enough cache to immediately draw attention… like dinosaurs. I’m always in for anything with a dinosaur! Zombies used to be at the top of the list too, but then The Walking Dead came along and almost completely ruined zombies by making them boring somehow. When I heard that Yaiba was basically a game about a cyborg ninja that fights zombies, my immediate thought was ‘that sounds awesome!’I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Then, I turned the game on.

With the amount of great action games on the market there is simply no reason that you should give Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z a try. It is a shoddily made, awful mess.

The gameplay is much like the new theme of Ninja Gaiden; a zombie. A mindless, shambling, pathetic, and utterly disgraceful shadow of its former self. Yaiba should be a once in a lifetime level of bad, but Spark Unlimited have already proven just how pathetically low they can sink. The Uwe Boll of video games, Spark continue their trend of ruining decent premises. Yaiba will make you question why you play games, as it certainly made me question it.