The game is great though, if you overlook the obvious niggles it has a solid fighting system and a plethora of weapons and enemies to chop through. The blood and gore has been ramped up to leave the battlefield looking like a slaughter house when you’re finished with blood and bits lying everywhere. The moves are well animated and the eyecandy is superb, the level design is linear and there are no open world elements at all, so sandbox gamers won’t find much to tempt them. Fans of hard core action and combat will lap this up.

Boss fights are excellent with the bigger meanies providing a suitable challenge, and the slimmer humanoid opponents are fast, agile and most of all packed with their own special moves that can decimate a casual gamer’s health bar in seconds. This game is definitely one for the fans of the series and pitched at the gamer who must master every combo, who can walk through entire combats making the game look simple to the rest of us.

The music is nicely composed and there’s a real sense of tension to some of the pieces, especially during the more crucial battles. The sound in the game is likewise excellent with the bone crunching and limb chopping married to the clash of swords and the swish of steel. The voice work is decent and there are no performances that made us cringe, usually we’re often cringing at some of the dialogue and the voice combined in these kinds of games. The Onimusha series and the Devil May Cry series are often guilty of this.

Enemy AI has a few problems as mentioned earlier, it can get stuck on some objects (this is not a frequent occurrence) but overall it provides a good level of challenge, blocking, defensive movements and offensive attacks/grapples are used to keep you on your toes and some of the enemies can pin explosives to you, so you’ll need to shake them off quickly. The more wounded an enemy is, the more dangerous it becomes since even bodies with one arm, one leg will crawl towards you and stick you with an explosive shuriken.

What Ninja Gaiden 2 lacks however is an online multiplayer, going one on one using the same combat system and move set as the game’s single player would have been a rare treat, providing extra replay value to the title. But it’s not to be in this incarnation either and Xbox Live gamers can only look forwards to competing score wise to see who will become the greatest ninja on the face of the planet. With the AI quibbles, some graphical slowdowns and the annoying camera it feels as if the shiny new graphics, blood and dismemberment aren’t quite enough to lift this game into the halls of greatness.

It’s one that you should at least play to sample the incredibly satisfying combat system, try out the new weapons and see where the story goes in the series. It lacks anything else to make it replayable however, and whilst it unlocks more difficulties when you finish it…most gamers probably never will due to the leapfrogging difficulty and rock hard boss fights in places.