Ninja Gaiden Ragebound preview: a challenging series modernised for a new audience

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is up there as one of the best games I played at Summer Game Fest this year, and I loved how it modernised the series for a new audience.

The Ninja Gaiden series is tough, really tough, and I spent countless evenings trying to beat the original on the NES way back when.

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is slightly more forgiving but not by any means easy, it takes good timing, precision and muscle memory to master its gameplay but getting to that point doesn't take long.

Most enemies die in a single hit, but beefier enemies and bosses can sustain more damage. To get around this, a special slice move can be used which charges up by killing a glowing enemy, or sacrificing a portion of your health to charge it up instead.

You don’t have this power for long when multiple enemies are on screen at the same time it becomes an elaborate dance to take them all out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Offense is an important part of Ninja Gaiden but so is defense, and while Ninja Gaiden Ragebound gave me a forward roll/dash that came in handy on several occasions the feature I like the most was the spin attack, which could be used to bounce on incoming projectiles as well as enemies. Mechanically speaking it worked a lot like Shovel Knight, if you’ve played it and know what I mean.

Putting all of these techniques together was good fun, and while the levels were pretty short there was a teeny tiny bit of exploration to do to find all of the collectables.

Eventually it was time to throw down with a boss, which took me a couple of tries but was fun nonetheless.

The demo I played was seemingly earlier into the game so I’d imagine things get much tougher as the playthrough continued, but from what I’ve seen it looks like it does a good job of reintroducing the 2D variety of the series for both new and old fans alike.

It had some bite to it, but it never felt like I was coming up against a wall I couldn’t get through, hopefully the full game feels the same way.