Killer7 SINdicate

[Krizzx]

Proteus is like a more gory Doom.



This is suppose to be like Hexen



Bushiden - This shit looks awesome



This is scheduled for 2022. I want it.





This is a Japanese retro pc stile fps. Surprisingly gory.





And, holy shit?! When I looked at the second trailer and saw who made this game. Its like a bunch of pro. One of the devs from the last guardian, the Secret of Mana music maker, Hiroki Kikuta, someone from Metal Gear, but this shit is only for VR...damnit.

[Jack]

Ahh man, I was going to start up a thread called "RETROMANIA!!!!!!" but this makes more sense since I was mostly going to talk about good indie games that imitate ancient 80s-early 2000s games.

I just preordered Cyber Shadow two days ago and I fucking can't wait for it. It's the spiritual Ninja Gayden successor I've been waiting for. The Messenger sucks. I hated the music. I hated how goofy it is, Messenger is similar to Streets of Rage 4 in the sense that you can tell it's made by a bunch of nerds trying to make nerdy Scott Pilgrim shit look cool. Oldschool Ninja Gaiden & Streets of Rage were extremely gritty. NG NES games actually had blood & gore during the cutscenes. I hated the open world metroid bullshit of The Messenger. Messenger is nothing like Ninja Gaiden.

https://yachtclubgames.com/cyber-shadow/
The trailers have all sucked.

I didn't care for most of the gameplay vids I saw, but what sold me is seeing this page filled with gifs of the gameplay.
https://yachtclubgames.com/2020/10/cybe ... nt-update/
Holy fuck that looks like a NG game of my dreams.


You couldn't make a game like this on the NES, coz it would've been a slow-down ridden mess with constant sprite-flicker.
It basically looks like what a NG game would play like if it were programmed on a Sega Genesis instead of a Nintendo. It still uses Nintendo gfx but the gameplay is more fastpaced than the NES games were and there's much more crazy shit going on. Shinobi games are much slower & more methodical than NG. Shinobi games are good too though, it's just not a Ninja Gaiden. Shinobi 3 sorta played like Ninja Gaiden due to the wall jump & run but it's still nowhere near as fast as a Ninja Gaiden game. The optimal way to play NG is to speedrun through it.

About the only thing I don't like so far about Cyber Shadow is the music. It sounds too much like a gameboy.
When I think of NG, I think of tunes that sound on par with the best of Ryu Umemoto & Yuzo Koshiro.



NG songs have that Karate Kid & Rocky-like martial artist appeal to them, they have this inspirational vibe of commanding you to do your best and never give up no matter the odds. (Street fighter 2 also had the same vibe, which is why those songs are still inspiring minds to this day.)
Even the titles of the NG songs are directly telling you to never give up no matter what. I miss that. You never see that type of message from modern Western media any more. It's still rampant in Japan though, but in Japan they make it a clear collectivist effort where everyone must try their best to over come the odds.




BTW, the man, the myth, the legend Tomonobu Itagaki is back.
https://www.gematsu.com/2021/01/dead-or ... gaki-games
Yeah I may have talked a lot of shit about him at times, but I'm willing to give him another chance to prove himself coz no one else makes games the way he does. Itagaki is like the Yoshiaki Kawajiri of gaming.
They're very similar since neither of them get the respect they're owed within their respective industries.

He's trying to get signed on by Microshit. I can't hate him for that, coz the only reason Itagaki's games were such masterpieces is coz Itagaki is an Elitist who needs the highest budgets available to him, with the best technology possible offered to him to make the game of his vision. That's why Devil's Turd faltered. He wasn't being sent their best. I also believe that a lot of his programmers actually stayed with Koei, since Ni-oh has shown that they can still do NG style combat, the problem is that Team Ninja lacks a consistent vision so their games often only have one good aspect (the combat) but are shit at everything else.
Itagaki even does babes way better. Under Itagaki, you get grown sexy ass bitches like Rachel, Momiji & that naked Kimono Jap-Russian girl from Devil's Third. All three of those girls are a 10 out of 10, when I first saw Rachel,Momiji & Kimono-Bitch from Devil's Third, I legit thought they were some of the hottest women I've ever seen.
Under Koei's Team Ninja, you get a bunch of Big titty 13 year old girls in thongs and a bunch of chomo shit. It's a yuge turn off.

Itagaki is the type of guy who actually wastes as much time creating the lore & mythos of his games (He even did this with Devil's Third, which seemed like it had an awesome background story, that you don't actually see in the game.) as he does with the gaemplay.

I'm not sure if Itagaki truly understands what it means to get owned by Microshit though. Microshit is hardcore American, and America is currently pushing hard on that transgender bullshit, trying to force it as a world wide issue rather than a localized Ameritard one.
Itagaki's games can only truly exist in a Japan-centric culture or a Pre 2010s USA. His style is too extreme, too manly, too bleeding edge, too hardcore. Americans won't be able to handle a pure Itagaki game coz they'd cry that his games are too hard and force him to patch it.
Not an exaggeration. This happened to Streets of Rage 4, too many crybabies complained about how Mania (the hardest difficulty setting) was too hard, so the fanbase forced them to patch it, to make Mania mode even easier than it already was. (Mania is so fucking hard that I beat that mode the first day I got the game, LOL!)
Americans only like hardgames that are similar to Dark Souls, games that aren't hard at all. They just have a learning curve.
The Modern-American would also cry about how Itagaki makes nothing but sexy men & women in his games. Ryu & DevilThird-Nukem are manly as fuck! They would offend the modern American who only want to see guys that look exactly like them, neckbeards! I fear that Itagaki doesn't understand what Americans are any more. He seems to think that Americans are still those kids who call you a faggot in online games, and play hard to win, through raw constant competition. (I actually mostly stopped playing online games, because of Americans! Americans won't stop cheating with their fucking aimbots & wall hacks.)

Itagaki is a Westaboo. He always preferred USA over Japan, coz USA during the 80s-early 2000s were all about constant rugged, & manly competition to see who's the fastest, & strongest. Itagaki's games reflected that culture, which is why something like Ninja Gaiden is way more popular in the USA (despite how it's a game steeped in Japanese culture) than it ever was in Japan. I don't see a Ninja Gaiden (made in Itagaki's style where each game had a 10 out of 10 butt naked babe that had to be saved by Tom Cruise-faced Ryu Hayabusa. My fan theory is that Ryu is a green eyed Ainu, AYY LMAO!) being popular in modern-day USA though. Modern USA even called the Japanese guy from Civilization 6 White-washed coz they claim that his face looks too White, when he just looks like a Japanese guy to me.
That's the problem with modern Americans though, they don't respect foreign cultures at all. They want every culture to conform with Twitter.

We don't deserve Fallen-DevilGod Itagaki, but I still want to see at least one final Action masterpiece classic from him.
The sad part is reality. Sony hates him. Microsoft is fucking gay. Sega would've been a perfect fit if they still existed. (ironic how Itagaki's games scream SEGA Attitude but he's never actually made a Sega game outside of Dead or Alive 2.) I honestly think that Nintendo will be the only ones who are willing to do business with him, but Nintendo's tech fucking sucks and not at all a good fit for Itagaki and his genius. This man needs a nuclear arsenal to give birth through the explosion of his ideas. Nintendo Switch would just limit what he could do on the action platform coz Switch is weaker than my motherfucking Iphone. It's not even a 12, but it's still stronger than Switch. I can run Xcom 2 on Iphone with no lag at all, unlike the Switch version which runs at 8 frames per second, as a turn based game, AYY LMAO!

The DEVILGOD Itagaki does not deserve to be relegated into Nintendo-hell. I don't plan on buying the retarded next gen systems ever but I'd buy his game on PC, coz no matter what you can't live without a Crapple or Microshit pc.

[Krizzx]

I remember reading that Itagaki was making a comeback some time ago, but I wasn't expecting him to make his own studio. Where did he get the money? After Valhalla closed, I was sure he was broke.

Microsoft is currently making a huge push in Japan. A bigger push than ever before, while Sony is making a huge shift toward Americanization.



Microsoft is trying to onboard a lot of Japanese devs, so this might be a good thing.


I was expecting the Good Life to be some kind of murder mystery of Twin Peaks themed game. Apparently, its about people who can turn into animals.



Eastward looks interesting. I'll probably pick this up when it releases.

[Jack]

I played the shit out of Bot Vice's demo when I first got Switch, I finally bought the new version a few days ago.

It's like a harder, faster version of Wild Guns, & Pocky & Rocky.

I love Stage 2's theme music.

This game is fucking crazy. That's the type of action that you don't see from modern games any more. It hs more explosions than a Contra game.
Fucking great game. If indies didn't exist, I honestly wouldn't buy any games outside of Nintendo's umbrella. I'm uniterested in practically everything else.

After Valhalla closed, I was sure he was broke.

I just assumed that he got a loan based off of his previous prestige. It wouldn't be that hard to convince some stupid rich Money-marks, to fund him.
He does have a good track record outside of Devils Third,but even then D-third itself had great lore. I ain't never played the game, and I think it looks awful but I recall reading about the background story & mythos when D3 first came out, and it gave me flash backs of reading the Ninja Gaiden mythos for the first time.
Itagaki does a damn good job of creating the world history for his games, making it seem much larger than it actually is.
It actually annoys me that so many stuck up game journalists always make fun of his writing when there's nothing wrong with Itagaki's writing style.
He adds so much lore which adds context to what you're doing in the game, and fully actualizes to you why Ryu and his clan do what it is that they do.

Ryu's clan are the reason why Demons & the Supernatural are a conspiracy theory, coz they fucking kill all of them before the demons get a chance to take over any large-scale civilizations. We only ever see the demons taking over cities. NG1 took place entirely in a North Korea styled dictatorship. NG2 had Ryu globetrotting to many cities that were in the process of being taken over.
In the France level, you even see some Blonde babe get her head bitten off by a huge werewolf.
Shit, that modern Itagaki would never get away with today. (For some reason Last of US 2 can, prob coz the game has zero gameplay and the shit-for-brains writing makes game journalists feel smart.)

I remember reading that Itagaki was making a comeback some time ago, but I wasn't expecting him to make his own studio. Where did he get the money? After Valhalla closed, I was sure he was broke.

Microsoft is currently making a huge push in Japan. A bigger push than ever before, while Sony is making a huge shift toward Americanization.



Microsoft is trying to onboard a lot of Japanese devs, so this might be a good thing.

LOL look at the date of that old ass video. (I could go on about how Yellowflash is just some right wing grifter, but I watch him sometimes too just for a laugh coz the SJWs he makes fun of are that damn retarded.) Kax & I posted much more updated sales figures at the Nintentard thread, and it turned out that Xbox Suck X barely sold anything in Japan, as expected. I knew from the get-go that the narrative of Japan suddenly wanting to buy XseriesX, was bullshit fake-news coz there weren't any games announced that the Japs would've bought it for. If japs didn't even buy 360 for Blue Dragon, why would they buy a newer X system that doesn't even have any games yet? Hell, Xone itself has no games, lol!

If the Original Xbox couldn't move units in Japan, then I don't think any attempt on Japan is ever going to do it. The Original Xbox actually had a great library of Japanese games. I'd say it was about on par with Sega Genesis's library. Granted a lot of Xbox's games were originally supposed to be Dreamcast games.




I've been playing the hell out of Wrestling Empire, which uses collision detection based combat like Virtua Fighter.


Speaking of Wrestling, I find it funny how Stardumb seems to be going all out on trying to get Ghoulia to replace Hana Kimura.

That Italian bitch actually isn't that bad looking, she just looked liked crap when standing next to Hana, lol.

I hope Mr Dickie releases more of his games on the Switch since Wrestling Empire is still in the top 20 downloaded games on the Switch store. He quit selling his games on Steam coz nobody bought them. I want me some motherfucking 3d version of School Days.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... n_US&gl=US
It's like Bully & River City Ransom but it plays out more like Persona's school schedule, in that it's up to you to forge relationships, factions & actually going to classes & shit. The cops will come and beat the fuck out of you if you don't go to school.

Empire is an ode to classic Aki wrestling games of old. Aki team are the same peeps who made Def Jam Vendetta & the Yakuza PSP games, which actually played like a mixture of DJ Vendetta, Yakuza & a Wrestling game.

Right now I have me a Promotion based off of Cobra Kai, Street Fighter (which includes Street Fighter universe series like Final Fight, & Rival Schools. I also added in Darkstalkers, Resident Evil, Megaman), I have B rank SNK promotion, A Hardcore Bloodsport Gladiator fighting ring featuring Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct & Mike Tyson (I have Bruce Lee in Street Fighter since Bruce Lee is a default character in Wrestling Empire. Bruce saved me the time of having to create Fei Long.), I have a comic book promotion run by Trump (Who's also a default character. I wanted him to have a promotion-rivalry with Vince McMahon, just like irl.) It's mostly Marvel characters. Batman is the only DC character I have so far. I have another promotion that's supposed to be Sega, but so far it's mostly Dead or Alive whores, Ryu Hayabusa & Nico Robin. I left the Hollywood faction alone, and I left any of the default WWE, NJPW, etc. characters that I felt like keeping, with Vince Mcmahon's promotion and he has the largest crew. The Street Fighters have the 2nd biggest crew though. I thought the Tekken Mortal Kombat faction would be the largest but then I realized that I actually hate most of Tekken's character designs and I don't give a shit about MK characters after Armageddon.


I legit don't understand what the hype is over the new MK series. Damn near everything these days is extremely manufacured by corporations. It's not grass roots any more. When you look at how raw & badass MK looked back in the PS2 era, and compare it to how fucking lame it looks now. You'd swear we were going back in time coz the new shit looks so bland. It doesn't really have an art style.
OG MK, looked as trashy as an Image Comic Book, but that's what made MK so damn awesome.
That was an actual menu screen in Deception.


I loved how MK characters used to look like a bunch of random Metal-heads & Slutty Metal-head groupies back in the 90s & early 2000s.
I hate the new MK shit, where Kitana & Mileena now look like Asians. I vastly prefer their Middle Eastern Arabian dancer look. OG MK used to look full blown Testosterone like an Itagaki game.

I don't understand the character designs for the new MK games. They just look like a bunch of random cos-play nerds now. Although Scorpion & Sub-Zero still look badass. Kinda hard to fuck them up though, when they're just generic ninja.
Modern MK looks like design by committee, where they try to represent every race, ethnicity & gender, and they all act the same American way despite how most of the cast aren't even motherfucking American, AYY LMAO. Half of them aren't even from this world yet they still act like Liberal Americans.

I'd say that's bizarre, but that's bascially how all Western games are, these days.
Which is why I'm not sure if it's a good idea for Itagaki to sell his talents to Microsoft. They're not going to allow Itagaki to make the games he wants. Part of the reason why Itagaki was such a rock star back then is coz Microsoft allowed him to do whatever the hell he wanted.
He seems to think that the USA is still edgy. Itagaki has a similar mindset about Japan that I have. He views Jap culture as a bunch of stiffy uptight pricks who waste too much damn time fudging over pointless formalities & traditions just to appease useless boomer fucks who don't do anything, except exist and profit off of Gen Xers like Itagaki.
It's the main reason why Koei Tecmo kicked out Itagaki after they bought out Tecmo, and why he practically can't get a job anywhere in Japan, because Itagaki is such an asshole that completely disrespects Japanese-norms, that nobody in Japan wants to risk hiring him. (His games sell like shit in Japan. Tiny Scrawny Jap bois are pedos mang. You have to be if you don't find Rachel, Momiji & Russian Jap Devil Turd bitch, sexy.)

It's also what makes him so badass though. The dude is a natural dissident and his games reflect that.
No one ever made Action games like he did, before he did it, and no one ever made fighting games like he did, before he did it. (Just keep him away from balancing fighting games tho.)

I'm still fucking laughing that Itagaki wasted so much of his Devils Third production time doing nothing but partying with strippers & hanging out with Japense wrestlers. It shocked me to find out that Itagaki is actually a pretty big guy. Which is also probably another reason why he's not a push over like the typical Jap-wuss who just allows corporations to step all over them.

[CENSORED]

Microsoft is trying to onboard a lot of Japanese devs, so this might be a good thing.

They've tried this every single time, why should this time be any different? Every console they made, they tried to garner a japanese or at least japanophile audience only to abandon that idea completely just a year or two into the console's lifespan. With OG xbox they had all those dreamcast ports, xbox360 they had sukaguchi's games (blue dragon and lost odyssey which sucked), xbox one they were bankrolling Swery's D4 and that platinum games dragon game before pulling out of both. They even released a spiritual sequel to panzer dragoon on kinect nobody bought.

Why would it be any different this time? Most importantly why do they keep trying lol. Sony has been niche in japan for a while because all console gaming had become niche in japan by that point, the switch is popular specifically because you can play it on the go like a handheld.

Older Itagaki games were more successful in the west than they ever were in Japan, specifically because gamers in the west were normal people who enjoyed action and beautiful men & women. Nowadays westerners enjoy getting AIDS, getting robbed, getting murdered, having their culture destroyed and their freedoms taken away, aborting babies and turning their children into eunuchs if they don't outright murder them by sending them to be beheaded in some third world country, so I don't see Itagaki relating to modern audiences too well because the games he made are you know, good and fun to play lol.
I do wonder what he's gonna do. I agree with Jack that his projects usually need a huge budget, while stuff like DMC5 can be made on a relatively small one (hence why the low sales of DMC5 are considered a triumph. An Itagaki game would need to push a lot more copies to be successful.)

[Jack]

Older Itagaki games were more successful in the west than they ever were in Japan, specifically because gamers in the west were normal people who enjoyed action and beautiful men & women. Nowadays westerners enjoy getting AIDS, getting robbed, getting murdered, having their culture destroyed and their freedoms taken away, aborting babies and turning their children into eunuchs if they don't outright murder them by sending them to be beheaded in some third world country,

I legit don't understand Americans, and I live here. I'm willing to bet that at least half of the populace in the USA, doesn't understand Americans at all, coz Americans seem to have changed what & who they are, over night. Biden has literal Fat White guy Trannies dressed up as little girls in a dress as his secretary of health, AYY LMAO! I really don't understand what was so bad about Trump. If we had 5 more years of him, I'd be a multi-millionaire just sitting on my ass coz that's how much my property values went up under him.

After seeing that whole Gamestop Hedge fund Stock scandal though.

(YoungRip is a Blood. No wonder why he has such a solid comprehension of what the American government actually is, gangsters.)
It's easy to see that the 1% fucking hate it when anyone who's not part of their club gets obscenely rich without their consent.
Only the Inbred Blue Bloods are allowed to get rich by sitting on their ass, & doing nothing.

Meanwhile, I truly am considering moviing back to Asia, to forcibly protect my shit or go down dying to protect what's fucking mine, FROM THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT! Asia loved Trump coz he kept China & Israel off of our ass. Israel already attacked Damascus, the first day Biden was in office. I tried preventing that by voting for Trump. TOO BAD, Americans are so fucking stupid. They don't understand that everything that the media tells you about Trump is a lie. Everything they're saying is actually true of Biden.

so I don't see Itagaki relating to modern audiences too well because the games he made are you know, good and fun to play lol.
I do wonder what he's gonna do. I agree with Jack that his projects usually need a huge budget, while stuff like DMC5 can be made on a relatively small one (hence why the low sales of DMC5 are considered a triumph. An Itagaki game would need to push a lot more copies to be successful.)

Even Nioh sold more than the avg Itagaki game does lol. Itagaki games sold well during their era, about 1 million to 2 million copies. He was always more of a prestige guy that you dump millions into regardless of how badly the game actually does, which is similar to how Hideous Kojima is regarded.
Itagaki games probably did make back the budget & a profit during its era, but I don't see that happening in the modern era at all.

FYI Cyber Shadow is shit. Aight it's not shit, but it's basically like what Nioh is to Ninja Gaiden. It's good for what it does, but is in no way shape or form, a good replacement for what Ninja Gaiden is.
First off, WHY THE FUCK DOES CYBER SHADOW PLAY MORE LIKE A MEGAMAN X GAME! IT HAS THE STUPID SPIKE 1-hit kill PLATFORM PUZZLES, THE SAME STUPID CHARGED UP ATTACKS, THE SAME CHARACTER WHO STARTS OUT USELESS, BORING & SLOW BUT EVENTUALLY GAINS POWER-UPS.

I agree with most of the negative reviews.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/INSUma/re ... ed/861250/
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Zengaku/r ... ed/861250/
I hate most of the brownnosers who act as if Cyber Shadow were anything like the Ninja Gaiden games, when that's the main reason why I don't like it (It's nothing like Ninja Gaiden!!!!), and wish I could refund it but I bought it on the Switch.

Moreover, why the fuck does the Cyber Shadow character play more like Zero from Megaman X than he does Ryu Hyabusa? You have the same exact wall slide jump ability. the same exact dash ability, the same exact charged attack ability.
Why did the asshole who made this game market it as a Ninja Gaiden when it clearly plays more like Megaman X? MMX is a great series. In fact, I was debating between buying the entire MMX collection + Casltvania Anniversary collection when it was on sales vs Cyber Shadow. Cyber Shadow cost as much as those 3 games combined. I went with Cyber Shadow coz I love Ninja Gaiden!
Did this guy play Ninja Gaiden? Why is the Cyber Shadow ninja so weak? He loses 3 life bars each time he gets hit. Ryu Hyabusa is actually very tanky, but the fucking Cyborg Ninja feels as light & weak as a feather.

Worse of all, CYBER SHADOW HAS BACKTRACKING! The level layouts flow more like Order of Ecclesia (Quasi-Metroidvania) rather than a straight forward action game, except you have no hub.

That's another thing, I was promised a fast-paced high octane action game but what I got was a mid-paced Megaman influenced game, and it fucking has backtracking just like a Mega Man X game!
I've been fucking bamboozled! I wish I could refund this piece of shit. It's not a bad game at all. It's just not a Ninja Gaiden game. Had I known that it was just a Megaman X game cos-playing as a NG, then I would've got the MMX collection instead!
It doesn't even play like the MM Zero games. If it did, I'd be complaining far less coz Zero is way more heavy on the action, like a Ninja Gaiden game.


I even turned on my Retrocade to play the 3 NES NG games to see if I remembered them wrong. Nope, they still play the same as ever. NG games are like the Sonic the Hedgehog of Ninja games. All you do is run forward and try to beat the stage as fast as you can while running & attacking everything that gets in your way.
The challenge of a Ninja Gaiden game should revolve around crowd control, knowing when to jump over an opponent and then attack them from behind or when to jump+attack to land on the platform before the enemy pushes you off.
That's how NG difficulty should be balanced. Cyber Shadow's difficulty feels more like a Megaman game, in that you're spending half of your time navigating through platform puzzles, and you have to rely on the sepcial skills that you picked up through the game.


That's not what I fucking play Ninja Gaiden for! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME THAT RYU HAD TO WASTE 6 or 7 STAGES BEFORE GETTING A FUCKING DOUBLE JUMP, OR A SUPER DASH? OH WAIT, HE NEVER HAD THOSE ABILITIES COZ RYU IS SUCH A BADASS THAT HE DOESN"T NEED SPECIAL SKILLS. ALL HE NEEDS ARE HIS BASIC SWORD SLASH AND THE ABILITY TO DUCK!
You can't even duck in Cyber Shadow, lol! Which was jarring, but I let it slide so long as the rest of the game feels as fastpaced as a NG.
NOPE! Cyber Shadow is not a slow game, but it's also not this constant battle with an endless horde of enemies that the entire NG series is.

Objectively Cyber Shadow is prob a low 8 (it's not a bad game at all), but as a NG fan it's a fucking 4 for me dog. Fuck this game!
BTW the music sucks. The music in the game is passable, but it's not Ninja Gaiden music.
Ninja Gaiden music is supposed to be funky as fuck.

NG NES games have always had music that get extremely pumped to run, jump & kill.
For Fuck's sake, NG's NES music goes hard as fuck!


Every single song from Cyber Shadow that I've heard so far sounded like it wanted to be as dramatic sounding as that Mine stage theme from NG1. That's fine, but where the fuck is my fucking Ninja Funk, you fucking idiot! This was like the only Cyber Shadow song that I thought sounded ok, but it's still nowhere near NG's level of catchiness.


I only got up to Stage 8 though, and then I quit coz I got sick & tired of all of the damn spike 1-hit kill platform puzzles. It truly does feel like a Mega man game, but no Megamang I've ever played, have ever went that insane with the 1-hit kill spikes. They're fucking everywhere in Cyber Shadow's late game. They're on the fucking ceiling, the ground, even on the goddamn walls. You have to specifically time your dash jumps, and I'm out here thinking.... HOW THE FUCK IS THIS NINJA GAIDEN? That's how MMX plays, not NG!


Oh yeah I almost forgot about the story. I actually love the story for NG1 & 2. NG3 was when it got kinda weird, but unfortunately Cyber Shadow's plot seems mostly inspired by NG3.
Not that NG3's plot was bad. It wasn't, NG3 made sense at least, since the main bad guys were the CIA and it's believable that the USA has or had access to such tech. (I wouldn't say it's believable in today's USA though. Today's USA seems to be run by a bunch of literal monkeys.)

What was great about NG's plots is how the cutscenes actually made me more hype to play the game. part of it has to do with how awesome the cutscene music is.

The songs that NG used, made it sound like the world would end if Ryu fails at his task.

Even better is that the actual story being told was easy to follow, and would be right at home with an 80s era Martial arts flick. You're a Ninja, from a rival Ninja clan who came to America to enact revenge for your dead father. During your quest, you're abducted by the CIA who force you to do your bidding, otherwsie they'll just kill you like they did with Walter. (Sure they tell you that they didn't kill him, so why the fuck do they imply to you that you'd meet the same fate as him if you don't do as you're told? LOL!)
The rest of NG's story plays out like a Mercenary film. He's sent to complete a task, he does no matter the cost.

My fave of the series is actually NG2, but I felt that NG1 had the easiest to follow story that didn't require you to play a previous game in order to understand it unlike with NG2 & 3.

Cyber Shadow's story, isn't really a story. It's a lot like Dark Souls, the story already happened but you piece together what the story was through terminals and cutscenes.
The story is fucking dumb. You're part of a Ninja clan that has a female called Master who's the leader of the clan. She caught a sickness so her father, who is a doctor tried to save her from the sickness.
He later sacrifices the lives of every ninja from her clan in order to save her, and transfer her 'essence' into a synthetic body to keep her alive. You're one of the last remaining survivors who tries to put a stop to his plan. It's implied that you're the Master's lover or something.


It's a really fucking dumb plot, coz I'd be thinking that if the main bad guy is a docter who's also the father of the Master, why are they not part of the same clan? Ninja clans are generally part of the same exact blood line. I don't think they would waste the lives of those they would consider one of their own.

My first reaction was that the plot was meant to be nonsensical like a typical NES plot, but after replaying stuff like Shatterhand, Secret Ties, The NG trilogy. NES action games actually didn't have confusing plots at all. NES action game plots were good enough to be the plot of an action movie, or an action anime like Ninja Scroll and what not.

Cyber Shadow's writing seems like it's trying to combine some Zen philosophy with a GITs-inspired take on on Machine-fusion being the higher evolved from of humanity.
My problem is that, that's all the fucking plot is. The plot is basically something that sounds like a background lore, rather than an actual plot.

The plot of NG1-3 is to save Irene Lew, that's it. LOL! You're given a different reason each time, but it's actually Irene's presence that causes all of the drama in the NES games, because Ryu would actually have a much easier time completing his tasks if he just killed her or left her behind.
That's why I still enjoy the NG series to this day, including the Itagaki games & even Koei Tecmo NG3. Every single one of them follow the same exact "Ryu must rescue a girl on his path to complete his conquest" set up. Ryu doesn't even have a romantic interest in Rachel at all but it's Ryu's heroic sacrifices that shows to Rachel that she doesn't need to sacrifice herself at all in order to save or avenge those she loves. All she has to do is her part and keep the faith.

In NG2, Irene was yet again the main damsel just like in the NES games but with a twist, we only know her under her real identity in NG2.
NG3 showed Ryu being a father figure to some Japanese lady and her daughter, and he moves on when its discovered that her husband still lives.

That's what I really liked about the Ninja Gaiden games. Ryu is very Japanese, he thinks the way to peace if for righteous men to be even more proficient at violence than those who commit evil. It's what the entire NG series revolves around.


Cyber Shadow tries to go for something deep, but it left a sour taste in my mouth coz I'm just laughing at the main character, and calling him a simp coz that's legit how the story comes off. We're never shown or given a reason why The Master is so special. She just happens to be the leader of her shitty Ninja clan, and that Ninja Clan itself seems to be written like a random treehouse club
I was always under the impression that Ninjas were supposed to function like a CIA agency, and expertise in espionage & information warfare.

That's the main reason why in both the NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy and the 3d Ninja Gaiden trilogy, the American CIA have such a heavy presence in those games. They're in the same business.
NG gets it right though, and they always portray the CIA as evil, WHICH IS TRUE, AY LMAO!

[Jack]

Now I'm at a mothafucking Battletoads style motorcycle level in Cyber Shadow. WTF is this shit? It was advertised as a Ninja Gaiden style game, yet it actually imitates everything but Ninja Gaiden. My score went from a 4 out of 10 down to a 2, AYY LMAO! Biggest waste of money ever. It does not deliver on what it promises.

[Iwazaru]

I played and liked Katana Zero recently, which i initially discovered through one of it's composers.

At first it felt too much like Hotline Miami, but then it kept my interest with new mechanics/details being added, also story/narrative was amusing (but still a bit underbaked). I must warn though, it's more a puzzle then an action game. For example, one of common behaviors needed to complete a level: start entering room, while at it go into slow-mo to deflect a bullet back into sniper, at same time start falling down with a blade to destroy a flying drone beneath, kill it vertically so it falls down on street and explode, firing up other explosives around that take care of swat guys. After that, grab a smoke grenade, run to a door of house, time it so you opening door will kill nearest watchguy and while doing that throw smoke so killers who come down dont see you and you cut them away. And for guy with shield, roll behind him when he shoots to not be blocked by shield. So yeah, it's more or less puzzle as you come up with a certain plan how exactly deal with enemies, with or without possible variations. Boss fights though... some of them reminded me of Gunstar Heroes' last boss in terms of patterns and movement. What i hated in game, were some sections where you have to evade lasers and traps, though was fun to lure enemies into them. Motorcycle level also perhaps questionable, but stealth one was allright.

Story part reminds me of Jacob's Ladder, not due to surrealism, but because of theme (super soldiers / chemical experiment / genocide etc. etc.). Plot itself isnt that much active (most of game we deal with flashbacks and our identity questions), but there are cool things in narrative. Also dialogue system is pretty dope with variable answers of different tone (like vtmb text options). One of endings is happening on 2/3 of game though which might be stupid decision.



Ludowic gives good atmosphere to it



And groove

[Cat]

Finally got around to playing Memento from 2016.
Can't recommend it enough. It's RPGMaker-like and not perfect, but has such good graphics that it easy qualifies as "remarkable".
I hope the developer's other games get Steam releases/translations.
Will probably buy more copies of this one for friends.