[Fix 355 Para Ninja Gaiden 3 Razon Edge
Melvin Amey
In games and in real life, I mean. Right? There is a western videogame producer somewhere snorting over his early-morning Monster Energy Drink, wondering who makes a game where your avatar is a masked, remorseless bladestorm in this day and age? When will the Japanese learn that that isn't what videogames are about anymore?
Developed by Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge is a post-Tomonobu Itagaki Ninja Gaiden game, the series' former director. Ousted after Ninja Gaiden II's release for allegedly sexually harassing female employees, an example of a games "persona" drinking too much of his own creepshow Kool-Aid. Koei Tecmo seemingly made a deal with the devil to turn their most famous franchise into something that was more in line with What Videogames Are About. It has battleships, jet-planes, military guys, helicopters, and deserts, as if to say, "Itagaki is gone, everyone, this is us stepping into modernity."
That above-described post-Itagaki game was called Ninja Gaiden 3 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. I'm told it was an unbalanced, dysfunctional steamer of a game, blorped out to nobody's satisfaction. That is not this game that we're talking about. We're talking about Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, the refined re-release, specifically released to zero celebration or excitement at the Nintendo Wii U's launch. I won't wine and dine the Wii U's forgotten launch-window games, if that's what you're thinking. I recently had the misfortune of purchasing the Wii U edition of Darksiders II on sale, quickly learning that it was about as fun as attempting to find one's way out of the Zynga employee parking garage in San Francisco, California, trying so hard to block out the worker's excitable, self-important side-conversations echoing through the concrete structure.
No, we aren't defending the Wii U, and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge came out on PS3 and Xbox 360, too, so knock it off if you were thinking that, and if you were, you should probably call your orthodontist back, your braces need to be tightened. This is a singular game we're talking about. What we have here is an underrated, passed-over game that is very conscious of what it is, delivering a strong message about game design, violence, and Japan's place in the world.
It's obvious by the scenery in Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge's very first mission set in London's rainy streets that ninjas are vicious psychopaths, and real men fight with guns these days. Real men use batons. Real men wear night vision goggles. Swords are for crazies. Real men fucking SWEAR, man!
Heroic bloodshed is a term frequently used in reference to action-director / dove-stroker John Woo, a Hong Kong film auteur in the 80's. It's okay for a hero to go buck-nutty if it's in service of heroism, and motivated by emotion. He's speaking with action, and if it's graceful, and beautiful, then it's heroic, in spite of its violence. Ryu originated in 1988 in the arcades and on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and he is an ageless 1980's hero. He's John McClane with a katana blade. Today though, he's a horrifying dinosaur. Have you seen A Good Day To Die Hard (that's Die Hard 5)? It's unwatchable. Mostly because of the bad jokes and its insistence on being a film with a massive scale. It laughs at John McClane, telling him, "hey this is the modern era, man, you can't just yipee-kay-yay whoever you damn please." Anyway, the point is that it forces Bruce Willis, who seems like a genuinely good guy, to realize that he's getting old, and being a looney-cartoony 1980's action hero isn't okay anymore. Leave this to John McClane junior.
There is always a way. You're Ryu "Ninja Gaiden" Hayabusa! You're a free-falling laser-razor. You don't care about consequences. You get the job done and you answer to nobody. Ryu is so determined that the player affects his clarity of vision. You want to kill everything. You want to survive at any cost, humanity be damned. And that's weird and disturbing to certain people.
Ryu shows no remorse. After the first mission, his arm is cursed by an alchemist with a red coat and pretty cool fencing saber. The curse is called The Grip of Murder. The alchemist says that it's payback for all the blood Ryu has spilled over the years, (across all those videogames). Yet, Ryu does not lament this. He doesn't pity himself. Half the time, he just sticks to the mission to figure out the alchemist's real plan, accepting that, yes, he has killed more people than the Texas justice system, so this blubbering, infected arm is deserved. He isn't even brooding or self-loathing like protagonists in games published by Electronic Arts, your Dead Space, your Crysis, your Battlefield kind of real American hero.
(It should be noted that the above-mentioned games were made by people from Washington, Germany, and Sweden, respectively. It sure is easy to appeal to the lowest common American denominator. Have a 4-pack per day voice. Adore PAYBACK. Etcetera.)
And yet, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge has gotten a bad rap. In this case, we have a game worth defending because it's essentially about the old guard having to bow out. This is an action-combat game in a first-person shooter's world. This is a stoic protagonist in a landscape where a producer is yelling at the obedient, crunch-time developers that, "you gotta make them feel for the guy's conflict! This is the most important thing in the game! If we can't connect with them here, they won't stick with the game!"
There's this generation of t-shirt wearing chumps that seem to only read videogame news sites, chugging down re-worded press releases like it's plain, white yogurt, musing on the topic in a loud voice to nobody in particular, as though yogurt needed to be declared good or evil right there on the spot. These are the industry-followers that have enough money to feel in the know about games, and to parade that knowledge around on a leash as though they had tamed the thing, but not enough money to feel comfortable getting a haircut that makes them look less like Eric Draven from The Crow. It's my perception from the stink of the bile on the comments sections on game sites that the following things are commonly accepted, because, I mean, c'mon, guys, we can all agree on this, right? It's safe to say this? We all agree on these things?
People have been inventing the recognized canon of accepted facts for thousands of years. It's tribalism. At the heart of everything, you just want to feel safe that we agree on a few things. Videogames, and to some extent, consumerism, is tribalism.
It's fashion. It's choice. It's agreement that one thing is best for the following reasons. That isn't enough for some people though. Why simply exist when you could also WIN? Sometimes, the other tribes need to be eradicated for one's fanaticism to fully make sense. It's addition by subtraction.
It's becoming harder to interact with games like Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge because there are fewer of them and because our vocabulary for understanding them has atrophied a little. We know how to criticize and discuss the modern console wars, we have that same conversation every day, over and over ("Fuck the Kinect, it's spying on you!"). Now that the arena has been established, and it still takes up so much time, some have taken to striking down games that are ambiguous or on less-popular systems. They focus instead on games and companies that will ENGAGE them in conversation. Through that engagement, these fans hope to replicate the feeling of collaborating each day at grade-school recess.
That longing to converse is the voice of the industry, and the voice is increasingly incoherent. We want to know that we're on the right side, that we're talking about the right thing. People that play games are still an insecure bunch.
There's still doubt that your investment in a piece of software is justified. Because your whole life couldn't be a lie, right? Go ahead. Squeeze some more blood from that stone. Make Mass Effect 3 into the game that you assumed it would be. Demand that it end properly!
The ending of the Mass Effect 3 was this ambiguous three-way choice. Your character can destroy all life in the galaxy, destitute and horrible, as you have observed, these space-species constantly warring. On the other hand, you, in all your wisdom, can declare yourself king (or queen) of the robotic space-faring murder-machines, and assume you can judge life and death benevolently. Or there's option three, you can force all organic and synthetic life to merge and co-exist.
The sound of a backed up toilet whirled in every fan's mind when confronted with this choice. I know I sat there for a bit, trying to work it out, the atmosphere above planet earth burning up like the California hills.
Ambiguity and mystery in games? Fascinating. Did you know there's only one guide for Ninja Gaiden 3 on GameFAQs? Did you know there are NONE for Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge? You're just gonna have to figure out the sphinx's mystery on your own. This game will itch the juiciest parts of your reflex nodule, ones that you hadn't used in ages because modern games are about separating fans into categories and then leading them down a corridor. We've been tutored to know that choice is good.
Q: This game or that game?
A: Which one got a higher score from IGN? Okay, give me the review. I want to scroll to the bottom and read the comments. I want to see what the people are saying. Well it looks like people are saying it's too short. Or the multiplayer is already dead. Or the open world is kind of empty. Or I'm sick of games like this, why do they keep rebooting games, how about something new?
Do you see where this is going? Game fans are talking in circles with each other, repeating news story language and vocabulary that the journalists summoned from a publisher's marketing copy, all to convince you that you're making a good investment, gradually siphoning off the ability to criticize.