Ninjas are cool, right? Take a look back at the great ninja craze of the 1980s and you’ll find the black-clad assassins in almost everything from cheesy flicks like American Ninja to the totally tubular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While I generally agree with the sentiment that ninjas are cool — cooler than those dirty pirates, anyway — no one should take the majority of ’80s ninja films seriously. Those quick cash-ins delivered uninspired performances that serve as ill-fitting tributes to the source material despite good intentions. I adore TMNT to this day, and it’s in no way the worst offender, but American attempts at making movies about ninjas generally fall well short of acceptable entertainment — not to mention the fact that they have almost nothing to do with real ninjas, who were silent assassins.
The Ninja Gaiden series isn’t big on stealth, either, and that’s fine. But rather than try to expand on the series’ history of intense action, developer Team Ninja set on a different approach for the third chapter in the series, one that cribs trends from contemporary blockbusters like Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed. As a whole, Ninja Gaiden 3 appears to represent a Japanese developer’s attempt to add a Western touch to an established brand. This philosophy, while possibly sincere, presents a mash-up of ideas that often fumble the concepts they’re based on. I certainly don’t mean to rant against Japanese game design or mock their games here. Yet trying to look past the obvious inspirations behind Ninja Gaiden 3 is like trying to ignore the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo — once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
