Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360, 2008)

Ehhhhh... Where to start. Ninja Gaiden II while it does look pretty good, it in my mind just still doesn't really stick out as a huge Next-Gen look. It's really more frustrating than it is fun to me. While it's pretty sweet cutting through your enemies watching their head as well as all their limbs go flying, the camera is a pain most of the time. You'll find yourself constantly trying to adjust the camera to see who you need to attack next, and if your camera is out of position you'll find yourself attacking/diving in the wrong direction a lot of the time. Of course it wouldn't be a team ninja game unless it was quite difficult and if you're like me, I'm more of a recreation player and don't really try to "hone" my gaming skills to be able to beat games that are so tough. It really doesn't give you much of an option for an easier difficulty either, it's tough or tougher and it doesn't help when you can only cary three minor healing items and three major healing items at one time. These go very quickly when you're in a battle and a character gets one powerful attack on you that takes 3/4 of your life away! They mention how it's good b/c your life regenerates, while this is true it only regenerates when there's no more enemies around. Also with your health gauge when you start out your life gauge will be full, but then as you take damage your "maximum" amount of health consistantly goes down, so after you defeat your enemies and your life regenerates it only regenerates to your new maximum amount of health depending on how much damage you took in the fight. Your maximum health will remain as such until you use a healing agent and get it back up to 100%. I really emphasize on this because a lot of my friends didn't understand the concept, they heard "regenerated health" and didn't think anymore of it until I told them. As I was saying, if you enjoy really tough games, and annoying camera controls don't bother you, this is probably your cup of tea. As for me, I'm probably selling my copy in the very near future.