Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is the Short, Joyous Ride Gaming Needs

There’s something to be said for good trash like Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. You know what I mean. The videogames that you always see on the discount rack for years that just look like a total mess. Games that will never achieve the success they yearn for, but you can’t deny the obvious effort against all odds.

An old colleague used to call them “greasy hamburgers” and I’ve always preferred that to “guilty pleasure”. Because even after all the exploding lingerie stores, zombie clowns, and terror-dactyls, I don’t feel guilty for playing Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. For all its absurdity, it’s a game that owns what it is, boasting a thrilling energy and a sense of pacing missing from far too many modern games.

Doomed But Not Dead

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z knows it’s not high art. Its opening instantly establishes its premise with little other context. All you need to know is it’s a zombie-filled Ninja Gaiden spin-off starring antihero Yaiba Kamikaze. He duels Ninja Gaiden mainstay Ryu Hayabusa, and gets cut in half by Ryu. Kamikaze is resurrected by the cybernetics of the Forge corporation who air drop him into Russia. Then for seven levels across six or so hours of hack’n’slash brawling, you hunt down Ryu, bash zombies, and waste no time charging ahead.

Everything here is breathlessly thrown together, presenting a singular focus that just wouldn’t fly in modern AAA games. You can achieve every character upgrade in a single playthrough. No sections glaringly repeat themselves, always throwing either a new enemy or combination of enemies at you. Your opponents escalate from a mob of zombies to piercing the multiverse to fight an underworld god over the course of your journey. And if you’re really dedicated, it can be cleared in a single sitting.

Gosh how I’ve missed games like this.

With Friends Like These…

Kamikaze’s allies are the voluptuous, sassy scientist Miss Monday and her Ricardo Montalbán-esque employer Del Gonzo. No one among this trio is a good person. They are despicable, duplicitous, and scheming. Gosh I love them.

Monday alternates between insulting and flirting with Kamikaze, as well as sharing anecdotes about her crazy lab experiments. Del Gonzo wants control of the source of the zombie outbreak and responds to the mass destruction of Russia like a mild inconvenience. Kamikaze is out for blood against Ryu and cares little for whatever it takes to get there.

What’s remarkable is how genuinely endearing the cast are despite their utter depravity. Kamikaze might be a homicidal maniac, but it lends him a Trevor Philips-style vibe. He’s an engine of chaos who lost everything to the dull, gloomy Ryu. Of course you side with Kamikaze— the alternative is a pretentiously heroic dead fish. Miss Monday’s a frustrated woman pushed too far by sexism in science. Del Gonzo is so impossibly upbeat that he’s like a Bond villain in on the joke.

That brazen, uncompromising energy runs at the heart of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. Guitar riffs and grunge synth duel each other at the pace of an EDM track. Gore splashes across the screen. And that’s before you’ve even truly delved into the gameplay.

Ninja Blade 2: Zombie Boogaloo

Despite the Ninja Gaiden branding, Yaiba is as chaotic and sloppy as its titular lead. Combos flow freely between your cyber-fist, katana, and cyber-flail, in addition to bonus moves and the ability to rip organs off of special zombies as an alternate weapon. There’s also a rage mode, but I found it mostly useless given you’re less likely to rip off those crucial bonus weapon organs.

Executing both regular and special zombies is a must, with every successful execution dropping extra health to keep you in the fight. Towards the end of the game, a single execution could pull me back from the brink of death long enough to survive the latest stage.

You can even chain normal executions together, though you have to guess at the direction the other stunned zombies are in. It’s clearly a design oversight that the others aren’t visible for easy chaining, but dicing up several in a row feels amazing.

That’s the greatest surprise you’ll find — every input in Ninja Gaiden Z is instantly satisfying.

Kamikaze is flashy and frenetic, drenched in neon blood. The cel-shaded visuals hold up astonishingly well for a late 7th gen game. In lieu of the dull, muted tones of its contemporaries, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is bursting with visual variety. Even the lower polycount works in the game’s aesthetic favor, making every fight look like a bunch of action figures going ham-wild. Kamikaze’s animations are liquid smooth to boot, contrasting well with the goofier zombies.

Everything and the Zombied Kitchen Sink

All the more impressive is how consistently Ninja Gaiden Z keeps throwing new ideas at you. It’s not a long game, and clearly working with a tight budget, yet up until the very end, new threats arise to wet your blade.

Zombies cut in half. Zombie legs that you have to kick in the groin. Electrified bride zombies. Crazy clown zombies with rainbow meat cleavers. Giant orthodox priest zombies that spew literal fire and brimstone who’s heads can be used like a BFG. Vomiting rave girl zombies. Towering robot mecha-dogs with rocket launchers. And that’s still not everything you’ll go up against.

Every enemy plays off of each other. Fire and electricity can mix to create a tornado of death. Puke and electricity generate crystals that can be smashed. Puke and fire can spawn an intense inferno. You can lead enemies into causing friendly fire, or wield their organs against any undead still standing. Sometimes you can work an environmental hazard to help you in kind, like electrified water or blasting air vents.

Bad Chemistry

Unfortunately this leads us to two weakest points of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z — platforming and puzzles. The platforming is basically FromSoft’s Ninja Blade with insta-death traps in later sections. In many ways, that title’s influence screams through brillirantly like a wailing electro-bride, but there’s a few platforming sections that just aren’t pleasant to work your way through. Thankfully, these traversal moments are brief and have checkpoints.

What’s far harder to swallow are the puzzle sections. They aren’t as masochistic, but tend to drag the pacing to a staggering halt until you figure out the exact routine to clear a given section. They’re artificial pace breakers with very little disguising that fact.

However, the fact each puzzle sequence is timed? That’s just needlessly undercutting players’ scores over a mode of play they didn’t sign up for. Even the final boss leans into this, with a greater emphasis on mixing elements than actually fighting opponents.

To The Point (of the Katana)

The silver lining to these blemishes is that regardless of how cumbersome they are, there’s only a handful of each. The brevity of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z saves itself from ever becoming repetitious treadmill. It’s a spicy pepper — sometimes it’s a bit too much, but no matter what, you’ll remember it far more than the banal salad bowl you’d get with something like Assassin’s Creed.

Sure, a bigger serving is good when you want it, but there used to be a choice in the matter. Now if you want anything like Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, you have to either go back at least one console generation, or dig around the indie scene. Even in the latter case, so many indie games right now are chasing after the Metroidvania genre, further bloating their own projects in kind.

There’s something to be said for what can be accomplished with a tight, one and done experience. Something you can pick up, play, and if you want more, you play it again.

A Ninja-Slayer Worth Hiring

You’ve still got an expressive set of attacks to put your own spin on. How Kamikaze charges through is heavily up to you, with no one guaranteed approach to victory. You can track down upgrade tokens that boost your health and elemental resistance. They even stuffed in an extra Streets of Rage tribute arcade mode with unique levels and mechanics of their own. But you aren’t required to do anything more than hop in and have some fun.

Is the story incredibly adolescent? Yes, in just the right way. A few jokes are cringe worthy but mostly it’s a knowingly silly tale that revels in you being the bad guys. It may also be the only game to ever make me laugh at a puke joke, which I thought was impossible, so there’s that?

Will the gameplay sate the hardcore tastes of Ninja Gaiden fans? Kinda. I recommend everyone else just play on Easy, as that’s essentially Normal difficulty for average players. However, it is still a sloppy mess at times, so I imagine some will turn up their noses at that.

If you can look past the blemishes though, there’s a refreshingly slick, rapid fire thrill ride begging to be played. Whether on PC (it’s still available on Steam as of this writing), PS3, or Xbox 360, action fans owe it to themselves to give this one a whirl.

P.S. — Hey there, thanks for reading! This week, we’ve got two quick bonus things to talk about!

#1 — So, if you’re interested and pick up Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z on PC specifically? Be sure to check the Steam community guides. There’s a way to unlock the costumes that were a pre-order bonus, and they’re your best bet for rebinding the controls. The default bindings aren’t terrible, but having the option to change them is wonderful. Should be as simple as poking around a .ini file!

#2 — I know some of you are returning readers from The Escapist. To you, I say welcome back! So happy to have you here! Second Look may be over, but Unabridged Gamer shall live on! Now with videos and the columns you’re accustomed to! We’ll be covering real hidden gems again, so no worries about me suddenly talking about something wildly mainstream, like Outriders. That’d be super weird, wouldn’t it? Stay tuned, citizens of the gaming underground!