Ninja Garden Deuce Options

[Crushinator]

Demo impressions:

• HOLY FUCK AWESOME. The speed of the game is a lot higher than NG.
• You slide to the side instead of rolling to dodge now, and its a shitload slicker.
• There's no more loading when you transition into new rooms, Ryu just kicks the door open RE4 Leon style and goes in busting heads.
• There's also no lag/loading when you go into menus, and you can use the D-pad to switch melee, range, ninpo and items on the fly without hitting start.
• The ninpo is a lot more potent, you can actually aim and target multiple guys now, it goes to kinda an over the shoulder view while Ryu casts it so you can aim.
• The demo starts on Acolyte difficulty, which is equivalent to ninja dog i guess? Its pretty easy, but the enemies still have a lot of HP. Even an ultimate technique isn't guaranteed to kill them in 1 hit!
• Speaking of ult. technique, it seems like you only need 1 yellow orb to charge it fully now. Makes it easier to chain combos.
• The flying swallow can bounce between targets now, so you can hit multiple guys before touching the ground.
• You have a "decimation technique" where if you press Y near an enemy that has been dismembered, you'll excecute him with a stylized finishing move. Good for taking out the gimped stragglers as they can still kill you when they are missing limbs.
• You can shoot the bow while in midair and you can also charge the arrow up for MASSIVE damage by holding down B.
• You can lose permanent segments of your healthbar that are unrecoverable, but special items bring it back. Think like the wounded damage in MGS3.
• The save statues now heal your life ONCE when you first touch them, after that they only save so you can't exploit them.

Demo goes up on the US marketplace 2 am tonight. You can use a japanese XBL account to download it from the JP marketplace if you want it now though There's also an image of the demo you can burn to a DVD and play from your xbox if you can find it online. No mod required, just a regular DVDR works.

[Vitamin D]

I probably can't buy the game until next Friday or so, but I'm for SURE going to (and try and get to play it in-between MGS 4 movies haha). I just got done with the demo, and Ryu still kicks all kinds of ass. The first thing I did was bust out an Izuna Drop, and sure enough, it plays just as fluidly as the first. The differences Crush mentioned are quite significant, especially the quick dash to dodge instead of a roll, and the shortcut menu for your items and weapons (MUCH needed). Also, the Dragon Sword's combos have changed a bit for the better, and the new Ultimate Techniques are SICK haha. The Acolyte path is Easy as hell if you've played through Ninja Gaiden or a DMC, so I breezed through the demo pretty handily. I can't wait to pick this up, I'm likely gonna play the demo some more, it's fun as hell haha.