Ninja Gaiden 3 Made Me Feel Like A Monster

I've recently had some downtime from school, and I've spent a good chunk of it playing videogames. Since I do not have an infinite amount of either time or money, I like to sometimes pop in and take a look at what demos are available on Xbox Live. I'll deal with some of the other demos I've played in later posts (looking at you, RE6!), but for now I'd like to talk about the Ninja Gaiden 3 demo.

First of all, I'd just like to say that I haven't played much of any Ninja Gaiden game. I've played a few levels of the original NES game and I've tried the demos of Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3. Something I noticed is that the third installment is much less difficult than the second one. In fact, it's almost ridiculously easy. Mash X and Y and press LT sometimes. There, that's how you beat Ninja Gaiden 3. There's very little flow or danger in the combat. You just mash and mash and mash. Sometimes when you build up a combo, the speed and the visceral gore makes the game kinda fun, but enemies spawn so frequently that it quickly loses its charm.

Anyway, one section of the demo really stands out in my mind. After plowing through lots and lots of goons with your katana, you confront a terrified henchman, slowly walking up to him whilst he throws away his weapon, pulls off his obligatory bad guy ski-mask and desperately begs for his life. He backs away from you and tells you that all he's trying to do is feed his family. After a while, he backs into the side of a truck. He's got his hands raised in the air and he's terrified. And you have to kill him to proceed. You have to hold Y to sink your sword into his shoulder, slowly puuling it down towards his stomach. "You're...not...human." he proclaims before falling to the ground dead. And then the demo just continues. This made me feel sick.

Now, from what I've played, the protagonist and player character Ryu Hayabusa is never set up to be a bad guy. Sure, I guess he's kind of an anti-hero, but during gameplay you're not supposed to feel remorse over his actions as he's slicing limbs off, you're supposed to think that it's totally badass. I'm not sure why the section I described above is even in the game. Is it supposed to be cool? Because it's just sick. Is it supposed to show that Ryu is ruthless? Yeah, I kinda got that when he was slicing cockney goons into mince meat without flinching or displaying any kind of emotion (also, as Yahtzee pointed out, cockney is the worst accent possible when having to constantly talk about ninjas). The section is a jarring shift of tone. One minute, you're running around London, summoning giant fire dragons and the next you're killing a terrified, helpless man for no real reason. At least the other goons tried to put up a fight. At least they were a threat.